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blood. priate box. 106 * CONCEPTION AND BIRTH My research colleagues also requested more justification from the animal literature for drawing blood levels of the various hormones I wanted to measure. These references were easy to provide. Finally, they wanted volunteers to submit urine samples for testing for drugs of abuse. Within a month, on February 19,1989, the Research Center approved the DMT protocol. They also agreed to fund my request for testing hor- mone levels and for developing a method of measuring DMT in human Three days later, the Human Research Ethics Committee also ap- proved the study. I then began looking for a source of DMT. At the same time, I had to make sure it was legal for me to possess it once I found it. The simpler of these two tasks was possession, and this depended on the DEA providing me a Schedule I permit. In April 1989 I met with the university hospital pharmacy about the security requirements the DEA would request for storing a Schedule I drug. Since the pharmacists previously had worked on a marijuana study, they believed their safeguards were adequate. I sent in my DEA Schedule I permit application. It stated that the permit was necessary to possess laboratory-grade DMT so we could begin developing a way to measure DMT in human blood. Later, the permit would need to cover the human-grade DMT volunteers would receive. This human-grade DMT needed to be purer than that required for labora- tory work. Giving people DMT would not begin until the FDA approved the study and the purity of the human-grade drug. One section of the DEA application asked for DMT's "drug number." I called the DEA office in Washington, D.C., and a staff person looked up DMT on the list of national drug codes. This number went into the appro- I called the DEA two weeks later, but they had no record of receiving my application. The person with whom I spoke said, "We're moving into a new office, and everything's in boxes." Another two weeks passed—still no record of my request. In a few