Pubdate: Sun, 22 Apr 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: Letters, Magazine Desk
Author: Bernard Weiss, M.D.
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n581/a03.html

WHAT DID THE C.I.A. DO TO HIS FATHER?

Michael Ignatieff (April1) describes Harold Abramson, a medical consultant 
used by the C.I.A., as an allergist, thereby casting doubt on the C.I.A.'s 
assertion that it sought psychiatric advice for Frank Olson. Although Dr. 
Abramson specialized in the treatment of patients with allergies, he was 
indeed a psychiatrist. In his extensive research on LSD (in which he used 
informed volunteers), he studied chemical inhibitors in the hope that they 
might be useful in the treatment of psychoses, and he tested LSD as an 
adjunct to psychotherapy and explored its possible military use through 
aerosols. His subjects were often treated afterward to cocktails because he 
uniquely believed that alcohol was an antidote for LSD. Thus, the bourbon 
that he prescribed for Olson may have been intended for more than sleep.

In 1953, during the early years of LSD research, few may have had a chance 
to observe a "bad trip" with long-term sequelae, but it requires no special 
experience to anticipate the devastating emotional effects that may be 
produced when the hallucinating subject, whose thought processes are 
otherwise intact, may believe that he is going insane.

BERNARD WEISS, M.D. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Emory University School of Medicine Atlanta
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