Looking back, none of the scientists I spoke with before the retraction could make sense of how MDMA could have killed the poor monkeys. "The abrupt deaths of two of the monkeys, the intense toxicity to most of the others, and the unexpected changes within the dopamine system, all seemed strange," says Dr. Alexander Shulgin, one of the drug's earliest researchers. The consensus among those who believe that MDMA's downsides have been overstated was that the dosage levels were unusually high -- researchers gave five monkeys high doses of "MDMA" every three hours -- exaggerating human use, rather than mirroring it.

For the past 20 years, Ricaurte has been considered one of the leading experts on MDMA and its effects. His research has been prominently featured on NIDA's Web site and cited in congressional testimony. He has received millions of dollars in funding for his research on MDMA and other drugs, research that has proved prominent in government's $54 million dollar effort in 1999 to educate the public about "club drugs." After the recent retraction, his critics make a dramatic charge: Ricaurte and his team were ardent to get their findings out to the public because the results were precisely the ammo the federal government needed for its War on Drugs.

"Ricaurte's got a long career of being funded by NIDA to say how dangerous MDMA is," says Dr. Julie Holland, an editor of "Ecstasy: The Complete Guide, A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA," and the attending psychiatrist at the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Room. "He also should have known that no one else has been able to show dopamine damage from MDMA -- it should have occurred to him to question his results -- everyone else was suspicious of them. But instead of checking his work right away, they come up with a press release saying you're playing Russian roulette with the brain." Holland and others are calling for the release of the results from the oral replications -- the follow-up research that led to the study's retraction. "If Ricaurte can show neurotoxicity with those oral doses, then he'd silence his critics," says Holland. "If he can't, then that's interesting also."

The academic work of scientists in research labs around the country can have dramatic consequences for ordinary citizens. Ricaurte's findings were widely quoted when Congress was lining up support for the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, also known as the Rave Act, which makes it easier to prosecute club owners and event promoters for the drug use of their customers. Congress passed the Rave Act on April 10, 2003. And tax dollars pay for public service announcements declaring that one hit of Ecstasy can destroy your brain.

"This study looks like high-class 'Reefer Madness,'" said Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Safety First Project of the Drug Policy Alliance. "The government's trying to scare the kids out of experimentation and into abstinence, and it just doesn't work. The problem is that the kids after 20 years of these messages have become incredibly cynical about what we tell them about drugs. 'This is your brain on Ecstasy' turned out to be completely bogus -- so they roll their eyes and say, Who do they think they're kidding?"

Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, who 1994 conducted the first FDA-approved research study examining the effects of MDMA on human volunteers, has been a leading critic of the monkey study, as well as Ricaurte's earlier research of MDMA's effects on the brain. In 2000, he published an article in the journal Addiction Research examining what he felt were serious flaws in Ricaurte's research going back to the 1980s. "It's not that MDMA's without risk; that's not the case," says Grob. "But the neurotoxicity issue has been such an attention grabber that it's distracting us from more realistic concerns, such as people using the drug under adverse conditions, and the substitution of other drugs in pills passed off as pure MDMA."

To be sure, almost no one in the pro-MDMA movement says widespread pill popping is a good idea. What Grob and others believe is that with the rush to declare that MDMA fries your brain -- the neurotoxicity issue, an issue that clearly requires further research -- its therapeutic potential is being ignored. "It's certainly worth investigation," says Grob, "but we haven't been able to get to first base because everyone is so hyped up about neurotoxicity."

This fall, Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, a nonprofit organization that aims to develop MDMA into a FDA-approved prescription medicine, hopes to hit the home run of MDMA research. "It always shocked me that superimposed on MDMA -- which is a remarkably benign drug when used in therapeutic settings, with serious adverse effects quite rare even in uncontrolled recreational settings -- was an edifice of such fear and misinformation," he says. MAPS will examine the use of MDMA and psychotherapy for the treatment of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a clinic in Charleston, S.C. Doblin then plans to examine MDMA's use for alleviating anxiety, depression and pain in cancer patients at Harvard Medical School.

In the retraction, Ricaurte stands by what he believes are MDMA's considerable risks to the brain. Dr. Jean Lud Cadet, another leading expert on MDMA use and the brain, won't comment on the monkey study as he was not one of that study's researchers, but he remains steadfast in his belief that long-term Ecstasy use can lead to sleeping problems, depression and memory loss. Dr. Drew Pinsky, author of the book "Cracked," co-host of the radio show "Loveline," and director of the Department of Chemical Dependency Services at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., points out some of the less deadly but nonetheless unfortunate side effects of prolonged MDMA use, explaining, "What we see clinically is a characteristic syndrome where very social people suddenly start isolating and soon they begin experiencing panic attacks and agoraphobia."

Where do we go from here? Somewhere between teenagers (or people who still think they are) doing too many doses at raves and "one hit of E can kill you" there may be acceptable therapeutic uses for MDMA. One thing is certain: After this mind-blowing blunder, everyone should heed that old raver adage -- mark your pills, people.

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