CHAPTER 5: The Staten Island Project
In 1981 the marijuana movement was divided between NORML ("the
suits") and a larger group of activists who did smoke-ins. Today's
Drug Reform Movement (the Drug Policy Foundation and its offshoots) was
still a glimmer in the future. NORML was in eclip se, having lost its Capitol
Hill clout when Carter Drug Czar Dr. Peter Bourne got caught writing a
phony script for quaaludes. That activated a little tidbit about Bourne
doing coke at a NORML party, planted with columnist Jack Anderson by NORML
head Kei th Stroup. Stroup thought of this as insurance in his running
feud with the White House; not realizing Bourne was the best negotiating
partner he was going to get. (Some of his own judgment was missing due
to coke.)
The DEA became the lead agency for U.S. drug policy for ten years until,
exasperated, Congress re-established the Drug Czar office by statute in
1988.
When Reagan came in, federal agencies were forbidden even to deal with
NORML. The other side wouldn't appear on the same television panel with
them. But the marijuana movement of the smoke-ins was unfazed. For five
years, until Howard Lotsof started ND A International and achieved self-sufficiency
in '86-87, tremendous resources were secretly diverted from legalizing
pot to Ibogaine. Like some Third World country developing nuclear weapons,
up to half of the YIPPIE GNP went either to the Project or to c orollary
organizing like RAR and the GREENS, in order to gain access and build support
in the Black and environmental movements.
After Howard and Norma moved to Staten Island from Brooklyn, it was only
a matter of time before people in the loop started calling it "the
Staten Island Project." And there was the same degree of secrecy as
the Manhattan Project, based at first on as sumptions that forces within
the government would once again stop it, and after Howard's decision to
go for patents, to protect it from being pirated and suppressed by corporate
interests.
Initially, in '81, Ibogaine was a research project tucked away in a RAR
task force innocently called Citizens Against Heroin. Other activities
included publication in OVERTHROW of a lengthy report on complicity of
World Nazism and the Intelligence Comm unity in the rising heroin influx
("A New Heroin Conspiracy?"), and a demo against blatant police
corruption in the Ninth Precinct. By April, however, Howard was already
moving to put the Ibogaine Project on independent footing to spare it from
intra-YIP PIE feuding. Then everyone ran out of money, at once.
As 1981 wore on, though, Howard found that a back injury made it imposible
to continue as a film-maker, or to pursue his back-up gig as a plumber.
His options were narrowing. In December, he landed the first large-scale
contribution from an outside source: $4,000. At a Christmas party he ran
into a woman he knew who said she had a boyfriend who was an addict, and
she would be very interested in treating him. He told her he needed money
for basic research, and she put him back at work in the libraries.
From the original RAR-sponsored literature search of NYU Library, Howard
had several books and about two hundred articles on Ibogaine and Tabernanthe
iboga. These he studied while he continued to scour other sources for
additional materials mentioned in the footnotes. Thenfor about 6 months
he again ran out of money. When he could resume, at end of 1982, his next
move was get everything translated from French, and to document every paper
ever done on Ibogaine. That took about 6 months, with the help of a research
librarian. What he was looking for was a clearl y demonstrable relationship
between the biochemical mechanisms of action of Ibogaine and the biochemical
mechanisms of action of the opiates. So after he reviewed about a century
of work on ibogaine, he reviewed the last twenty-five years of biochemical
research on the opiates.
What he found was that every system the opiates work on Ibogaine works
on --like the neurohormonal system in the brain, the central nervous system,
the production of proteins relating to RNA templating. Virtually every
system where the opiates were active, Ibogaine also was active. Additionally,
he ran across the 1956 paper by Jurg Schneider, who was working at CIBA-GEIGY
at the time, but went on to become President of Dupont's Biochemicals Division.
It said Ibogaine potentiates morphine analgesia. It wasn't analgesic itself,
but combined with morphine, it could reduce by fifty percent (!) the amount
of morphine used to maintain a certain level of freedom from pain.
