Scientist haunted by drugs he invented

A chemist who studies the way psychedelic drugs act in the brains of rats said he was shocked at how humans hijacked his work to make street drugs, sometimes causing overdose deaths.

David Nichols makes chemicals roughly similar to ecstasy and LSD that are supposed to help explain how parts of the brain function. Then he publishes the results for other scientists, hoping his work one day leads to treatments for depression or Parkinson’s disease. But Mr Nichols’ findings have not stayed in purely scientific circles. They have also been exploited by black market labs to make cheap and marginally legal recreational drugs.

“You try to work for something good, and it’s subverted in a way,” Mr Nichols said. “I try not to think about it.” The 66-year-old chairman of the Purdue University pharmacology department in West Lafayette, Indiana, spoke out in an online essay in the journal Nature to describe an ethical struggle seldom discussed by brain researchers.

“You can’t control what people do with what you publish, but yeah, I felt it personally,” he said, explaining that his struggles were probably similar to those faced by the inventor of the machine gun, although not as severe. “What if a substance that seems innocuous is marketed and becomes wildly popular on the dance scene, but then millions of users develop an unusual type of kidney damage that proves irreversible and difficult to treat, or even life-threatening or fatal? That would be a disaster of immense proportions. This question, which was never part of my research focus, now haunts me.”