Disturbing Footage from MAPS Trial Emerges

Warning: the footage in the article linked below contains testimony of sexual abuse and scenes of traumatic events.

Power Trip, a series of New York magazine’s Cover Story podcast (co-produced with psychedelics industry watchdog and critical voice Psymposia) reached a crescendo this week. The latest episode of the series was accompanied by the publication of footage depicting Meaghan Buisson’s experience as a MAPS trial participant. It is disturbing to say the least.

The footage shatters the imagery of a “peaceful, formal arrangement” that is so often portrayed by companies working in the space.

The accompanying article begins:

Much of the footage in this video looks like it comes from a security camera because it kind of does. It’s from a camera fixed to the wall of a treatment room, part of a routine medical setup. At the start of the video, you see a man adjusting the camera angle. The footage was supposed to be checked by professional monitors, who, if they saw it, might have asked some obvious questions: Why is this woman screaming? What are they doing in bed? Why is he using that soft doctor voice to tell her to spread her legs?

Many are asking questions of MAPS, including those around how timely and comprehensive the monitoring of such footage is. If a therapy session is recorded but the footage isn’t review in a timely or comprehensive fashion, is it really being monitored in a meaningful sense of the word?

Below, we share some notes on people’s responses to the footage (including MAPS’)…

Instead of using our platform to spout our own opinions, we’re curating a handful of reactions on Twitter:

• “Cover Story #PowerTrip was extremely difficult to listen to. I hope it can create the momentum for a more careful and nuanced investigation of psychedelics’ potential for therapeutic benefit as well as for harm.” – @chiaracap
• “therapists have no reason to touch their clients in this way” – @avadaei_
• “I’m a full supporter of good psychedelic science, but I am NOT a full supporter for harmful and unethical behavior that’s being passed off as a “cure all” for PTSD and other neuropsychiatric disorders.” – @JasterAlaina
• “In what universe could someone watch this video and say “yep, looks great – very ethical!”?” … “I have to believe that this immediacy and power of this video is going to make an impact.” – @ThomasVarley
• “VERY disturbing.” – @eturnermd1 (Erick Turney was formerly a reviewer of psychiatric drugs at FDA, and has since become a staunch critic of what he deems to be the agency’s increasing rates of corporate capture by Pharma. His work to increase transparency in medical research has led to some influential publications, including this one that we cited in an earlier Bulletin: Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy – Turner et al., 2008).

While most responded with horror, a minority responded with scepticism:

• Twitter user @calleymeans is promoting a theory that New York Magazine, along with Psymposia, is “directly funded by pharma companies,” and that this is a campaign with the “explicit goal of muddying the waters… cherry picking one patient from thousands to paint a (wrong) narrative.” In short, he describes this series as “pharma-funded propaganda.” We contest that anyone who knows the folks at Psymposia will deem this an absurd supposition.
• Another Twitter user, @HighRollHeros, expressed a similar ‘concern’ that Psymposia are “a Trojan horse full of bad faith prohibitionists acting as legalizers trying to create tabloid hysteria that damages the legalization movement more than helps it.” Again, this is entirely unfounded.

We’re with @maraldy on this one: “It’s incredibly disheartening to see the stories being covered by @psymposia be described as sensationalist & gossipy. These are humans who were hurt, actual accounts of harm…”  

MAPS Responds

MAPS has responded to Cover Story’s series in an article titled, Participant Experiences & “Cover Story,” published on its website.

Responding directly to the ethical violations depicted in the video and accounts of Buisson, they write that “MAPS views these violations as a breach of trust between patient and clinician and a violation of the MAPS Code of Ethics.”

Yensen and Dryer, the trial investigators in the video, were previously removed as investigators of MAPS-sponsored trials “for not complying with MAPS PBC’s requirements for providing study records in a timely and organized fashion.”

MAPS went on to explain that data from this trial site will not be submitted to the FDA, and that the ethical violations “were reported to the FDA, Health Canada and the Institutional Review Board when MAPS was informed that an ethical violation had been committed.”

Potential FDA Repercussions?

Toward the end of the latest episode the show’s hosts revealed that a 30-page complaint was submitted to FDA some months ago, outlining what they deemed to be ethical and research issues with MAPS’ MDMA-AT for PTSD trials.

The hosts were disappointed by FDA’s response, which came shortly after the airing of Episode 7; months after the complaint was filed. FDA explained that they had engaged in a workshop which included MAPS, but they weren’t willing to comment further.

How might the FDA respond to these accusations and revelations? Not just to this issue of sexual abuse, but also on the heterogeneity of the therapy administered alongside MDMA, and other allegations of methodological shortcomings.