The state of Howard's understanding of Ibogaine at the end of 1983 can
pretty much be seen in the original patent for treatment of morphine addiction
(U.S. #4,499, 096), filed November 18, 1983, in the section reproduced
here, with asides:
Historical Background
Ibogaine is one of at least twelve alkaloids found in theTabernatheiboga
shrub of West Africa. The indigenous peoples have used the drug as a ritual,
ordeal or initiation potion in large dosages and a stimulant in smaller
doses. One of the first Europe an references to the drug was made by Professor
Baillon at the March 6th, 1889, session of the Linnean Society in Paris
during which he described samples obtained by Griffon de Bellay from Gabon
and the French Congo.
Early isolation and identification of Ibogaine was accomplished by Dybrowski
and Landrin (Compt. rend. ac. sc. 133:748, 1901); Haller and Heckel (ibid.
133:850); Lambert and Heckel (ibid. 133: 1236) and Landrin (Bull. sc. pharm.
11:1905).
Interest in the drug seemed to lie fallow until it was picked up by Raymond-Hamet
and his associates. E. Rothbin and Raymond-Hamet published The Effect
of Ibogaine on the isolated Rabbit Uterus in 1938 (Compt. rend. soc.
biol. 127: 592-4). Raymond-Ha met continued to study the drug for twenty-two
years. He himself published nine papers: Pharmacological Action of Ibogaine
(Arch. intern. pharmacodynamie, G3: 27-39, 1939), Two Physiological
Properties Common to Ibogaine and Ephedrine (Ibid. 134: 541-4, 1940),
Difference Between Physiological Action of Ibogaine and That of Cocaine
(Ibid. 211: 285-8, 1940), Mediate and Intermediate Effects of Ibogaine
on the Intestine (Compt. rend. soc. biol. 135: 176-79, 1941), Pharmacologic
Antagonism of Ibogaine (Compt. rend. 212: 768-771, 1941), Some Color
Reactions of Ibogaine (Bull. soc. chem. biol., 25: 205-10, 1943), Sym-pathicosthenic
Actions of Ibogaine on the Vessels of the Dog's Paw (Compt. rend. 223:
757-58, 1946), and Interpretation of the Ultr aviolet Absorption Curves
of Ibogaine and Tabernathine (Ibid. 229: 1359-61, 1949).
D. Vincent began his work on Ibogaine by a collaboration with I. Sero:
Inhibiting Action of Tabernathe Iboga on Serum Cholinesterase (Compt.
rend. Soc. Biol. 136: 612-14, 1942), [this effect is the key to "behavioral
immobility" during the first 3-4 hours of treatment]. Vincent participated
in the publication of five other papers: The Ultraviolet Absorption
Curves of Ibogaine and Tabernathine (B. Brustier, D. Vincent and I.
Sero, Compt. rend. 216, 909-11, 1943), Detection of Cholinesterase Inhibi
ting Alkaloids (D. Vincent and Paul Beaujard, Ann. pharm. franc. 3:
22-26, 1945), The Cholinesterase of the Pancreas: Its Behavior in the
Presence of Some Inhibitors in Comparison with the Cholinesterases of Serum
and Brain (D. Vincent and P. Lagreu, Bull. soc. c hem. biol. 31: 1043-45,
1949); and two papers, which he and Raymond-Hamet worked on together: Action
of Some Sympathicosthenic Alkaloids on the Cholinesterases (Compt.
rend. soc. giol. 150: 1384-1386, 1956) and On Some Pharmacological Effects
of Thre e Alkaloids of Tabernathe Iboga: Ibogamine, Iboluteine and Tabernathine
(Compt. rend. soc. biol. 154: 2223-2227, 1960).
The structure of Ibogaine was investigated by Dickel et. al. (J.A.C.S.
80, 123, 1958). The first total synthesis was cited by Buchi et al. (J.A.C.S.
87, 2073, 1965 and J.A.C.S. 88, 3099, 1966).
In 1956 Salmoiraghi and Page elucidated Ibogaine's relations to serotonin
(J. Pharm. I. expt. ther. 120(1) 20-25, 1957-9). About the same time J.A.
Schneider published three important papers. The first, Potentiation
of Ibogaine on Morphine Analgesia, was done in collaboration with Marie
McArthur (Experientia 12: 323-324, 1956) [and gave the earliest clue to
Ibogaine's unique interaction with opiates]. The second was Neuropharmacological
Studies of Ibogaine: An indole alkaloid with.Central-Stimulant P roperties
(Scheider, J.A. and Sigg. E.B. , Annals of the NY acad. of sciences, Vol.
