Harris Isbell
| Harris Isbell | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 7, 1910 Arkansas |
| Died | December 23, 1994 (aged 84) Lexington, Kentucky |
| Parent(s) | Francis Taylor Isbell, M.D. Celeste Mathews |
Harris Isbell, M.D. (June 7, 1910 – December 23, 1994) was the director of research for the NIMH Addiction Research Center at the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky from 1945 to 1963. He did extensive research on the physical and psychological effects of various drugs on humans (imprisoned narcotics offenders, see below). Early work investigated aspects of physical dependence (an important aspect of drug addiction) with opiates and barbiturates, while later work (at least partially funded by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of the MKUltra project) investigated psychedelic drugs, including LSD. The research was extensively reported in academic journals such as the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Psychopharmacologia, and the AMA Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry.
He was born on June 7, 1910 in Arkansas to Dr. Francis Taylor Isbell, M.D. and Celeste Mathews. He received his M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine in 1934, and held various research positions before becoming head of the Addiction Research Center (ARC) in 1944. He was awarded the US Public Health Service Meritorious Service Award in 1962; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy praised him as "an extraordinarily able director and coordinator of multidisciplinary research" and "an outstanding investigator in his own right whose work in clinical pharmacology has exerted far-reaching influences on medical practice". After leaving the ARC in 1963, he became Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Kentucky School of Medicine.
Isbell and his associates (including Abraham Wikler) published extensively on the effects of drugs (including opiates, synthetic opioids, barbiturates, alcohol, amphetamine, ibogaine, multiple psychedelics, and THC) on human subjects, with over 125 publications. Among their experimental results were the qualitative and quantitative documentation of physical dependence on barbiturates, physical dependence on alcohol,tolerance to amphetamine, investigation and therapeutic use of opiate antagonists (e.g., nalorphine as an overdose treatment), rapid tolerance but lack of physical dependence with LSD, the ability of methadone to alleviate opiate withdrawal symptoms,cross-tolerance between LSD and psilocybin, and the ability of pure THC to cause marijuana-like effects. New pharmaceutical substances were assayed (in the prisoner population) for their abuse and addiction (substance dependence) potential (medications for pain, cough, and diarrhea were of particular concern), and this information was utilized by groups such as the World Health Organization.
...
Wikipedia