SUBJECTS IN RESEARCH

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In the March 17 CRIMSON Mr. Alpert and Mr. Leary put their finger on one of the leading objections to the psilocybin research. They say that psychological change, positive or negative depending on the individual's response to the experiment, will occur. They continue with the statement that when, as a result of the drug's action the mind enters a new region these regions may be returned to afterwards.

Many people can tolerate all sorts of psychological experience with few ill effects. There is also a large group of persons who are more profoundly affected by experiences particularly at certain times of life including late adolescence and even early adulthood. The people whose systems of controls have not yet completely integrated and who may be influenced by certain experiences are all too often the same people who most ardently seek out such experiences. They are also the same people whose tendency may be to repeat experiences almost involuntarily, in either objective or psychic reality, even if the repetition has unpleasant or destructive connotations. One of my many questions about the research has to do with the specific psychological screening that is done. Are the subjects screened in such a way as to make sure that none of them fits into the category of people whose immediate and later reactions indicate that they may have had psychological experiences by way of the psilocybin which have been psychologically harmful?

When the research concerns usage of drugs, I feel free to paraphrase Sir William Ozler's first rule of medicine, admittedly a conservative one: Don't give a patient or a subject anything (a disease) he didn't have before. His second rule is: Help or learn about patients or subjects if you can. Norman Zinberg, M.D.,   Lecturer on Social Relations.