Sasha Shulgin Smacks Down George Ricaurte

Above: the Professor with visionary scientist Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin.

I attended a delightful lecture by Sasha yesterday at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore -- home of the recent Psilocybin as a catalyst for mystical experience study.

At the end of Sasha's talk, after he had explained his very cautious methodology for evaluating new compounds and introducing them to his research group, a well-dressed, carefully groomed guy in the front asked a rather loaded question. I'll paraphrase:

Guy in front row: "Surely, you know about the people in California who ingested MPTP thinking it was heroin. This must have concerned you. It must have shaken up your group."

Shulgin: "No, it didn't."

Guy in front row: "I have a hard time believing this didn't worry you. You're testing compounds that you know nothing about. Those people got Parkinson's. And that doesn't worry you? You're not at all concerned about the safety of yourself and your group?"

Shulgin: "No."

Guy in front row: "I find that very hard to believe...." yadda yadda yadda.

Shulgin: "Let me turn this question around. How do you propose evaluating novel psychoactive effects in animals?" (Sasha's reply was much more nuanced, but that was the gist of it.*)

Guy in front row: (Uncomfortable silence)

My suspicions were correct -- the guy in the front row was none other than George "Oops, I fed my monkeys methamphetamine instead of MDMA!" Ricaurte. Had I known for sure it was him, I would have followed up with "Well, at least Sasha and his group KNOW the substances they're evaluating are the real things.... unlike a well-known, well-funded (pdf) scientist and his unfortunate monkeys ....**"

Damn, what a missed opportunity.

* Shulgin once said, "There are real problems involved in testing a rat for empathy or changes in self-image."

** MAPS has collected a trove of documents chronicling Ricaurte's research and the ensuing controversy. To be fair to Ricaurte, he has gone on record as admitting that MDMA may eventually be a legitimate medicine.

Prescription Ecstasy and Other Pipe Dreams: An Update on Psychedelic Research

RU Sirius interviews Jag Davies of MAPS about developments in psychedelic research:

RU: So a while back, MAPS got approval for a study in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. Where are we at with that?

JAG: It’s almost over. They’ve treated 15 out of 20 patients. It’s very slow. There are lots of pre-conditions for the study because it’s such a controversial substance. But the results are ridiculous. Their CAPS score—(CAPS is the Clinician Administered PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] Scale) is about five times higher than in treating chronic treatment-resistant patients with Zoloft. It’s very likely that we’re going to be able to go on to do our next set up studies—Phase III studies. And there are a whole other slew of studies that are sort of copying this one that we’re doing in a bunch of other places like Switzerland, and Israel, just to be sure.

More at link.

Padilla Injected with a "Truth Serum"

Further confirmation that MKULTRA never died:

Whenever Padilla left the cell, he was shackled and suited in heavy goggles and headphones. He was kept under these conditions for 1,307 days. He was forbidden contact with anyone but his interrogators, who punctured this extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds.

Padilla also says he was injected with a "truth serum," a substance his lawyers believe was LSD or PCP.

According to his lawyers and two mental health specialists who examined him, Padilla has been so shattered that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defence. He is convinced that his lawyers are "part of a continuing interrogation program" and sees his captors as protectors.

And Klein has clearly done her homework:

Now that his mental state is the central issue in the case, the government prosecutors have a problem. The CIA and the military have known since the early 1960s that extreme sensory deprivation and sensory overload cause personality disintegration that's the whole point.

Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation, a declassified 1963 CIA manual for interrogating "resistant sources" was based on the findings of the agency's notorious MK-Ultra program. In the 1950s, it funnelled about $25 million to scientists to research "unusual techniques of interrogation." One of the psychiatrists who received CIA funding was the infamous Ewen Cameron of Montreal's McGill University.

Cameron subjected hundreds of psychiatric patients to large doses of electroshock and total sensory isolation and drugged them with LSD and PCP. In 1960, Cameron gave a lecture at the Brooks Air Force Base in Texas in which he stated that sensory deprivation "produces the primary symptoms of schizophrenia."

There is no need to go so far back to prove that the U.S. military knew full well that it was driving Padilla mad. The Army's field manual, reissued just last year, states, "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and anti-social behavior," as well as "significant psychological distress."

If these techniques drove Padilla insane, that means the U.S. government has been deliberately driving hundreds, possibly thousands, of prisoners insane around the world. What is on trial in Florida is not one man's mental state. It is the whole system of U.S. psychological torture.

Al Qaeda Suspect: U.S. Government Gave Me LSD

More confirmation that MKULTRA never went away.

Lawyers for Padilla, who was born in Brooklyn and converted to Islam while in prison for gang-related crimes, made the claims of torture in a motion filed last week with a federal court in Florida.

"He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution," the chief federal defender in Miami, Michael Caruso, wrote. "Additionally, Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations."

See also the Sex, Drugs, Mind Control, and Torture index.