Dosed by the CIA

I circulated this to my friends in the psychedelic medicine community when it came out and Rick Doblin of MAPS sent me this response, which I am sure he does not mind me sharing:

Charles,

You have created an opportunity for us to serve as myth-busters and to show that we are rigorous thinkers. Here's a message that was sent out by Marc Franklin to the people on his list to whom he initially sent the book release. The person Mark is referring to, who wrote the text below, is Dr. Jim Ketchum. You may have met him at Burning Man, he's friends with Ann and Sasha. He wrote, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Long Forgotten. He is a retired US Army Colonel, a reputable MD - quite a decent sort, who ran the psychedelic drug research laboratory, ethically, for the US Army. I suggest you read Jim's reply first and then, if you like, post it to your initial list.

Let me know what you think of the arguments below.

Rick

Jim wrote:

Too bad the sponsors of this myth know so little about LSD.

1. Water, if chlorinated (like in a drinking supply), would inactivate LSD almost immediately.

2. The quantity of LSD required in a water supply to incapacitate 500 people distributed throughout a city area would be totally beyond the capability to manufacture the drug.

3. Sunlight's UV rays also destroy LSD. A release from the air would be subjected to rapid degradatiion if sunshine were present.

4. Sandoz had not made more than a few grams (10-100) in 1950. Lilly took over later when larger amounts were requested for research purposes. Try making a few tons (the amount needed in even a small reservoir.

5. Ill-advised, unethical CIA use of LSD as a covert agent for individual dosing is a far cry from an "experiment" designed to make 500 people psychotic. The CIA was not a bunch of Nazis (stupidity would be a better diagnosis).

6. If used for cooking, heat would kill LSD rapidly.

7. The safety margin between psychedelic effects (which are not the same as psychosis) and lethal dose is enormous. Deaths would be likely from accidents, etc. but not to direct toxicity.

8. The whole idea is so ridiculous and born of fantasy that it is laughable. It shows how suspension of rationality can make possible the most diabolical conspiracy theories.

9. The French drink wine, not water.

Thanks for the heads-up.
Jim

You be the judge,

Charles Shaw

Author - Exile Nation

 

      If we were to read the linked-to telegraph.co.uk article, we would find that:

“On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants [of Le Pain Maudit] were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.  One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.  Time magazine wrote at the time: "Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead. Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that infects rye grain.”

      Further research (as this article states) suggests that the suspected ergot was not mold, but the refined chemical derivative LSD contaminating bread from the local bakery. Having personally enjoyed trips after eating media such as blotter squares and sugar cubes, this doesn't sound like bullshit at all, but sounds quite plausible.

 

I noticed the "bread" omission in the Exile Nation's arguments 

Thanks.

Also:

<2. and 4.> I read ( somewhere here: www.justice.gov/dea/programs/forensicsci/microgram/bulletins_index.html) that at least 70 kg of LSD were produced by only one clandestine chemist in almost improvised labs.

 

<5.> “CIA was not a bunch of Nazis (stupidity would be a better diagnosis)”. Instead both are true and who said this statement begin to appear not honest to me.

 

  <7.> similarity and relationship between psychedelic effects and psychosis are common knowledge. Direct toxicity as cause of deaths should be verified, but it’s not. Reported deaths were by accidents. 

 

< 9.>French wine is not bread.

 

"You may have met him at Burning Man, he's friends with Ann and Sasha. He wrote, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Long Forgotten. He is a retired US Army Colonel, a reputable MD - quite a decent sort, who ran the psychedelic drug research laboratory, ethically, for the US Army."  

Colonel ?! Ethically ?! ... huahuahuah!!! Even my Bunnies understand you are infiltrated ! 

 

Who tried to debunk this story ended to strengthen its credibility and uncover his masters. ;)  

Aloha 

Why automatically assume that this small town in France had chlorine in its drinking water in 1951?

Fairly well documented that the CIA was filled with Nazis - http://operationpaperclip.info

Hofmann was one of the Sandoz scientists who investigated the incident. From LSD: My Problem Child: "The mass poisoning in the southern French city of Pont-St. Esprit in the year 1951, which many writers have attributed to ergot-containing bread, actually had nothing to do with ergotism. It rather involved poisoning by an organic mercury compound that was utilized for disinfecting seed." Similar cases of accidentally eating pesticide contaminated grains have happened in Japan.

This story should be about the danger of pesticides, not out-dated paranoia about psychedelics. The reported effects from the poison were clearly nothing like LSD.

Comment from James Redford on Corante: "Further, the symptoms of poisoning were incompatible with those of LSD's effects. Symptoms began 6 to 48 hours after eating the contaminated bread. Whereas if it had been LSD, effects would have started to occur at about an hour for normal doses and sooner for massive doses (and sooner still for insufflation via aerosol spraying). Secondly, people haven't died from even massive overdoses of LSD, unlike a number of people who died of convulsions from the mass-poisoning in Pont-Saint-Esprit. There has never been a unambiguous recorded human death from LSD overdose. The therapeutic index for LSD is among the highest known for any pharmacologically active substance. Physiologically speaking, it's extremely safe. For a description of the symptoms of the Pont-Saint-Esprit victims by the physicians who treated them, see Gabbai, Lisbonne and Pourquier, "Ergot Poisoning at Pont St. Esprit," British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4732, pp. 650-651, available for free on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website."

Anyone interested in this case should read the above-cited short, free-access British Medical Journal article from 1951.

In 1938, Albert Hofmann, a young Swiss chemist employed by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Basel, Switzerland, was working with lysergic acid in the hopes of developing a stimulant for blood circulation. On the twenty-fifth experiment in the series he produced lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a product he was certain was the stimulant he was seeking. He gave it to the laboratory’s medical department, which tested it and told him he’d once again failed. BMW Accessories

He authored more than 100 scientific articles and a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child. 3d Poker