Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research

If MDMA were to become approved medicine in the US, I see it as an important milestone when it comes to getting rid of misguided classifications of drugs as having no medical value even though there are both research and anecdotal evidence suggesting otherwise. I am certain that a change in the US will have impacts on other countries as well.<p>I donated last summer because I sincerely believe this research will have a huge positive impact on many peoples lives if MDMA were to become medicine. Seeing this news I have decided to donate again.

This is fantastic news. MDMA and psychedelics when taken in the right setting with the right support people can be incredibly healing. Right now it&#x27;s primarily focused on PTSD and other traumas, but it can be a powerful experience for improving relationships or personal growth as well.

This is fantastic. I recently helped a few of the NGOs selected by Pineapple get their tech together to accept the funds. It gave me a chance to learn more (as much is public) about the fund and love hearing about bolder moves like this to make such an impact. Being close to the NGOs that did receive the funds, I can say first hand just how much of a difference this macro-funding is making for real orgs that care so much about change. @Pine thank you for giving a damn.

From the press release:<p>&quot;If this funding challenge is met in gifts, grants, and multi-year pledges, MAPS will have raised sufficient funds to complete its Phase 3 trials.&quot;<p>That statement is huge. The idea that MAPS has successfully taken a compound through the entire FDA approval process using only donations is kinda amazing. They received breakthrough status with the FDA, they are starting phase 3 trials, and the only thing holding them back is an amount of money that would be a drop in the bucket for a big pharma company.

Pineapple Fund is seriously awesome, really warms my heart at the great things that they&#x27;re funding. :)

This is fantastic news! I did an actual fistpump seeing this in the HN list this morning. In my anonymous, just-another-person-on-the-internet opinion, there isn&#x27;t a lot out there that holds more potential for humanity at the moment than furthering our understanding (and consequent _responsible_ use of) psychedelics.<p>A huge thank you to Pine for supporting healing-driven science and noticing that MAPS is doing this particularly difficult work with efficiency and integrity.

It&#x27;s been said a bunch of times, but it should be said a bunch more times: what pineapplefund is doing is incredible. I can only hope that is how all of us would react to that sort of windfall.

Usually MDMA has the backlash of lowering the amount of serotonin release in your brain the days after you take it, which makes you feel down. The so-called tuesday blues. So how come these people in these treatments aren&#x27;t getting more depressed after their few hours of excitement?

One big issue not addressed in this post, how is MAPS differentiating between PTSD and BLAST[1] in this CT? They have identical symptoms, but one is psychological and one is physical. Being unable to differentiate them could cause some SERIOUS error in the results. Have you thought about how you are going to address that?<p>[1]BLAST is a traumatic brain injury similar to CTE. It is caused by shockwaves emanating from explosives. Symptoms are near identical to PTSD.

i for one welcome our new crypto-currency funded drug research clinical trials. Please try to be as ethical and scrupulous when doing your research as possible: it&#x27;s important that we have high quality scientific results, regardless of whether they support our hypotheses, so that people trust the outcomes.

This seems like evidence towards Gwern&#x27;s theory that pineapple fund is a retired dark net drug dealer...

Very nice, on reddit people suggested they donate the interest alone like University endowments do<p>They could buy a bunch of masternodes because those are dividend producing assets in the cryptocurrency space<p>The yields should be pretty good

[unpopular opinion, criticism is welcome]<p>People who build cheap cars&#x2F;smartphones&#x2F;clothes&#x2F;food&#x2F;anything usually don&#x27;t care about poor people at all, even if poor people benefit the most from those cheap protducts&#x2F;services.<p>They care about profits in $$$<p>$$$ incentives bring the most value to poor people, so the best motivation I can think of for improving society is money-making businesses .