A call for LSD research

Lancet calls for LSD in labs

James Randerson, science correspondent
Friday April 14, 2006

"Use more psychedelic drugs," is not advice you would expect from your GP, but that is the call from an influential US medical
journal to researchers.

An editorial in the Lancet says that the "demonisation of psychedelic drugs as a social evil" has stifled vital medical research that
would lead to a better understanding of the brain and better treatments for conditions such as depression.

The journal's editor Richard Horton said he was not advocating recreational drug use, but championed the benefits of
researchers studying the effects of drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy by using them themselves in the lab.

"The blanket ban on psychedelic drugs enforced in many countries continues to hinder safe and controlled investigation, in a
medical environment, of their potential benefits," said the editorial, "...criminalisation of these agents has also led to an
excessively cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits."

Dr Horton told Guardian Unlimited that important advances were made by researchers using psychedelic drugs on themselves,
but that these studies were stifled by the post-1960s anti-drug backlash. "Our very earliest understanding of the neurochemistry
of the brain came from studying LSD-like compounds. Those same researchers were also taking those drugs, not recreationally,
but as experiments on themselves. This was immensely important work."

For the full story: http://212.187.153.30/science/story/0,,1754088,00.html