Leslie Iversen obituary
Afflictions of the mind and brain, from stroke to schizophrenia, remain among the most challenging to treat, even after more than half a century of discoveries about the brain's biochemistry and how it responds to drugs. The neuropharmacologist Leslie Iversen, who has died aged 82, devoted his career to making sense of the interplay of signalling molecules in the nervous system that might provide sites where drugs could act.
After directing laboratories in both the public sector and the pharmaceutical industry, in his later years Iversen chaired the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). He favoured a harm-reduction approach to substance use, supporting both the decriminalisation of the recreational use of cannabis and research into its possible medicinal benefits.
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