66, 765-776, 1957) and third was An Analysis of the Cardiovascular Action
of Ibogaine HCI (J.A. Schneider and R.K. Rinhard, Arch. int. pharmcodyn,
110 92-102, 1957 ) [which showed Ibogaine's temporary cardio-vascular stimulant
effect is independent of the central nervous system, the first indication
that caution should be observed in giving it to people with weak tickers.]
Ibogaine's stimulant properties were further investigated by Chen and Bonner
in A Study of Central Nervous System Stimulants (J. Pharm. and Expt.
Ther., 123 (3): 212-215, 1958 [the first indication Ibogaine is ahealant;
rats pretreated with Iboga ine recovered from electroshock twice as fast
as those treated with saline (i.e., nothing).] Gershon and Lang published
A Psychological Study of Some Indole Alkaloids (Arch. intern. pharmacodynamic,
135: 31-36, 1962).
In 1969, Claudio Naranjo reported on the effects of both Ibogaine and harmine
in human subjects in his paper: Psychotherapeutic Possibilities of New
Fantasy-Enhancing Drugs (Clinical Toxicology, 2(2): 209-224, June 1969).
H.I. Dhahir, in his 1971 doctoral thesis, published A Comparative Study
of the Toxicity of Ibogaine and Serotonin (University Microfilm International
71-25-341, Ann Arbor, Mich.) [in which he established that Ibogaine is
less toxic than the common n eurotransmitter serotonin]. His paper gives
an overview of much of the work accomplished with Ibogaine.
Additional studies of interest include: The effects of Some Hallucinogens
on Aggressiveness of Mice and Rats (Kostowski et al., Pharmacology
7: 259-263, 1972), Cerebral Pharmacokinetics of Tremor-Producing Harmala
and Iboga Alkaloids (Zetler et al. , Pharmacology 7(4): 237-248, 1972),
High Affinity 3H Serotonin Binding to Caudate: Inhibition By Hallucinogens
and Serotonergic Drugs (Whitaker, P. and Seeman, P., Psychopharmacology
59: 1-5, 1978 Biochemistry) and A Common Mechanism of Lysergic Acid.
Indolealkylamine And Phenethylamine Hallucinogens: Serotonergic mediation
of Behavioral Effects in Rats (Sloviter, Robert et al. J Pharm. &
Expt. Ther., 214 (2): 231-238, 1980).
While Howard harvested data, Dana was still looking for vindication. On
St. Paddy's Day, 1981, a small but real bomb had gone off outside 9 Bleecker
in the faces of two bomb squad officers. The SOHO WEEKLY NEWS, already
gunning for a felony conviction for the firecracker promptly ran a full
page charging that if Beal himself hadn't done it for the publicity, he
should be locked up anyway as "the leader of a violent cult"
and a danger to the community who "attracted violence." They
called him "Jim Jones on Bleecker Street." The real perpetrators
were never caught, although all indications are it was one of two people
on the fringes of the SOHO WEEKLY NEWS itself. But coming after four days
of mass media hysteria about the martyrdom of the two cops (who were not
maimed, although one lost part of his eyesight), such character assassination
made an impression that long outlasted the trial.
So in the summer of 1981, dead broke, Dana found himself handing John Spacely,
ex-publisher of Punk magazine, $20 bills for info about the Marcia
Resnick/Johnny Thunders/John Belushi connection which Bill Kunstler might
be able to use during the firecracker trial. Spacely was maing a movie
about punks on junk with Lech Kowalski, who'd already chonicled the fall
of Sid Vicious in the film DOA: A Rite of Passage. Spacely was strung out,
and when the junk need was in him, he'd talk freely. Kunstler never used
most of most of Spacely's information, however, because he firmly believed
no one should be denounced for their private habits, not even to save a
client.
But Dana's trial and partial acquittal had so shifted the debate on heroin
that by Christmas, when Dana was released from 35 days in prison on Riker's
Island--where he wrote much of "The Secret History of the '70's"--
Abbie Hoffman was busily publicizing his own benefit for Veritas, a residential
program specializing in treatment of heroin addiction. Benefit organizer
Jill Seiden had convinced her friend DA Robert Morgenthau that Abbie was
such an important counter-culture figurehead that having him publicly affirm
that heroin was much more sious than grass, or acid, or even coke, would
make a difference to millions of people. Such a difference, in fact, that
Abbie's sentence on the 1973 cocaine rap should be reduced. In January,
1982, Dana, Howard, Norma and and virtually everyone they knew attended
Abbie's first benefit for Veritas. All of a sudden, anti-heroin was hip.
