Scientists at Johns Hopkins University who last year published a controversial report suggesting that a single evening's use of the illicit drug "ecstasy" could cause permanent brain damage and Parkinson's disease are retracting their research, saying the drug they used in their experiments wasn't Ecstasy after all.
The retraction, to be published in next Friday's issue of the journal Science, has reignited a smoldering and sometimes angry debate over the risks and benefits of the drug, also known as MDMA.
The drug is popular at all-night raves and other venues for its ability to reduce inhibitions and induce expansive feelings of openheartedness. But some studies have indicated that the pills can at least temporarily damage neurons that use the mood-altering brain chemical serotonin. Some users also have experienced high fevers, which rarely have proven fatal.
Last year's research, involving monkeys and baboons, purported to show that three modest doses of ecstasy -- the amount a person might take in a one-night rave -- could cause serious damage to another part of the brain: neurons that use the brain chemical dopamine. Advocates of ecstasy's therapeutic potential, including a number of scientists and doctors who believe it may be useful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder or other psychiatric conditions, attacked the study. They wondered why large numbers of users weren't dying or growing deathly ill from the drug, as the animals did, and why no previous link had ever been made between ecstasy and Parkinson's despite decades of use and many studies.
The answer to at least some of those questions became clear with the retraction. Due to a mislabeling of vials, the scientists wrote, all but one of the animals were injected not with ecstasy but with methamphetamine, or "speed" -- a drug known to damage the dopamine system.
The researchers said they discovered the mistake when follow-up tests gave conflicting results, and they offered evidence that the tubes were mislabeled by the supplier, identified by sources as Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina. A spokesman for the company said he did not know if the company had erred.
Una McCann, one of the Hopkins scientists, said she regretted the role the false results may have played in a debate that was going on last year in Congress and within the Drug Enforcement Administration over how to deal with ecstasy abuse.
But she emphasized Friday that the retraction hadn't changed her feelings about the danger of taking ecstasy: "I still wouldn't recommend it to anybody."
