Canadian MDMA/PTSD Study Gains Institutional Affiliation On July 19, 2010, Health Canada informed principal investigator Ingrid Pacey, M.D. that they would accept a letter from the director of the University of Victoria’s (UVic) Center for Addiction Research of British Columbia (CARBC) as proof of affiliation with UVic/CARBC. This was a major hurdle in getting the Canadian MDMA/PTSD study started. In Switzerland and the U.S., we have been able to conduct our research without any outside institutional affiliation, but Health Canada required affiliation with a Canadian institute before we could import MDMA for the study. We had obtained approval for the actual protocol from both Health Canada and a Canadian Institutional Review Board (IRB) by March 2009, so this delay for institutional affiliation has been especially prolonged and frustrating. Fortunately, we were not deterred from continuing to strive for full approval for what will become the first psychedelic research study to take place in Canada in almost 40 years. On July 22, 2010, Tim Stockwell, Ph.D. the Director of CARBC, sent a letter to Health Canada confirming CARBC’s support and affiliation with Dr. Pacey. In the letter, Stockwell wrote, “I have reviewed the paper about the results of the [MAPS-sponsored] U.S. MDMA/PTSD study… As a result, I found the results to be promising and think it is of significant scientific importance that a Canadian MDMA/PTSD study is conducted to see if the results can be replicated with a new co-therapist team in a new location.”