And so Abbie Hoffman succeeded in maintaining his radical credibility while
securing a substantial reduction in his imprisonment.
Dana's trial also caused SOHO owner Robert Maxwell to check into rumors
that his paper had a heroin problem. He discovered a $1.2 million defici
t, and folded the SOHO in 1982. Covering-up to the bitter end, one staffer
wrote in the NEW YORK TIMES Op-Ed that the SOHO WEEKLY NEWS had been shut
down by a bomb.
So Dana was motivated. He kept asking when there would be an Ibogaine story
OVERTHROW could publish, and more to the point, when there would be some
Ibogaine, since Spacely was only the most prominent of scores who it seemed
had become strung out in the early 80's. Spacely, a former member of the
STP family, had no problem with a 36 hour trip, and volunteered repeatedly
to do Ibogaine once the shooting of Gringo was finished.
But Howard's experiences had led him to a somewhat different set of con-clusions.
Most important--he realized the goal was not to treat a few hundred addicts,
underground, only to be shut down again by the DEA. His goal was to make
Ibogaine a viable alternative, and treat millions. He had to get patents,
which could be challenged if any premature leaks in the press undermined
his claims of originality. (Fortunately, when Dana tried to pull an end-run
in mid-'83 by getting something in HIGH TIMES, now staffed with ex-SOHOites,
D.A. Latimer was unsympathetic. His response: "Why would anyone want
to quit drugs?"
High Times was interviewing respresentatives of the British, French and
German marijuana movements, assembled for the '83 World Cannabis March
on the UN on the first Saturday of
May-the first US appearance of the original hemp proponent , Dr. Hans-Georg_Behr,
author of
Von Hanf Ist Die Rede. But Latimer was unwilling to run anything new on
the US movement,
either Ibogaine or the pioneering work of Boston's "Doc" Humes,
whose Unidentified Flying Idea
was successfully using black hash for heroin detox, in conjunction with
accupressure massage at 45 minute intervals. Harold Humes' views on the
historic clash of Persian enlightenment and Baby-
lonian obscurantism never got the exposure to the High Times audience they
probably deserved.
That year Howard informed Dana he was resigning as producer of the annual
May Central Park Rock Against Racism Concert to work full-time on Ibogaine.
"With RAR, it's fight the same battle every year. Your problem is
that the Black and Jewish groups don't want to work together," he
told Dana (who never again found anyone as competent to put on the concert).
"I'd rather be a healer. I want to do something permanent ."
But Howard and Norma did come in for the publication party of Blacklisted
News, held on the fifth
anniversary of Tom Forcade's wake.Jill Seiden had booked it at the Limelight,
a new club which
was supposed to be scandalous because it was in a de-consecrated church.
Everyone was there, in-
cluding John Spacely, who informed Dana he'd run out of patience waiting
for the Ibogaine,and
quit the old-fashioned way, cold turkey. Outside, a severe culture clash
erupted between doormen
and Yippies who didn't meet the dress code. Mitch "the Bitch"
Blotter, sometimes of David Peel's
band and several others were arrested before Ben Zippie came out and stopped
everything by stripping naked.
Meanwhile inside the church, Howard Lotsof was engrossed with Hans Georg-Behr,
himself a psychiatrist/addictionologist,swapping the most advanced secrets
of the US and German under-
grounds-the secret of Ibogaine for hemp information. Georg, who was back
in the US trying to find a publisher,never succeeded in getting his book
out in English. Instead, a summary prepared the
next year for another publisher and several thousand dollars worth of research
were turned over to Jack Herer of the California Marijuana Initiative to
use to bring out a White Paper.
But Hans-Georg stayed at 9 Bleecker for another month and a half, sharing
reminiscences with Les
Ledbetter, who was in the process of quitting the New York Times after
being found with two
joints in his locker. This was unfair, since Les was being fired for the
very credentials which got
him hired in the first place, including being a White House page at age
18, in which capacity Les
procured pot for John Kennedy, used it medicinally for back pain. Later,
at the height of the Vietnam war protests, Les was hired by the Time because
they had no one inside the counter-culture.Les soon became part of Forcade's
Capitol Hill "Underground Press Syndicate" network,
around the time Tom pied the US Commissioner of Pornography. In twelve
years, Les graduated from the youth beat to edit the night edition, until
Times illegally searched his locker.
