Only veterans?
I wonder about the editorial choice to use veterans rather than, say, women who have PTSD from assaults, which is a much larger group of people. (Approximately 4% of US men and 8% of US women experience PTSD every year across all reasons like accidents, sexual assaults, combat, etc.)
Presumably this treatment would help everyone? Or is it somehow supporting only vets?
If this was a study on ptsd in assault survivors you could make the exact same comment asking why they didn’t try it in veterans (and I have no reason to doubt someone would)
What a strange and presumptive thing to say. I'm wondering why not all PTSD cases, why specifically this relatively small group?
Like, obviously we should treat veterans with PTSD, but the article is unclear about whether it's just them.
> I'm wondering why not all PTSD cases, why specifically this relatively small group?
Because then it’s another variable in the study.
That's a reasonable answer!
> you could make the exact same comment asking why they didn’t try it in veterans
That would be an extremely odd comment to make, though. Not only does the category "assault survivor" obviously not exclude veterans, why would you single them out to care about?
The war machine is the one funding so the framing makes sense. Not that I like it... I would prefer that the concept of a war veteran was non existent but that is akin to wishing the moon was made out of cheese.
They are an easy group to recruit or reach and have complete medical histories on file. Remember this is a military study.
The research on ptsd began with US veterans afaik. It’s probably the group that is most studied for it and also receives trials.
The US also spends a large amount of money on each veteran. If they can find a cure for trauma they would benefit hugely from it. The side effect of this is that others would benefit as well.
That's damning in another way -- it suggests we aren't spending money on the other, larger groups of PTSD survivors.
Shame it has to be a side effect.
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I read it less as "this only helps veterans" and more as "veterans are the group this particular research and funding path is centered on"
Way back in something like 2002, I was in college. One day at my then-girlfriend’s apartment east of campus, she got a phone call. An old friend of hers was in town, so she told him to come over. I don’t know his name, but let’s call him J., which is a randomly selected letter.
J. was a traveling Ibogaine ... healer? He went from city to city, summoned by the loved ones of advanced heroin addicts, to attempt one last Hail Mary shot at recovery.
These were situations of absolute desperation, and I can’t overstate the seriousness with which he took his adopted occupation. He described to us in detail his process.
First, he interviewed the person requesting help, seeing what else they had tried and trying to suss out if Ibogaine would be worth the risk. He turned away most callers.
Those who he accepted would be dropped off at his van, inside which was a mobile, DIY ICU of sorts: a bed, food, water and emergency medical supplies. He would administer the ibogaine (I don’t know what form this took), and then, in his words, the patient would undergo a 2 to 3-day continuous hallucination.
During this time, in J.’s observations, the patient was almost always ‘visited’ by dead relatives, who typically admonished the patient for what had become of them, laying into them with real talk about the state of their life.
J. said half of the patients came out of this experience fundamentally changed, and effectively cured of their addiction to heroin. I don’t know if he had any data (anecdotal or otherwise) on recidivism, but the implication was that this was likely to be permanent.
But, he said, the other half went insane, which is why he spent a great deal of effort screening families and informing them of the risks.
I don’t know how much, if any, of this is true. I don’t know what ‘insane’ means, or meant. But I remember vividly how seriously this guy took it, without ever coming off as some kind of self-satisfied guru or medicine man, believing himself to be a god, or anything like that. He never accepted money. He lived somewhat roughly. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.
I always associated it with treating opioid and alcohol addiction. I suspect there's something to do with funding here. Same with the whole "we could use MDMA to treat veterans" angle when veterans are a tiny percentage of the population worth treating with it.
It's who the trials are done on. US veterans have their own health care system, so that may have played a role in why they were targeted for the research.
Vets kill themselves a lot so I guess it's easier to propose crazier stuff because the alternative is very bad.
Veterans also make it easier to get wider political support for legalizing the treatment.
Though notably never anything really crazy like “let’s stop doing war”
I mean, that does sound pretty crazy. Specific wars are often ill-advised or largely pointless, but "stop doing war" presupposes that all other countries in the world will also "stop doing war", otherwise what you're suggesting is just unilateral surrender under the guise of stopping war.
> presupposes that all other countries in the world will also "stop doing war"
No it doesn't. But making efforts to stop it ourselves is necessary to achieve that. Same reason it's worth doing nuclear disarmament: because not disarming guarantees nuclear war eventually.
You're strawmanning I think.
My interpretation of the parent comment is: Americans should stop aggressing other countries, slaughtering the population, and then publishing scientific breakthroughs on treating ptsd among the killers.
I'd say the comment says nothing about wars of survival, which is not what veterans have ptsd for. No one is 'doing war' at America.
Game theory and history say otherwise. If you want to be a fool, have at it. Just don't expect the rest of us to go along or respect you because of it.
Just because it used to happen doesn't mean it should continue. It will be death of all of us collectively.
But didn’t you know: game theory!!!!
Nash equilibrium is the religion for millennials who didn’t get sucked into the boomer/gen-x Ayn Rand bullshit
States are not rational actors. Game theory does not apply to them.
Stopping doing wars doesn't mean not having a military capable of wars. It means not starting them. The US hasn't been involved in justified military action since the 40s.
Hey if that’s the world you wanna live in then continue to do what you’re doing
It's political posturing, makes it more likely to get bipartisan support. Female rape victims are not as unimpeachable as the (superficially) hallowed veteran in American society.
> Presumably...
Presumably isn't how science is done. They did an experiment with veterans who had ptsd and ibogaine so the results are relevant to veterans with ptsd using ibogaine.
One could, presumably, extrapolate that result to an even wider audience and say "hallucinogens could help people who experience trauma" but that'd be unscientific and irresponsible to imply this study showed that.
People like to use us war veterans to wash their agendas through
We’re one step below “think of the children”