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March Café Scientifique with Michael Hughes
Posted by: jdewitt | March 3, 2015 | 2 Comments
Dear Café Scientifiquers, our next café will happen on Tuesday March 31st, 7:30pm at The Railway Club. Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Michael Hughes, a Research Associate in the Department of Medical Genetics at UBC. The title of his talk is:
Psychedelic Medicine: The History & Science of LSD in the Clinic
Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye and other grains that has been blamed (rightly or wrongly) for episodes of mass hysteria throughout history. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized from ergot in 1938 by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman, who, at the height of World War II, also discovered (somewhat mysteriously) its psychedelic properties. LSD soon came to the attention of the U.S. Army who quickly proceeds to buy up all the supply – primarily to keep it out of the hands of its enemies. Throughout the Cold War, elements in U.S. defense and security agencies engage in experiments by secretly slipping LSD to citizens with dangerous (and sometimes comical) consequences with the goal of perfecting brainwashing and mind control. Canadian scientists at McGill participated in some of these studies, thinking they could use LSD to cure psychoses. These unethical and largely unscientific experiments were akin to psychological torture. Meanwhile, the public discovered the recreational benefits of LSD and the hippie movement adopted the drug as a symbol and vehicle to enlightenment. Largely for this reason, in the early ‘70s LSD was classified as a Schedule-1 drug in the U.S. restricted legal access stopped most research and hopes of the clinical benefits of LSD was abandoned and all but forgotten. Recently, scientists, mostly working outside of the U.S. and Canada, have rediscovered LSD’s efficacy for the treatment of psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and existential fear in terminally ill patients. Are we ready for a new wave of ethical human research to (re)-discover the clinical benefits of LSD? Take a journey through the strange history of LSD research and learn about its potential applications in medicine. What a long, strange trip it’s been.
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Thanks again to the organizers and the great audience! I had lots of fun!
entrepreneur
March Café Scientifique with Michael Hughes : Café Scientifique Vancouver