Ironically, Les died less than two years later, carried off by a flu because
years of alcohol and cocaine (which he would do in the wee hours, after
getting off work as night editor) had left him with only seven per cent
of his liver. A victim of cocaethylene poisoning, butst for trying to use
something less toxic, Les edited Overthrow for a couple of issues with
Georg's friend Tom Todd, who hung around after George left.
Behr went back to Germany a few weeks after the 1983 NORML Formal, where
he met Eric Sterling, staffert of U.S. Congressm,an Robert Drinan, who
was about to be reassigned to the House Judiciary Committee. Eric was able
to arrange for Georg to "testify" about the Dutch system of separating
cannabis and hard drugs--but only to two staffers, one of who only came
to denounce the Greens a LaRouche.
By the end of 1983, Howard realized he needed help from real professionals.
He made the first of many approaches to the National Institute on Drug
Abuse (NIDA), where he found that this part of the government, at least,
was not about to shut him down. They just wouldn't take him seriously.
The '60's hysteria about psychedelics might be a fadin g memory, but everyone
at NIDA immediately pigeon-holed Lotsof's account of a twenty-year old
Ibogaine experiment with the LSD claims of Tim Leary. And despite Leary's
statistical record of success treating prison recidivisim, NIDA-crats could
fall back on the fact that the risk/benefit ratio with LSD had already
been reckoned unacceptable by a higher authority--the U.S. Congress.
No one was paying any attention to Lotsof's real point: the interruption
of addiction was due to a distinct pharmacologic effect of the Ibogaine
itself, and not--as with LSD--interaction with a good therapist. Now when
he was reviewing the opiate literature, he came across a paper by Dr. Doris,
Clouet, who had reviewed 256 other medical projects relating to opiates,
and cla ssified and catalogued them. Howard ended up giving her a grant
to study his data and explain it to him. For a number of years the other
researchers laughed at her behind her back. They called Ibogaine "Clouet's
folly."
In Clouet's report to Howard she stated: "I am not certain...that
one should expect or wish that Ibogaine should act like an opiate."
And: "I will discuss some of my thinking about possible mechanisms
of action... ...I am not adverse to positive clinical studies...with certain
precautio ns concerning Ibogaine toxicity, especially in "at risk"
groups, clinical settings, double-blind tests, etc. because your invention
is a new approach to the treatment of addiction..." "There is
no data on toxicity in man... There is no information on the setting in
which the trials took place and no information on the presence of a physician
at the trials. The data probably does not exist in part because interest
in the mechan-isms of action underlying hallucinogenic action has been
desultory. Therefore, it is not possible...to make any definitive statement
about the relationship between the opiates and [Ibogaine]. It should be
mentioned that many therapeutic successes arise empirically and not as
the result of a well-defined research program."
Subsequently Clouet confirmed that the fact that Ibogaine abolishes tonic
extensor seizure (Chen, Bonner: rigidity of the muscles, as during withdrawal);
that it inhibits intestinal contractions; and that it's a nor-adrenalin
antagonist--all were specific mechanisms that might interfere with withdrawal.
To get Ibogaine to addicts, in 1983 Howard and Norma had begun setting
up a charity, the Dora Weiner Foundation. Lotsof named the foundation after
his grand-mother and put Norma in charge of fundraising. But when she went
looking for funding for Ibogaine research, the response was more dismal
than the at NIDA. They were up against "Just Say No!"
"Ninety percent of the anti-drug abuse foundations were only interested
in education," says Lotsof.
"When it comes to solving addiction I found no sympathy for any disease
people think is self-induced," Norma recalls. "The reaction was:
`Oh, you're a ddicted--serves you right, suffer!' That's what they said."
Even if the eventual harvest of ignoring Ibogaine was more death and addiction,
rehabilitation of an obscure drug didn't square with the strategy of intolerance
that was afoot in the land.
[It wa s also some time in mid-1983 that Dana remembers his upstairs roommate
Mitch Halberstadt coming in "fuming about tales of a 'Gay-Linked Immune-Deficiency
Disease: "It's blatant homophobia!" said Halberstadt. "They're
saying that just being gay causes a fatal disease."
