were observed, and in the spiders, alterations in web building were apparentlyproduced by kSD. At very low optimum doses the webs were even betterproportioned and more exactly built than normally: however, with higher doses,the webs were badly and rudimentarily made.ttHow Toxic Is LSD?HThe toxicity of LSD has been determined in various animal species. A standardfor the toxicity of a substance is the LDso, or the median lethal dose, thatis, the dose with which 50 percent of the treated animals die. In general itfluctuates broadly, according to the animal species, and so it is with LSD.The LDso for the mouse amounts to 50-60 mgtkg i.v. (that is, 50 to 60thousandths of a gram of LSD per kilogram of animal weight upon injection ofan LSD solution into the veins). In the rat the LDso drops to 16.5 mg/kg, andin rabbits to 0.3 mg/kg. One elephant given 0.297 g of LSD died after a fewiminutes. The weight of this animal was determined to be 5,000 kg, whichcorresponds to a lethal dose of 0.06 mg/kg (0.06 thousandths of a gram perkilogram of body weight). Because this involves only a single case, this valuecannot be generalized, but we can at least deduce from it that the largestland animal reacts proportionally very sensitively to LSD, since the lethaldose in elephants must be some 1,000 times lower than in the mouse. Mostanimals die from a lethal dose of LSD by respiratory arrest.aThe minute doses that cause death in animal experiments may give theimpression that LSD is a very toxic substance. However, if one compares thelethal dose in animals with the effective dose in human beings, which is0.0003-0.001 mg/kg (0.0003 to 0.001 thousandths of a gram per kilogram of bodyweight), this shows an extraordinarily low toxicity for LSD. Only a 300- to600-fold overdose of LSD, compared to the lethal dose in rabbits, or fully a50,000- to 100,000fold overdose, in comparison to the toxicity in the mouse,would have fatal results in human beings. These comparisons of relativetoxicity are, to be sure, only understandable as estimates of orders ofmagnitude, for the determination of the therapeutic index (that is, the ratiobetween the effective and the lethal dose) is only meaningful within a givenspecies. Such a procedure is not possible in this case because the lethal dogeof LSD for humans is not known. To my knowledge, there have not as yetoccurred any casualties that are a direct consequence of LSD poisoning.Numerous episodes of fatal consequences attributed to LSD ingestion haveindeed been recorded, but these were accidents, even suicides, that may beiattributed to the mentally disoriented condition of LSD intoxication. Thedanger of LSD lies not in its toxicity, but rather in the unpredictability ofits psychic effects.iSome years ago reports appeared in the scientific literature and also in thelay press, alleging that damage to chromosomes or the genetic material hadbeen caused by LSD. These effects, however, have been observed in only a fewindividual cases. Subsequent comprehensive investigations of a large,statistically significant number of cases, however, showed that there was noconnection between chromosome anomalies and LSD medication. The same appliesto reports about fetal deformities that had allegedly been produced by LSD. Inanimal experiments, it is indeed possible to induce fetal deformities throughextremely high doses of LSD, which lie well above the doses used in humanbeings. But under these conditions, even harmless substances produce suchdamage. Examination of reported individual cases of human fetal deformitiesreveals, again, no connection between LSD use and such injury. If there had
Leave a Comment