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As these words are written, the chemical we will call MDMA is a Schedule I drug. This means that MDMA (a) has no currently accepted medical use, (b) no currently accepted safety even under medical supervision, and (c) has a high potential for abuse. On the other hand, there are those who see great therapeutic potential in MDMA, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated MDMA- assisted psychotherapy as a breakthrough therapy. We can foresee the day when it will be available by prescription. There is no doubt as to the chemical identity of MDMA, and much is known of its pharmacological effects in humans and in animals. The recreational drug commonly known as Ecstasy is more complicated. As is true for any illegal drug used by millions of people, demand for the drug has been met by persons not noted for their high ethical or manufacturing standards. Simply stated, short of chemical analysis, one can never be sure what street-bought Ecstasy is. For example, investigators at Vanderbilt University determined the contents of 1,214 tablets sold as Ecstasy. Only 39% contained only MDMA, while fully 46% were “substances other than MDMA.” Mixtures of MDMA and other drugs comprised the remaining 15%. On the other hand, sometimes in some places over the past several decades, nearly pure MDMA has been available on the illicit market. Nonetheless, a buyer of Ecstasy may ingest, rather than MDMA, drugs such as ketamine, gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), cathinone, ephedrine, caffeine, or any one of the so-called designer drugs, many of which are amphetamine derivatives. A consequence of this pharmacological chaos is that many of the hazards associated with the use of Ecstasy have been uncritically attributed to MDMA. This fact has been a boon for those who would continue the Schedule I status of MDMA and a bane for those who would explore its therapeutic potential. However, in contrast with recreational use where purity of the drug is uncertain, MDMA in clinical trials is FDA approved and of known composition.

The January 25 Revolution saw high hopes of an end to sectarianism, but in the following year violence against minorities increased. Copts find themselves at a critical junction, both within Egyptian society at large, but also in terms of Church’s leadership and relations with the community and the state. The introduction lays out the themes addressed in the book, the multidisciplinary approach taken, and the research methodology used.

This chapter examines development of and changes in the research culture at Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies. The directors applied their psychological expertise in how humans think and learn to design a research environment that would maximize the chances for acquiring reliable knowledge about world—specifically, about the nature of human thinking. They saw learning as, fundamentally, the acquisition of new structures of thought and of new tools with which to think. Therefore what was important was not simply facts that people learned or scientists discovered. Rather more significant were the procedures, forms of mental representation, and heuristic methods that enabled individuals to have original forms of ideas, novel hypotheses, and techniques for investigating the world. Accordingly the Center was organized along interdisciplinary lines in order to facilitate the construction of new theories and new scientific tools while establishing the disciplined study of human cognition on a stable foundation. Several years later, once its work was well under way, the Center's culture became multidisciplinary. Rather than emphasizing the creation of cognitive science by sharing, invention, location, discussion and stabilization of new research techniques, the Center's new multidisciplinary atmosphere involved researchers working in parallel.

This chapter summarises what has been achieved for multidisciplinary public health in England since the 1990s and what has not been achieved to date, provides a commentary from a range of public health professionals involved in the changes on the impact on population health from the English model. It provides useful comparisons with some other countries. It concludes with a reflection on the potential next stages for public health development.

This chapter charts the start of the quest for recognition of public health practitioners from backgrounds other than medicine. It sets out national processes leading to the establishment of the Tripartite Group and the progress made by lobbying groups such as the Multidisciplinary Public Health Forum in the context of changing government policies which started to favour a move to multidisciplinary public health at senior levels. It includes the initial reaction of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine including creating honorary membership for non-medics, but voting not to admit non-medics as full members through to the 1998 vote for first stage admittance of non-medics via sitting Part I of Faculty examinations. The 1990s also saw the formal start of development opportunities for senior practitioners working in non-medical public health such as opening up Masters in Public Health courses.

This chapter examines the crisis brought about the American legal profession's fear of sharing power. This fear has been expressed in multiple ways, through the “Fear of Sears” while the Kutak Commission proposals were before the ABA House of Delegates in the early 1980s, to the resistance to Multidisciplinary Practice (MDPs) and Alternative Business Structures (ABS). The profession has held tight to its claims of self-regulation when those claims have long since become highly questionable. It has held fast to its traditional model of fully lawyer-owned provision of legal services, while other models have been tried without adverse consequences elsewhere and promise to provide more services to more people. Its mantra has been that it must protect the core values of the legal profession.