E for Ecstasy by Nicholas Saunders
Appendix 1: Reference Section

63 Risk assessment and the FDA, by Rick Doblin, 1988.

A lecture on the history and current status of neurotoxicological research into the effects of MDMA. Doblin is president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

Doblin asked whether changes observed in animals given MDMA were permanent, produced behaviour changes and occurred at doses equivalent to those taken by humans.

Experiments on monkeys showed that nerve endings were damaged two weeks afterwards but were partially repaired in 10 weeks. Serotonin levels were partially recovered over a period of months, while one study on rats showed total recovery after one year.

He noted that researchers failed to identify distinguishing characteristics between untreated primates and those whose serotonin had been reduced by 90% and that no cases of MDA toxicity in humans had been noticed even though MDA is twice as toxic as MDMA and was popular in the sixties. Neurotoxic effects on primates given MDMA are only observable at about twice the human dose.

Tests of the mental health of MDMA users showed that their IQ levels were well above average, even though they had consumed an average of 13,000 mg - 100 times more than the therapeutic dose of 125 mg.