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Researchers tested 12 “magic mushroom” edible products sold in Portland, Ore., and found no trace of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound that gives magic mushrooms their name. Instead, seven of the products contained at least one undisclosed active ingredient. Such ingredients included cannabis extract and synthetic psychedelics whose effects and safety have not been formally documented or studied.

“We found no evidence of mushroom compounds of any kind, coming from any species,” says the new study’s co-author Richard van Breemen, a pharmaceutical sciences professor at Oregon State University. The research was published on Thursday in JAMA Network Open.

Psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs have received a lot of attention in recent years as potential treatments for mental health conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. “There’s a lot of hype around these substances, so people are increasingly trying them outside current legal pathways,” says Lori Bruce, a bioethicist at Yale University, who researches psychedelics.

In June 2024 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the agency was investigating reports of severe illness after people consumed certain purported psilocybin edibles. By last October, 73 hospitalizations and three deaths—all possibly associated with such products—had been reported across 34 states. “The mislabeling highlighted in this [study] causes harms,” Bruce says. “And as usage rates increase across the U.S., harms from retail products are also likely to increase.”

Are Any Commercial Psilocybin Products Legal?

Psilocybin comes from several mushroom species, including some in the genus Psilocybe. When consumed, the body breaks down the compound into psilocin, an alkaloid that can cause startling visual hallucinations and psychological effects, often including intense introspection. The U.S. federal government classifies both psilocybin and psilocin as Schedule I drugs, meaning they’re deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use.

But a handful of states have recently legalized the manufacture, sale, possession and use of psilocybin under certain conditions. Both medical and recreational use are legal in Colorado, and New Mexico passed a law this year that legalizes certain medical uses. In Oregon, the regulations are stricter: the drug must be taken in the company of a licensed facilitator at a specific “psilocybin service center.” These centers receive psilocybin from licensed growers, whose products are tested by a licensed laboratory.

Oregon does not allow the sale or use of psilocybin products outside of these centers; it is otherwise a criminal offense to buy, sell or possess the drug in the state. But the legal channels are prohibitively expensive to many: the average trip costs somewhere between $750 and $1,200.

This dynamic may be leading more people to try purported psilocybin products that are untested and prohibited but nonetheless sold at some retail stores, says legal researcher Mason Marks, a law professor at Florida State University who focused on psychedelics. “A lot of people are very curious about these substances. And if you’re in a state, like Oregon, that does not decriminalize them, people might go to these shops and buy these products that are either blatantly illegal or kind of in this gray area.”

Undisclosed and Untested Ingredients

For the new study, the researchers purchased 12 edible products (11 gummies and a chocolate) that were advertised as containing “magic mushrooms” and were sold at gas stations and convenience stores in Portland. These products are “being marketed widely in local convenience stores and on the Internet,” van Breemen says.

The edibles were first tested at a state-licensed facility that normally certifies the quality of the drug for Oregon’s psilocybin service centers. None of the products contained any psilocybin at all. To determine what they actually did contain, van Breemen and his colleagues turned to more advanced mass spectrometry techniques.

Seven products contained undisclosed active ingredients such as caffeine, kava extract (a legal herbal supplement with antianxiety and hallucinogenic effects), and cannabis extract (including the plant’s main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC). Four of the gummies contained no active ingredients at all.

Two of the gummies did contain psilocin, which also occurs naturally in some mushrooms in small quantities—and which is easier to synthesize in a laboratory than psilocybin. If the psilocin in the edibles came from natural sources, the researchers would expect to also detect other, related compounds from mushrooms. Such compounds turned out to be absent, leading van Breemen and his colleagues to conclude that the psilocin was likely synthetic.

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“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night.

The lawsuit is being filed in Florida, Trump said.

The White House and the Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the Tampa division of the Middle District of Florida. Brito represented Trump when he sued ABC News and The Wall Street Journal for defamation. ABC News paid Trump a $15 million settlement last year.

