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First LSD Test In 40 Years Reveal Drug Helps Terminal Patients Prepare For Death
EwanPalmer writes "The first controlled LSD study in more than 40 years reveals the drug could be used to help people with terminal illnesses deal better with death. The study, published in the Journal of nervous and Mental Disease, showed that 12 people who agreed to take the banned hallucinogenic drug during therapy sessions felt 'significant reductions in anxiety' about their lives ending."
This is really ancient knowledge. Did science just get hep? Great.
It's more about science getting approval. LSD is one of those compounds that is next to impossible for researchers to get access to and test in humans. For reasons I don't care enough about keeping kids off drugs or something to fully understand, some drugs are so wicked and dangerous and illegal that it is necessary to prevent any research (even about how dangerous they are; but definitely nothing suggesting that they aren't as dangerous as previously believed), even under hardass conditions, on terminal patients, and so forth. As quoth noted toxicologist and psycho-pharmacologist Jacqui Smith: "You cannot compare the harms of an illegal activity with a legal one." Why? Because one is illegal, of course!
I wouldn't really call this 'ancient knowledge' (if the first synthesis was in 1938, it probably isn't shamanic lore); but it was certainly an active area of scientific interest pre-ban. That somebody would want another crack at it isn't even remotely news. That they managed to fill out the paperwork, on the other hand...
They seem to have similar effects, but these things are notoriously hard to study objectively, so anecdotal evidence is not enough to establish that they have identical effects (and it would be really weird if they did. How should such different molecules get identical pharmacokinetics and pharmarkodynamics?).