Posted by steve on March 22, 2001, at 2:17:19
In reply to Re: Scientists test hallucinogens for depression » steve, posted by Cam W. on March 20, 2001, at 9:52:29
Cam,
The only use of hallucinogens that I could sanction is the use of peyote by the Indians who have done so for thousands of years, and perhaps by others under their supervision.
This whole article smacks of rich people wanting to play God. It is interesting that a Rockefeller is partly funding this work. As you may know, this is not the first time an organization associated with that family has funded psychiatric research overseas as it would have been inacceptable in the US. What I am referring to is the Reign of Terror by Cameron et al at the Allen Institute at McGill, your most acclaimed university.
Unnecessary ECT on a daily basis, with the aim of "destroying" a person's personality, massive doses of needless neuroleptics, lobotomies for the heck of it, and more, supported by the US government and the Rockefeller Foundation. It's too bad I can't find a link about it, I read about it in some reputable history of psychiatry, but it seems that most of the websites that are obsessed by it are a little more paranoid than I would like. What was done cried to heaven, and I think that if organized psychiatry's main dedication had been to its patients (ha!) they would have arranged a Nuremberg style accounting.
In any event I know that if was a Rockefeller (ha!) and was sincerely interested by such stuff, and had the interests of humanity at heart, I would not in any way associate my family name with such undertakings, because of the foul odor that surrounds the name in such aspects. Pace, U Chicago (dr.bob) To me this feels like the performing the Fiddler on the Roof at Bayreuth, an absolute abomination.
One of the establishment newsmags, Atlantic Weekly, or the Nation, reported that Ted K, the Unabomber had probably been given LSD as part of the mind control experiments conducted on unwitting Harvard students. Whether that caused him to go nuts we'll never know, but I think it's a given that subjecting * anyone * to such tests should result in a life sentence, and LSD can seriously scramble people's brain.
Since you pride yourself on your knowledge of and affiliation with psychiatry, let me ask you how familiar you are with Cameron's "work", and how it has affected your view of psychiatry. Do you think that any other branch of medicine would have gotten away with near as brutal "experiments," and why do you think that the guild let it be swept under the table?
S.
http://www.counterpunch.org/gottlieb.html
> Steve - In the late fifties and early sixties many studies were done on treating people with serotonergic disorders (eg OCD, panic, etc.) and alcoholism using LSD and peyote. In researching a term paper years ago I found that there seemed to be a very good success rate in treating a few people with OCD and even more with alcohol (and other substance abuse) problems. These studies would not stand up to our stringent research criteria, but there were some interesting results. The LSD treatments were done in conjunction with psychotherapy. The study subjects would gain insight into their problems while under the influence, and at the next appointment (while not under the influence) the doc and patient would talk about the experience and how that person could change things in their life to overcome their problem (it was assumed that the OCD symptoms and alcoholism were results of other problems in these people's lives).
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> Then Tim Leary got ahold of LSD and screwed it up for the scientific community. Media scares about LSD soon put a stop to the studies. The real problem was that LSD was used in uncontrolled environments and in improper dosages and in unpure forms (eg mixed with strichnine or atropine).
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> Doing controlled studies with LSD will be hard. It will be near impossible not to know who got the placebo. New research with LSD has been going on for at least the past 3 years, but the results are not publicized very often, for obvious reasons. When enough of the results are published, though, it will be interesting to see what they find. - Cam
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> > Read all about it at the NY Times.
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> > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/13/health/13DRUG.html?pagewanted=print
poster:steve
thread:56948
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010319/msgs/57138.html