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110 * CONCEPTION AND BIRTH This was true. The rising tide of AIDS and drug abuse brought into focus the delays in the drug approval process at the FDA. A new division formed to provide expedited review of new drugs for these problems. For- tunately, my DMT request went to this new division rather than Dr. L.'s, where my MDMA proposal never made any progress. Several months passed, and Ms. R. never did receive any information from Sigma. Sigma felt that the FDA had broken confidentiality, and they probably did not want to get any deeper into what they knew would be a long and complicated process. What was in it for them? I gave up hoping to obtain Sigma's DMT for human use. A densely worded letter arrived from the FDA in August 1989, spelling out twenty separate requirements the human-grade DMT must meet. There were no questions about general toxicity, which would require compli- cated and expensive animal testing. Nor were there concerns about the study's scientific merit. On those counts, in any event, I was encouraged. I called the chemist colleague who previously had offered his dire predic- tion about my only publication being one on the failure to obtain permis- sion to run the study. I asked him directly, "Will you make me some DMT?" He declined. He did not believe his current laboratory would meet the requirements to qualify as a "manufacturer." It would be too expen- sive and time-consuming to try. I also asked David Nichols, Ph.D., a chemist and pharmacologist at Purdue University in Indiana. He recommended Dr. K. at the National Institute of Mental Health, who directed a program that made hard-to- find research drugs. Dr. K. said his contract prohibited use ofhis compounds in humans, although perhaps in the future he might request to synthesize human-grade drugs. Dr. K. recommended calling Lou G., an old colleague at a chemical supply house in Chicago. As it turned out, Lou, who stayed on after another firm bought his company, had provided much of the DMT for American human studies. However, his Chicago firm did not give those researchers any manufac- turing or animal toxicity data.