Difficile est satiram non scribere.
(It is difficult not to write satire.)
--Juvenal
Scientists Retract Story on Ecstasy Brain Damage
Fri September 5, 2003 06:02 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers horrified to find they had used a mislabeled bottle in an experiment retracted their findings on Friday, saying they had failed to show the drug Ecstasy can cause a certain pattern of brain damage.
Their original report, published in September 2002, said they had found Parkinson's disease-like damage in the brains of monkeys injected with Ecstasy. or MDMA.
"The authors recently discovered that the drug used to treat all but one animal in that report came from a bottle that contained methamphetamine instead of the intended drug, MDMA ('Ecstasy')," the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which published the study in its journal Science, said in a statement.
"This explains a lot," said a visibly agitated Professor Popo, of the New Mexico Institute for Stoned and Disoriented Animals. "We were having a huge number of fistfights in the lab, all the researchers were working 36-hour shifts, and frankly, the dances were awful." The news has also cast doubt on some of the labs previous discoveries, including a 2001 report in which they claimed that repeated use of cocaine had a laxative effect and a 2000 study that heroin "tasted salty."
The mix-up was blamed on a member off the laboratory's support staff. "Jeff was clearly supposed to be responsible for labeling the bottles," said Dr. Popo. "He was supposed to put the name of the chemical on the label, along with the batch number and whether it was for research, lunch, or recreational use." But apparently there were problems with the system. "He was definitely shorting us on the THC," said one staffer, "And I know for a fact he was cutting the LSD with talcum powder." Jeff could not be contacted for an interview. Nobody answered the door at his bullet-riddled trailer, and he did not return several calls.
In the meantime, the Institute plans to continue its work. Work is currently underway on what is expected to be a ground-breaking study on the effects of Zoloft on Marmosets. Preliminary results indicate that it makes their teeth whiter.
(Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product. The rest is the fakey part.)
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