In the court filing, Trump’s lawyers said the Times had been trying to “destroy his reputation as a successful businessman, and subject him to humiliation and ridicule.”

The filing cited several articles about Trump published by the Times last year. It also took aim at “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” a book written by two Times reporters, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. Craig, Buettner, and their publisher, Penguin Random House, were listed as defendants alongside the Times.

“The Book and Articles are part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the court filing.

“Today, the Times is a fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. The newspaper’s editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents,” the filing said.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

This isn’t the first time Trump has sued the Times. In 2021, he filed a lawsuit against the paper, accusing the Times and its reporters of conspiring with his niece, Mary Trump, to obtain his tax records. Craig and Buettner were two of the three reporters named in Trump’s lawsuit.

Justice Robert Reed of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan dismissed the suit in May 2023 and ordered Trump to pay the outlet and its reporters their legal fees. In January 2024, Reed said Trump owed the Times and its reporters $392,638.69 in legal expenses.

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President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday that he was filing a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times in Florida. Andrew Harnik via Getty Images

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From

CBC

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Actor-turned-director and activist Robert Redford, one of Hollywood’s most well-known leading men and an influential supporter of independent film, has died at the age of 89.

His publicist Cindi Berger confirmed the death to CBC News on Tuesday, saying he passed away in his home in Sundance in the mountains of Utah, “the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved.”

Redford used the millions he made to launch the Sundance Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent filmmaking long before small and quirky were fashionable.

“Robert Redford was the golden boy,” said Sean P. Means, deputy editor at the Salt Lake Tribune, who formerly served as the paper’s film critic for 25 years.

Whether Redford was portraying the wealthiest among us in The Great Gatsby, making hearts race in romantic roles like Out Of Africa, or playing an outlaw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Means says he had the “stunning good looks that [let him] fit in to society’s spaces equally well.”

Baseball player, then painter, then actor

Born in the Los Angeles beach city of Santa Monica on Aug. 18, 1936, to what he described as a “lower working class family,” Redford landed a college baseball scholarship but lost it after spending too much time partying.

Deciding he wanted to be an artist, Redford moved to Europe, spending time in France and Italy trying to sell his paintings on the street. Moving back to the U.S., he enrolled in drama school to try his hand at theatrical set design. Michael Feeney Callan, Redford’s biographer and friend, told CBC News Network that Redford was initially skeptical of a career in front of the camera.

“The idea of being an actor had never been in his game plan,” Callan said. “By osmosis, celebrity happened to him.”

But he was persuaded to take to the stage, and by 1959, he was a full-time performer on Broadway and later found work on television.

Redford made his movie debut in 1962 in a low-budget film called Warhunt, but first won attention in Barefoot in the Park, opposite Jane Fonda.

Redford remained best known for the two early movies he made with Paul Newman: the 1969 western caper Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, both of which became classics.

He never won the best actor Oscar, but Redford’s first outing as a director — the 1980 family drama Ordinary People — won for best picture and best director.

From the 1980s, he devoted more time to producing films and to the establishment of the Sundance Institute — a year-round workshop for aspiring filmmakers — and the Sundance Festival, which has become one of the most influential independent film showcases in the world.

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Actor, director, and activist Robert Redford, known for roles in movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, has died at the age of 89. His publicist, Cindi Berger, confirmed the death to CBC News on Tuesday, saying he passed away at his home in Sundance in the mountains of Utah, ‘the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved.’ (Adam Rountree/The Associated Press)

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A school-aged child in Los Angeles County has died from a rare but always fatal complication from a measles infection they acquired when they were an infant who was too young to be vaccinated. The first dose of the vaccine is typically not administered until one year of age. Experts say the death underscores the need for high levels of vaccination in a population to protect the most vulnerable against the disease, as well as from side effects that can occur long after the initial illness has passed.

