Abstract
In this paper our aim is to examine whether research conducted on human participants with LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide) raises unique research ethical questions or demands particular concerns with regard to the design, conduct and follow-up of these studies, and should this be the case, explore and describe those issues. Our analysis is based on reviewing publications up to date which examine the clinical, research and other uses of LSD and those addressing ethical and methodological concerns of these applications, just as some historical examinations of this subject. The first chapters of the paper give an overview regarding the history of LSD-research with human participants, healthy volunteers and patients alike. The remaining chapters have a focus on questions regarding the potential ethical issues of such human trials in the contemporary research ethics framework. We also consider briefly political and regulatory issues regarding this substance that possibly affect its clinical and research applications.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andreae, Michael H., et al. 2016. An ethical exploration of barriers to research on controlled drugs. American Journal of Bioethics 16 (4): 36–47.
Carhart-Harris, Robert, et al. 2016a. Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. CNAS 113 (17): 4853–4858.
Carhart-Harris, Robert, et al. 2016b. The paradoxical psychological effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Psychological Medicine 46: 1379–1390.
Das, Saibal, et al. 2016. Lysergic acid diethylamide: A drug of ‘use’? Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology 6 (3): 214–228.
Dolder, Patrick C., et al. 2015. Pharmacokinetics and concentration-effect relationship of oral LSD in humans. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology 19 (1): pyv072.
Dolder, Patrick C., et al. 2016. LSD acutely impairs fear recognition and enhances emotional empathy and sociality. Neuropsychopharmacology 41 (11):2638–2646.
Dos Santor, Rafael G., et al. 2016. Antidepressive, anxiolytic, and antiaddictive effects of ayahuasca, psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD): A systematic review of clinical trials published in the last 25 years. Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology 6 (3): 193–213.
Dyck, Erika. 2015a. LSD A new treatment emerging from the past, Psychedelic medicine: A re-emerging therapeutic paradigm. CMAJ 187 (14): 1079–1080.
Dyck, Erika. 2015b. Flashback: Psychiatric experimentation with LSD in historical perspective. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 50 (7): 381–388.
Emanuel, Ezekiel J., et al. 2000. What Makes Clinical Research Ethical? JAMA 2000 (283): 2701–2711.
Erowid Erowid LSD (Acid) Vault. Accessed 3 May 2017. https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd.shtml.
Family, Neiloufar, et al. 2016. Semantic activation in LSD: Evidence from picture naming. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 31 (10): 1320–1327.
Gasser, Peter, et al. 2015. LSD-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety associated with a life-threatening disease: A qualitative study of acute and sustained subjective effects. Journal of Psychopharmacology 29: 57–68.
Grinspoon, Lester, and Bakalar B. James. 1981. The psychedelic drug therapies. Current Psychiatric Therapies 20: 275–283.
Grof, Stanislav. 1980. The effects of LSD on chromosomes, genetic mutation, fetal development and malignancy. In LSD psychotherapy, ed Stanislav Grof, 320–347. Pomoma: Hunter House.
Hofmann, Albert. 1979. LSD–My Problem Child. Translated by Jonathan Ott. Oxford: OUP.
Horváth, Lajos, et al. 2017. Weak phantasy and visionary phantasy: The phenomenological significance of altered states of consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-016-9497-4.
Kaelen, Mendel, et al. 2016a. Effects of LSD and music on brain activity. European Neorupsychopharmacology 26 (2):130.
Kaelen, Mendel, et al. 2016b. LSD modulates music-induced imagery via changes in parahippocampal connectivity. European Neuropsychopharmacology 26 (7): 1099–1109.
Kapócs, Gábor, et al. 2016. Possible role of biochemiluminescent photons for lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)-induced phosphenes and visual hallucinations. Reviews in the Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1515/revneuro-2016-0047. (Ahead_of_print Accessed: 2016.12.05).
Komete, Michael, and Franz X. Vollenweider. 2016. Serotonergic hallucinogen-induced visual perceptual alterations. Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences 30: 1–26.
Krebs, Teri S., et al. 2012. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for alcoholism: Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Psychopharmacology 26 (7): 994–1002.
Lebedev, Alexander V., et al. 2016. LSD-induced entropic brain activity predicts subsequent personality change. Human Brain Mapping 37 (9): 3203–3213.
