Herbal incense
Synthetic chemist David Nichols describes how his research on psychedelic compounds abused – with fatal consequences.
This is the beginning of the International Year of Chemistry, designed to celebrate the contribution of my country for the welfare of mankind. However, last year was alarmingly clear to me that some of my scientific contributions can not help people on welfare. In fact, they can cause real damage.
A few weeks ago, a colleague sent me a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Described a businessman “adept Laboratory of Europe and its chief chemist, who mined the literature for ideas for new products design – the name of the legal maximum. I was particularly concerned to see their name in the paper, and “It was especially valuable” for their business. Later, I received an email saying I should stop my research and was in a quandary at my university.
I never thought that my research to be dangerous, and really hope one day to the development of herbal incense to help people. I have worked for nearly four decades, the synthesis and study of drugs that can improve the human condition. One is aimed at relieving the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and works well in a monkey model of the disease. This study is also incense herbs to improve memory and cognition in patients with schizophrenia, one of the most devastating human conditions. Other substances, I’m working on those psychedelics like LSD and mescaline. Is that the last area of research that I have published articles in numerous molecules that are likely to psychoactive properties in humans? It seems that many of them are being produced and sold as “Legal highs.
I first heard that unknown chemicals fans have seen my papers for over ten years. My laboratory conducts research on the 3.4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or “ecstasy”), a project that began in 1982, before most people have not heard of the drug. We would like to know how MDMA has worked in the brain, because we think of drugs, as it could help in psychotherapy. In the process, we taught a lot of molecules that structure similar to MDMA. One was a 4 Methylthioamphetamine or MTA, which can inhibit an enzyme that breaks down serotonin in the body. Between 1992 and 1997, he published three articles on the effects of the MTA in rats, including a study showing that the MTA may have potential in treating depression and may be greater in the currently marketed drugs.
“I was stunned. I had posted the information that ultimately led to the death of a man.”Without my knowledge, the MTA has been synthesized by others, and become the pills are called, respectively, rather ‘flat-liners. Some people who took them died. Now, any literate person who had carefully read the newspapers, have realized the danger in swallowing MTA. This not only causes the release of serotonin neurons, but also to prevent the collapse of the neurotransmitter, which can lead to dangerous serotonin syndrome, which sometimes can be fatal. My laboratory showed that rats receiving MTA consequences such as ecstasy. It seemed that this was the only motivation for illegal production and distribution among people. I was surprised by this revelation, and left me with a feeling of emptiness and depression for some time. In 2002, six deaths were associated with MTA. It has not helped that I knew that some of these victims were associated with the use of multiple drugs, or were associated with very high doses of MTA. I had posted the information that ultimately led to death.
There is really no way to change the way we publish things, although in one case, however, decided not to study or to publish in the molecule, he knew very toxic. I guess you could call that self-censorship. Although some of my results were, for example, violence, nobody can know that research will eventually lead. I try to find positive things, and when my research is used for negative from which saddens me.
During the last year or so, I began to ask more email about the human effects of other materials, which my laboratory was studying. Forensic laboratories began sending requests for drug samples that are suspected to have been popping up on the black market, but they were so new that there are no standards of analysis. Fortunately, most of the other molecules we have posted could not kill, at least in reasonable doses. However, at very high doses or mixed with other substances that can become part of a deadly mix.
Never test the safety of the molecules under consideration; it is not a problem for us. So it really bothers me that employers “European laboratory experts and their ilk seem to be so little concern for human security and human life, the little information we publish used them to go ahead and market a product intended for human consumption. Although the test procedures “safety” that use these people is apparently only determines whether a substance immediately kill them, there are many different types of toxicity, not all of which are easy to detect. For example, if a substance seems innocuous in the market and became popular in the dance scene, but then, millions of users to develop a rare type of kidney damage, which shows irreversible and difficult to treat, or even endanger the life or death? “It will be a catastrophe of enormous proportions. This problem, which has never been part of my research focus at present time does not give me rest.
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