Read the original article from The Washington Post
MAPS did not fund all three of the previous human safety studies of MDMA. Two were funded by NIDA and the other, conducted by Dr. Charles Grob, was funded by Harbor-UCLA and MAPS. However, all three studies used MDMA from a source that MAPS was instrumental in developing.
The article says “All experts agree that ecstasy on rare occasions causes a sudden, inexplicable and fatal form of heat exhaustion. That is one reason there will be an emergency room doctor and nurse outside the Charleston-area therapy room.” Actually, the primary reason for the ER doctor and a nurse in the next room is not due to concerns over heat stroke (hyperthermia) which is not a significant risk when MDMA is administered in a clinical setting with subjects lying down and occasionally drinking fluids. To date, volunteers in the various Phase 1 studies conducted with MDMA administered in a clinical have either experienced no significant increase in core body temperature or only a mild increase. Rather, the ER doctor and nurse are present in order to respond in case of heart attack or stroke, exceedingly rare possibilities related to increases in blood pressure caused by MDMA. What is “inexplicable” about heat stroke (hyperthermia) is not the causal factors but rather why a very few people are more vulnerable to hyperthermia than everyone else.
