for Slate

On Feb. 4—the same day that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for secretary of Health and Human Services advanced out of the Senate finance committee—the New York Times published a story with the headline “How a Leftist Activist Group Helped Torpedo a Psychedelic Therapy.” The story claims that Psymposia, a psychedelic-science and harm-reduction nonprofit consisting of five members with no paid employees, used baseless and misleading accusations to thwart Food and Drug Administration approval of MDMA-assisted therapy, or MDMA-AT. Without the efforts of this “small band of anticapitalist activists,” the authors argue, Lykos Therapeutics’ “$250 million investment” in MDMA-AT may have paid off by being the first psychedelic therapy to get federal approval—potentially establishing the company as a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

As a journalist who has followed the psychedelics movement for years and attended hearings during the FDA approval process to write about them for Slate, the story was stunning. It was largely divorced from the events as I witnessed them, misleading in crucial ways, and journalistically bewildering. But what the story lacks in fully recounting why Lykos’ application tanked, it makes up for in fostering outrage, scapegoating a fringe group, and establishing a useful narrative should the new HHS secretary want to reverse the FDA’s decision. (continued)