08-04-2013, 06:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-04-2013, 07:12 AM by Adele Edisen.)
I think there can be, and have been, some therapeutic and ethical uses of LSD. One such project I know about occurred in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Louisiana State University School of Medicine during the early 1960s. Residents in Psychiatry could volunteer to take LSD doses in order to experience perceptual and other mental changes similar to those experienced by psychiatric patients whom they would be treating as physicans. Just to experience the inability tro control one's own thoughts. visions, and sensations would allow the physicians to have greater empathy for the patients. It was done in a carefully controlled situation, and antidotes were available in case anyone were to have an unexpected reaction to the drug.
In another study I read about, architects, again on a volunatary and controlled basis, took LSD to learn of the visual distortions mental patients could have. Their intent was to be able to design mental hospitals which would be less frightening to patients. This was during the times when psychiatric hospitals were still being built to treat the mentally ill.
Reputable psychotherapists used LSD in controlled situations to aid in promoting access to their patient's repressed subconscious memories to facilitate their recovery and healing.
The use of unwitting civilian and military subjects in uncontrolled situations, as in MKULTRA and other CIA and U.S. Army and military projects was reprehensible. These projects yielded little, if any, valuable scientific information because that had not been their goals in the first place, nor were they intended to provide humanitarian assistance and comfort to the subjects so used.
The lethal dose of LSD in humans is not clearly known, but every animal species tested for the LD-50, the phamacological lethal dose which kills half of the animals being tested is known, and reported in the Merck Index. a volume which lists drug actions, not to be confused with the Merck Manual, a physician's handbook of diagnoses and treatments of medical conditions.
Adele
In another study I read about, architects, again on a volunatary and controlled basis, took LSD to learn of the visual distortions mental patients could have. Their intent was to be able to design mental hospitals which would be less frightening to patients. This was during the times when psychiatric hospitals were still being built to treat the mentally ill.
Reputable psychotherapists used LSD in controlled situations to aid in promoting access to their patient's repressed subconscious memories to facilitate their recovery and healing.
The use of unwitting civilian and military subjects in uncontrolled situations, as in MKULTRA and other CIA and U.S. Army and military projects was reprehensible. These projects yielded little, if any, valuable scientific information because that had not been their goals in the first place, nor were they intended to provide humanitarian assistance and comfort to the subjects so used.
The lethal dose of LSD in humans is not clearly known, but every animal species tested for the LD-50, the phamacological lethal dose which kills half of the animals being tested is known, and reported in the Merck Index. a volume which lists drug actions, not to be confused with the Merck Manual, a physician's handbook of diagnoses and treatments of medical conditions.
Adele