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FDA’s review of MDMA for PTSD highlights study bias and safety concerns
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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Bought is it.
Mental health meds are a huge industry. MDMA has the potential to help cure what other medication can only treat.
Nah, that's not the issue (nor do I believe in magic bullets, but that's a different matter). See, the issue is that MDMA can't be patented. Anyone can make it so no one pharmacorp can have a 20 year monopoly
I said potential to help cure. I think MDMA assisted psychotherapy, in particular, has the potential to cure PTSD in a lot of people. Not everyone. But a lot.
And the patent issue on this has been solved by starting a non-profit pharmaceutical company and getting grants and donations to fund these trials. And then patenting the treatment protocols under a public trust corp I believe. I follow MAPS quite a bit, the non-profit that spear headed a lot of this.
I think what the other poster said about the FDA approving drugs with more cardiovascular issues than MDMA is true and points towards corporate bias in the panel (which most of us probably know is true).
Treating mental health with SSRIs etc. is a big business. Some of that panel probably stands to lose money if some of those repeat customers find a cure.
You sound like you'd be interested in David Healy's work. Check out Children of the Cure if you haven't already. That, as well as a plethora of other shady things I learned in university, are responsible for reorienting me toward public policy rather than becoming a practicing psychologist.
I found a TED talk with him I'm listening now. Thanks for the lead I hadn't heard of him before.
Usually first to market work generics enjoys a year of exclusivity. Usually other companies abandon our back burnera project they don't make to market first. There's still money to be made. Just not as much.
I think you don't quite understand the comment.
Current pharmaceuticals are usually a (life)long prescription. It's not like antibiotics, where you get a dose for a few days or weeks and you're done. Antidepressants have to be taken for years. Every day. That means revenue every day. It's a treatment, not a cure.
MDMA on the other hand is a (potential) cure. You take it a few times under supervision and that's it.
Problem is, this takes away customers from the former group. And that means, far less revenue from "traditional" psychopharmacology products. MDMA cannibalizes other drugs.
Well, I guess it's not only that. Psychedelic drugs can really fuck you up, if you aren't prepared. People talk about set and setting a lot.
I suspect that these drugs sure help a lot of people, but can also fuck a lot of people up really badly. It's like, people who don't go along well with these substances, avoid them instinctively.
Now, if someone would prescribe them, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people who are simply not prepared for it mentally (instead blindly trust the medics), would take them and get hurt pretty badly because of that.
That's why its better to take them under medical supervision(at least for the first time). Just giving them someone is probably the dumbest thing you could do.
It's not just supervision IMO.
I prepared myself for years before I took psilocybin for the first time, because I knew that it's going to bring up all of the subconscious shit that I carried around. So I "cleaned" myself enough emotionally beforehand, before taking the fungus.
Now, imagine your typical asshole walks into your medical treatment facility and demands psilocybin. Sure, you can give them psilocybin, but you cannot give them the sense of respect and understanding in front of these drugs.
Edit: by "your typical asshole" i mean, the typical asshole that you would encounter daily. Not you personally or sth.
That's why you shouldn't just give it out to the Normie's. It should only be taken with medical supervision.
These drugs are typically used for individual and group therapy sessions and not given as prescriptions to take at home. They're basically just there to augment therapy sessions.
I do think they should be legalized and allowed for recreational use as well but your concerns aren't really justified if you look at what existing therapeutic applications are like and what companies in the psychedelic space are trying to do right now.
Yeah, I guess you have a point.
Don't use the word cure.
It does not have that potential. This should be downvoted to oblivion.
There is no such thing as "curing" a mental disorder/disability. Although it could theoretically help speed up recovery from temporary bouts of depression or post-traumatic stress (which is often labelled "PTSD" when it's not), it cannot cure a lifelong disorder like depressive/mood disorders or PTSD & CPTSD. "Curing" a mental disorder would mean making you a completely different person, it's inseparable from the rest of your brain – especially something that leans more into the "neurodivergence" idea, like ADHD or ASD/Autism, which both have imperfect yet effective treatments (ASD less so than ADHD), but "curing" such a thing would be impossible.
The only solution that helps people with disabilities is to make treatment in the form of pharmaceuticals, counselling, and other methods widely available and accessible over the long term – not to look for a cure. Not to say that MDMA can't be used for that though, it definitely can, it'd just be misleading to call it a cure.