Mitch was a member of Gay-Lesbian Anti-Discrimination (GLAD); in the late
'70's #9 Bleecker functioned for a couple of years as a back office in
putting on annual GAY PRIDE DAY. Many of the kids whom Dana tried and failed
to keep from t urning on to heroin at Studio 10 were bisexual or gay. He
ran into them again later in ACT-UP.]
The Dora Weiner Foundation managed in just under two years of activity
to accrue $4,000. Howard continued to be dependent on handouts from friends
and suppor ters in the movement. But he did get one thing: On February
12, 1985, the U.S. Patent Office granted him patent protection for the
use of Ibogaine interrupting narcotic dependency.
Described as "an improved method for interrupting the physiological
and p sychological aspects of the heroin addiction sydrome," Howard's
invention was said to consist in "its high degree of success, the
absence of great pain or discomfort accompanying earlier treatments, the
ease and convenience of application, the absence of undesirable or persistent
side effects and the persistent effectiveness of the treatment." It
was "based on the discovery...that Ibogaine hydrochloride and other
non-toxic salts of Ibogaine, possess the unexpected unique ability to disrupt...all
the sympt omology demonstrated by addicts in their use of and search for
heroin."
The patent covered the method of treating heroin addiction via oral administration
of between 6 mg. and 19 mg. per kg. body weight, or between 400 and 1,000
milligrams, either once or more than once, but with successive doses being
separated by a number of days. In other words, the claim was that it wasn't
a maintenance drug.
Howard was ecstatic when he heard his patent had been reported in THE NEW
YORK TIMES. Imagine his distress wh en he learned that the Times patent
reporter, a genial drunk, had gotten it wrong, and said the ENDABUSE procedure
involved intravenous administration--a method that is 10 times more toxic
than the proper oral route Lotsof uses.
Howard quickly followed u p on this by filing for U.S. Patent # 4,587,243,
for the rapid interruption of cocaine and amphetamine abuse syndromes.
And he did one thing more: He furnished an excellent story to OVERTHROW.
In the fall of '85 the paper published a world scoop, informa tion known
to YIP's inner core but only the inner core until that time. (See illustration,
opposite page.) Ibogaine, a psychedelic drug from the African rainforest,
had been secretly developed by the movement as a miracle cure for hard
drugs.
Now Lotsof was in a position to approach major drug companies. But when
he and Norma approached Dupont, Lilly and CIBA-GEIGY, once again they were
met with crashing indifference.
"While the indication for narcotic addiction withdrawal is almost
certainly worthwhile, it has not been identified as a strategic commitment
for our company," wrote Gerald F. Sieschio, licensing manager of CIBA,
which held a patent for Ibogaine as a "tonic stimulant" up until
1970. They were so uninterested, in fact, that they turned ov er all their
files (the equivalent of a million dollars in research) to Lotsof, gratis.
That's how he got the Isbell letter.
That same year Du Pont's associate director of product licensing, Hermann
S. Weissman, told Lotsof, "Our Research and Marketing gro ups have
come to the conclusion that Ibogaine does not fall within the priorities
of our developmental pharmceutical program."
Lotsof learned the majors had no interest in developing a natural alkaloid
they could not call their own. "The type of patent pr otection the
pharmaceutical companies prefer is one in which they actually own the molecule,"
he says.
"Our patent protection is use protection--we own the rights to use
Ibogaine pursuant to drug dependency. They could earn a million dollars
distributing it but their board of directors would say, 'What's a million
dollars to us?' That's why our company has its own special niche. "The
second reason they're not interested is the stigma of drug dependency,
and I'll give you an example: clonidine. A group of researchers at Yale
discovered that clonidine, an anti-hypertensive, was useful in ameliorating
withdrawal. They got a patent for that use, and Boehringer-Ingleheim, which
was the initiator of clonidine, bought up that patent and sat on it. The
last thin g they wanted was for the middle-class hypertensive to walk into
the pharmacy with a clonidine script and be pegged as an addict. They don't
consider that profitable.
"The third reason is that Ibogaine is a Schedule I Drug. It takes
three to six months for the paperwork to clear the DEA just to move it
around the country."