Liechti, Matthias E., Patrick C. Dodler, and Yasmin Schmid. 2016. Alterations of consciousness and mystical-type experiences after acute LSD in humans. Psychopharmacology 26 (8): 1043–1050.
Mashour, George A. 2007. From LSD to the IRB: Henry Beecher’s psychedelic research and the foundation of clinical ethics. International Anesthesiology Clinics 45 (4): 105–111.
Novak, Stephen. 1998. Second thoughts on psychedelic drugs. Endeavour 22 (1): 21–23.
Nutt, David et al. 2010. Drug harms in the UK: A multicriteria decision analysis. The Lancet 376 (9752): 1558–1565.
Oram, Matthew. 2014. Efficacy and enlightenment: LSD psychotherapy and the drug amendments of 1962. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 69 (2): 221–242.
Oram, Matthew. 2016. Prohibited or regulated? LSD psychotherapy and the United States Food and Drug Administration. History of Psychiatry 2016: 1–17.
Passie, Torsten. 1997. Psycholytic and psychedelic therapy research 1931–1995: A complete international bibliography. Hannover: Laurentius Publishers.
Passie, Torsten, et al. 2008. The pharmacology of lysergic acid diethylamide: A review. CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics 14 (4): 295–314.
Pollan, Michael. 2015. The Trip Treatment. The New Yorker (Annals of Medicine) February 9, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment.
Richards, Williams A. 2016. Psychedelic psychotherapy: Insights from 25 years of research. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167816670996. (Published online before print September 29, 2016)
Roseman, Leor, et al. 2016. LSD alters eyes-closed functional connectivity within the early visual cortex in a retinotopic fashion. Human Brain Imaging 37 (8): 3031–3040.
Sessa, Ben. 2018. The 21st century psychedelic renaissance: Heroic steps forward on the back of an elephant. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 235: 551–560.
Sessa, Ben, and Friederike M. Fischer. 2016. Underground MDMA-, LSD- and 2-CB-assisted individual and group psychotherapy in Zurich: Outcomes, implications and commentary. Drug Science, Policy and Law. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050324515578080. (Published online before print March 24, 2015, Accessed 2016.12.05)
Smith, David E., et al. 2014. From Hofmann to the Haight ashbury, and into the future: The past and potential of lysergic acid diethlyamide. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 46 (1): 3–10.
Speth, Jana, et al. 2016. Decreased mental time travel to the past correlates with default-mode network disintegration under lysergic acid diethylamide. Journal of Psychopharmacology 30 (4): 344–353.
Strajhar, Petra, et al. 2016. Acute effects of lysergic acid diethylamide on circulating steroid levels in healthy subjects. Journal of Neuroendocrinology 28 (3): 12374.
Szabó, Attila, et a. 2014. Phenomenology and altered states of consciousness: A new framework for analysis? Psychologia Hungarica Caroliensis 2: 7–29.
Tagliazucchi, Enzo, et al. 2016. Increased global functional connectivity correlates with LSD-induced ego dissolution. Current Biology 26 (8): 1043–1050.
Terhune, Devin B., et al. 2016. A placebo-controlled investigation of synaesthesia-like experiences under LSD. Neuropsychologia 88: 28–34.
von Felsinger, J., et al. 1956. The response of normal men to lysergic acid derivatives (di- and monoethyl amides)—Correlation of personality and drug reactions. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology 17 (4): 414–428.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the thorough professional assistance of the faculty members The Bioethics Program at Clarkson University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, with particular respect to the extensive support in shaping this paper to professors Rosamond Rhodes and Sean Philpott-Jones, together with our colleges and friends for their valuable comments and insights, Dr. Levente Móró, Dr. Attila Szabó, Dr. Gergely Szabó and Szabina Péter. We are very grateful to both our reviewers for their efforts and exceptionally useful comments they’ve provided us with. Research reported in this publication was supported in part by the Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health under Award Number R25TW007085. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the US National Institutes of Health.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bodnár, K.J., Kakuk, P. Research ethics aspects of experimentation with LSD on human subjects: a historical and ethical review. Med Health Care and Philos 22, 327–337 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9871-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9871-9