þ7 ç))))) 3 ==OxÇÇ ççççTHE CHROMOSOME DAMAGE HOAX By the mid-1960s, LSD was also singled out as Public Enemy Number One by the mass media, which whipped America into a virtual frenzy over psy- chedelic drugs. It wasn't enough to convey the false impression that LSD probably caused permanent insanity; all of a sudden the press conjured up the frightening prospect of couples giving birth to some kind of octopus because acid had scrambled their chromosomes. However, when thc Army Chemical Corps ran in-house studies to assess the potential hazards of LSD "from a tissue or genetic stand-point, " it could not duplicate these findings. "Although human chromosome breaks have been reported by others, we found them much more frequently from caffeine and many other substances," stated Dr. Van Sim, chief of clinical research at Edgewood Arsenal during the 1960s and early 1970s. "We were unable to demonstrate any damage by LSD to any system used." But army officials never uttered a public peep while the so-called facts about LSD and chromosome damage were trumpeted over and over again by the mass media. Nor did the CIA attempt to set the record straight, even though the Agency had access to the same classified reports as Dr. Sim by virtue of a long-standing liaison between the CIA and the research and development staff at Edgewood. The chromosome hoax had all the earmarks of a media-hyped disinformation campaign against psychedelic drugs. Hardly a day passed in the mid-1960s without yet another story about people freaking out and hurling themselves from windows while high on acid. At the same time, Timothy Leary and his cohorts kept churning out magical proclamations about mind expansion, groovy highs, and utopian prospects. ("Can the world live without LSD?" asked the East Village Other, an underground newspaper. Their answer, of course, was no.) The combination of dire warnings and ecstatic praise created a highly polarized atmosphere. LSD acquired the emotional and magnetic pull of the taboo, and as a result, more and more people decided to try the drug. body was an outer emblem oi conceptual incohercnce, the inability to synthesize an adequate frame of understanding and program to embody all that we had come to realize was essential for the transformation we sought. An autopsy of tk­¸ÿC‚Ç K1ï û÷óïëçãßÛ×ÓÏËÇÃ@k­¸ÿC‚Ç K1   Þÿÿÿÿ  ô¬f&xrÖü&Š't@B«B« pLßNu/x¸—d´t@f°´@g\D¸Teêp(J€g 9‚@)€@\DNu$(/8ÄNuHçÀJ‚g8(Bt&Bg.v40 :=à/Р   Ð