The big drug companies were not interested, but Howard had one more move
before he started his own company. He called the Director of Clinical research
at NIDA, Barry Brown, who gave him introductions to Herb Kleber, Richard
Resnick and Arnold Washton--all prominent drug researchers. He managed
to get several of them to serve on his foundation's advisory board: Doctors
Kleber, Resnick (one of the developers of naltrexone), and Robert Milman
(director of the Substance Abuse Unit at New York Hospital.
Next he contacted various persons within the government: Charles Rangel,
the Chairman of the House Select Committee on narcotics; Nancy Reagan,
Al-phonse D'Amato, Guy Molinari, Cuomo and K och. Rangel was the first
to respond, asking NIDA Director William Pollin to evaluate the procedure.
Howard followed this up with a letter asking Pollin how he intended to
evaluate it, and if he had the money to do so.
Pollin's reply cited Doris Clouet's conclusion that there was no evidence
in the existing literature that Ibogaine could act as a substitute narcotic--without
her point that this wouldn't be desirable in an interrupter anyway.
"She further expresses concern about toxicity. She refers specifically
to changes in blood pressure, but we would in addition worry about longer
term neurological and psychological effects, including the potential for
Ibogaine like other hallucinogens becoming a drug of abuse. ..."
"Perceptual problems, visual hall ucinations, motor difficulties..."
suggested to Dr. Pollin a "potential for brain damage."
In his next letter Pollin mentioned the need for FDA approval and sufficient
funding to carry out the research, suggesting that Lotsof submit an application
for a g rant from NIDA. Lotsof replied that in designing an investigational
new drug application (IND) for the FDA, he'd come across data "relating
to the 'potential for brain damage'..." in Dhahir's 1971 paper: "No
brain damage was evident after 30 day chronic studies at fifty milligrams
per kilogram day. The average dose for our proto-col is about nine per
kilogram day in a single-administration treatment."
What Howard did next was to write to Rangel and say, "Look, I've got
Herb Kleber, Richard Resnick and Robert Milman, the top people in the field,
ready to evaluate this." When he sent copies of all this correspondence
to Kleber, Milman and Resnick, they resigned. They resigned because he
was using them not for research, but to attract money to do research.
"He said money was not an issue," Kleber recalled recently. (And
Howard truly believed money would not be an issue, once he made his case.)
"Then I got calls from across the country. Howard was using my name
to raise money to do this research." Kleber was interested in keeping
tabs on Ibogaine, but all three experts wanted $110 an hour apiece just
to meet--$2,000-a-day, which Howard didn't have. And when the advisory
board names were used in a letter to Rangel to get that funding from Congress,
Kle ber, Resnick and Milman all resigned from the board. Kleber told Howard
he'd crossed the line by using the names "pro-actively," i.e.,
in a way that undermined his reputation for scientific objectivity.
Howard wondered what the Hell an advisory board is g ood for, if you can't
put it on the letterhead of your foundation. But Herb Kleber had mixed
motives. He was working closely with Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Thomas
R. Kosten, who has called Ibogaine "snake oil! It works for everything--nothing
works like that."
They were deep in preliminary studies of their own drug, buprenorphine,
an opiate "agonist/antagonist" that seemed to show promise as
a treatment of crack. That promise didn't hold up in subsequent studies.
Ibogaine does work for crack (a big problem in '86), and unlike buprenorphin,
it's not a maintenance drug. Buprenorphine is somewhat useful as a maintenance,
or as a de-tox, for opiates (withdrawal is mild compared to methadone).
But as a euphoric psychoactive, it seemed a much safer be t to pass the
regulatory hurdles than Ibogaine--even if it didn't ultimately work out.
And if Ibogaine worked, it would obsolete buprenorphin before it got off
the ground.
"My issue is not with Ibogaine but with Howard Lotsof," says
Kleber, who later b ecame Bush's Deputy Drug Czar for Demand Reduction,
his treatment expert. "I don't want to tar a chemical with the personality
of the person pushing it."
Today buprenorphine is near completion of Phase III trials--the last stage
before approval. The Medic ations Development Division of NIDA didn't really
start evaluating Ibogaine until Kleber was on his way out of the White
House New Executive Office Building Annex to head up the Substance Abuse
Division at Columbia University._
©1995 ~ Cures Not Wars
Last updated February 6, 1995
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