The Futile Cycle

As some of the mainstream media has started to pick up (rather quickly, for an article about science), in this week’s edition of Psychopharmacology, there is an study of psilocybin — the main ingredient in “Liberty Caps” mushrooms — and its ability to induce “mystical experiences,” using a double-blind trial in humans. They notice that giving psilocybin induces many positive effects on the patients that affect the serotonin pathways; this is not surprising, considering how similar psilocybin is to serotonin in structure.

I can think of some vast ethical problems I have with this sort of trial, though, since there is some evidence that psilocybin can cause schizophrenia and other psychological disorders (which is no surprise for a psychoactive compound). It’s not quite as bad as devolving into giving LSD to subjects (as the Harvard Psilocybin Project in the 1960s did), but there are still some questions as to what extent consent of the subject makes something ok. It’s one of the reasons why psycho-pharmaceuticals research (or even neuroscience research) is difficult. You can’t ethically do many things to people, and other model organisms just don’t work that well for this kind of research (after all, we experiment on them because they aren’t like us, which makes us more comfortable with doing certain experiments on them).

I’m sure it is valuable to have this sort of information, in the long run, but I’m glad I’m not involved with any research like this; I’d have trouble sleeping at night.

The Futile Cycle is not as depressing a concept as the name might make you think. It is really the fundamental structure in all of molecular biology, the epitome of the balance that living organisms maintain.

This blog will be filled with whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. You are welcome to come along for the ride.