SCIENCE

So. In the realm of "It pays to keep yourself informed"...

A few months ago, I'd heard from a respectable professor giving a lecture at UC Berkeley that a paper had been published which said that even in normal club-level doses, MDMA caused some long-term brain damage.

I've had MDMA three times. It's pleasant enough but not really my thing so this was not seriously a sad discovery for me.

However, I'd passed along this information to friends and some of them were a bit saddened by it. However, I was listening to Lorenzo's program (see Music) and he mentioned that there was a huge scandal with the paper in question and that Science had printed a retraction/apology/etc. Turns out that the original author, Ricaurte is one of Bush's little weasels and he'd ACCIDENTLY confused MDMA with Methamphetamine. GEE, what a mix-up!

Here's a google search string if you're interested in looking at the various articles

This makes me angry on a couple levels. First because I've been part of their blanket of misinformation because it's my nature to want to keep my friends and loved ones safe. But moreover it bugs me because while their lie made HUGE press and I saw it in several different reports and have subsequently heard it mentioned a half-dozen times by anti-drug groups, the RETRACTION was printed nearly TWO YEARS ago. Better yet, this bozo continues to get fat grants from the Bush Administration to keep up his smear campaign research My tax dollars hard at work! :(

Anyhow, to anyone I passed bad information along to, I do apologize. The source I heard the information from was a credited (and drug-positive) professor whose information was based on a peer-reviewed scientific publication. Just goes to show that anyone can be duped.