Ron Warren, Senior Vice President of the Western IRB, wrote a letter to Dr. Michael Mithoefer, reporting the outcome of the November 19 meeting of the WIRB’s Executive Policy Committee. The WIRB letter was two short sentences, “The Western Institutional Review Board, Inc. (WIRB) has made the decision not to provide institutional review board services for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Please find enclosed a refund of your previously paid fees, along with the material you submitted for IRB review.”
The WIRB retreated from its supposed scientific rationale for revoking approval for MAPS’ MDMA/PTSD study, as described in its September 6, 2002 letter and critiqued in MAPS’ October 10 letter, and fell back on no rationale whatsoever. The WIRB has shown itself to be scientifically out of its depth and lacking of sufficient integrity to acknowledge its mistakes and refocus on a rational, data-based, risk/benefit analysis of MAPS’ MDMA/PTSD protocol.
MAPS will very soon start the process of submitting the protocol to another IRB for review.
