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Recently the mainstream news media have aired a report by a Dutch researcher Dr. Maartje M. de Win into ecstasy use. The media report stated that ecstasy use can harm the brain for first time uses even though the evidence from the scientific study did not show this to be the case.

MAPS Clinical Research Associate Ilsa Jerome, Ph.D., wrote a special report evaluating the media’s claims and how they relate (or not) to the actual data.

—– extract —–

News Coverage of Dutch Prospective Ecstasy User Studies

Ilsa Jerome

Recently there has been a lot of news coverage of a new study in
ecstasy users that has been carried out in the Netherlands, with the
headlines stating that Ecstasy can harm the brain of first time users,
and with the stories including statements about memory loss in ecstasy
users as well. (See, for example, this report from BiologyNews.net).
After examining the few published reports and conference presentations,
there is little to no published data supporting the worries of the
researchers or the media. All the measures they used for detecting
signs of damage to serotonin neurons failed to find these signs, and
the significance of the one change they did find is not clear.
Furthermore, the only publicly available data from these studies
concerning memory in ecstasy users refutes claims of memory impairment.
Hence the news coverage, and even the researchers themselves,
misrepresent what the researchers actually found; little to no
indication that a few doses of ecstasy harm the brain.

—– end extract —–

read more of the article here.

This video made by Tim Leary about 10 years ago outlines his version of how our brains work. This video is 28 minutes 58 seconds long and was produced by Chris Graves.