“This case is a painful reminder of how dangerous measles can be, especially for our most vulnerable community members,” said Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis in a recent statement.

The child who died suffered from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a progressive brain disorder that usually develops two to 10 years after a measles infection. The measles virus appears to mutate into a form that avoids detection by the immune system, allowing it to hide in the brain and eventually destroy neurons.

“It’s just a virus that goes unchecked and destroys brain tissue, and we have no therapy for it,” said Walter Orenstein, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at Emory University, to Scientific American earlier this year.

People with SSPE experience a gradual, worsening loss of neurological function and usually die within one to three years after diagnosis, according to the Los Angeles County Health Department. The disorder affects only about one in every 10,000 people who contract measles. But the risk may be as high as about one in 600 for those who are infected as infants.

“There is no treatment for this. Children who suffer from this will always die,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in a previous interview with Scientific American. Offit, who had measles himself in the 1950s, has seen five or 10 cases of SSPE in his career.

SSPE is one of several side effects of measles that go beyond the coughing, runny nose, and characteristic rash of the original infection. Measles can also cause encephalitis, a faster-occurring brain inflammation, in one in every 1,000 people who are infected because the virus causes the immune system to attack a protein produced by certain brain cells. This inflammation kills about one in five people who develop it.

Measles also causes “immune amnesia”: the virus seems to attack the immune system’s B cells, which remember previous pathogens the body has been exposed to, resulting in reduced immunity. There is some evidence this effect can last for a couple of years, making those who get measles more susceptible to other infectious diseases.

These side effects are of particular concern because the measles virus is highly contagious, an order of magnitude more than seasonal influenza. With measles, viral particles emitted by coughing or sneezing can linger in a room for hours after the infected person has left. One infected person infects 15 more people on average.

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BJ MILLER: Dying is not just a medical event. It’s way bigger than that. It’s where everything comes to account. Our psychology, our philosophy, our spirituality, our social world, our intrapersonal lives. It is all-encompassing.

TYLER VOLK: Without death, there’s no evolution. Evolution, as it works now, operates by dying, and the next generations carry on. The body, through the evolutionary process, has tuned interconnectivity of the cells and the brain. You can get a design happening out of evolution over time. Or you can get adaptations occurring that did not exist. At one point, there were no large creatures such as us walking around on land. The only way that could happen would be many generations dying. So death has really been an essential ingredient to the evolutionary process.

BRUCE GREYSON: I started being confronted by patients’ reports of things that I couldn’t explain. Near-death experiences are profound, subjective experiences that many people have when they come close to death, or sometimes when they are in fact pronounced dead.

And they include such difficult to explain phenomena as a sense of leaving the physical body. And we have hundreds and hundreds of experiences that occur during a cardiac arrest or deep anesthesia, when we know the brain is not capable of functioning well enough to create complex thoughts and feelings and memories. And they often report hearing sounds they’ve never heard on Earth, and seeing colors they’d never seen before.

Some of the lessons that near-death experiences bring back from this event is the sense of being interconnected with other people, about how to make this life more meaningful, more purposeful, more fulfilling. But I think the important part of near-death experiences is what they tell us about this life we’re in now.

BJ MILLER: The domain of death is more or less ruled these days by health care. In times past, it’s been the church or the family was the center of all this. The medical piece is a little itty bitty piece, it just gets too much attention. We people, we humans, we patients, loved ones, we need to take back the subject on some level.

One of the things I see, that happens a lot around this subject, one can be made to feel ashamed, to be sick, ashamed to be dying like we’re failing somehow. We end up accidentally making life even harder for each other by keeping the truth of the situation at bay. We die before we have to die.

Ideally, we come to our death without piles and piles of regret. When I’m working with patients, especially upstream of their death, I’m always encouraging them to feel things, enjoy the body they have while they have it, because it’s someday going to go and you’re going to miss it. As long as I can feel something, I’m interested in being alive.

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