Professor David Nutt
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We said, why?
They said, well, they might go mad.
I said, no, no, they might kill themselves.
The third time I sat in this ethics committee and I thought, if they said no now, it's gone.
So I said, OK, well, look, what do you want?
And they said, well, you have to do a safety study.
And that means you have to give it to 12 people and then follow them up for six months.
And if they don't die, then you can do a proper controlled study.
But I thought, we have to say yes, because otherwise we wouldn't do anything.
So we said yes.
So the main outcome for a first study was whether they lived or died.
Of course, they all lived.
And the secondary outcome was their mood.
But that was the easy bit, that getting the drug, this controlled, class A schedule 1 drug, there's only one place we could find in the world that would make it.
It took 32 months.
Of a 36-month grant.
Oh, my God!
I mean, and that's all because...
Well, it's a very dangerous drive, isn't it?