[susie123]

Well I thought the most annoying thing about tonight's (Thurs)programme was the long advert breaks: they were always having to interrupt the flow of discussion to cut to the adverts. And the programme because of its format was very bitty and too chatty - I don't think keep cutting to twitter and email comments and keep rushing about the studio does anything to promotea sensible discussion.

Anyway - and I would say this wouldn't I as it reflects my own thoughts - the most sensible comments came from Evan Harris, doctor and ex-MP who said he took part in the trial because it was important to investigate the science of the possible use of MDMA to treat post traumatic stress disorder. He said the scientists could do all sorts of trials but the government would probably ignore the findings which is a depressing thought.

It's happened before [from Wikipedia]:

In February 2009, the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs issued A review of MDMA ('ecstasy'), its harms and classification under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which recommended that MDMA be re-classified in the UK from a class A drug to a class B drug.

The government's veto was criticized in scientific publications. Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience, Oxford, stated in the British Medical Journal, "The government's decisions compromise its commitment to evidence based policy". Also in response, an editorial in the New Scientist noted "A much larger percentage of people suffer a fatal acute reaction to peanuts than to MDMA.... Sadly, perspective is something that is generally lacking in the long and tortuous debate over illegal drugs.

Anyway Prof Nutt said that the end that they had got funding for more trials, and that the MRI scanning data had revealed useful and previously unknown information about the effects of the drug on the brain.

And I don't for one moment think that the programme would tempt anyone to try this drug for the first time. There was no sensationalism, and a couple of profs said how dangerous they thought it was.

An interesting point was made about the drug as bought on the street: the researchers analysed the ecstasy that had been seized at a festival, Glastonbury I think - one third of the tabs contained no active ingredients at all and the rest were cut with various things, some harmful and some inert, but the average MDMA content of the tablets was almost exactly the same as the amount given to each of the volunteers in the trial.

My conclusions - a worthwhile programme, not easy to watch because of its style, probably watched mostly by folks who were sympathetic to its aims, and sadly not watched by many who jumped to conclusions about it before it was shown who might actually have found it interesting and learned something from it.