biomedical ethics – mycolab.ai

Expanded access to psychedelic treatments: comparing American and Canadian policies

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This article compares how the United States and Canada allow patients with serious health conditions like PTSD and depression to access experimental psychedelic treatments outside of clinical trials. Canada’s program has allowed over 200 patients to access psilocybin and MDMA treatments since 2022, while the US has only approved 50 patients for MDMA. The authors argue that Canada’s approach is more ethical and accessible, and suggest the US should streamline its process to help more patients who have failed conventional treatments.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy – supposedly paradigm-shifting research with poor attempts at hypotheses falsifying and questionable ethics

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This paper critically examines recent clinical trials testing MDMA and psilocybin for treating PTSD and depression. While these trials reported promising results, the author identifies serious scientific and ethical problems: participants could tell whether they received the drug or placebo due to its strong effects, researchers and therapists who strongly believed in the treatment may have unconsciously influenced patient responses, and negative side effects may have been downplayed. The author argues that without fixing these problems, the entire field of psychedelic therapy research could lose credibility.

Research Keyword: biomedical ethics

Expanded access to psychedelic treatments: comparing American and Canadian policies

Psychedelic-assisted therapy – supposedly paradigm-shifting research with poor attempts at hypotheses falsifying and questionable ethics