On Monday, September 14, 2026, the FDA held a public hearing on the future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. Around 80 people had 2 minutes each to contribute to the FDA’s docket. We heard four hours of testimony at the White Oak campus in Maryland, half the speakers in the room and half on video link. A thousand more watched the stream.
Reuters covered it from Bengaluru. One line from that story traveled further than anything else said that afternoon:
“Approval alone is not access. A breakthrough therapy nobody can reach is not a breakthrough — it is a press release,” said Lynn Watkins, a U.S. Air Force veteran associated with the Psychedelics and Pain Association.
Watkins didn’t say it.
“Thank you to Reuters for highlighting comments of some of the speakers, including mine,” she told Psychedelics Today. “However, the statement attributed to me was actually made by another speaker who followed me.”
This statement can be heard at 3:40:07 in the FDA’s livestream video of the event. It was said by another commenter in a longer passage about insurance hurdles.
Reuters got everything else about her correct.
What she came to say
Watkins spoke on her own behalf, as a friend and representative of PPA, about recovering from complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS, a debilitating pain condition in which the central nervous system keeps firing pain signals long after an injury has healed, or even in the absence of injury). Her case is documented in a 2024 report in Clinical Case Reports, “Refractory CRPS pain treated with psilocybin.” Psychedelic Alpha, which had a reporter in the room, places her with the small group of commenters pushing the agency to look at pain rather than psychiatry alone.
“These are not single factor drugs,” she said. “They are not only beneficial for mental health.”
Her two minutes were mostly about one thing: neurorehab interventions and facilitated touch during active dosing, which is how she was treated working with REMAP Therapeutics in 2023.
“The impact that made for me and my healing cannot be overstated,” she said. “Just one example, but pretty huge. Within 90 minutes of dosing, I stretched out my right foot and all 5 toes moved for the first time in nine years.”
Thankfully this testimony went into the federal record.
Who did say it
We reviewed the FDA recording and confirmed the line appears at 3:40:07, spoken by a different commenter in a longer passage about insurance hurdles.
PPA’s response to the error was to thank the people who made it.
“We also wish to extend our sincere appreciation to Reuters and other news organizations for highlighting her testimony,” said Court Wing, co-foudner & president. “While the statement attributed to her in the article was made by another speaker, we welcome the focus on the plight of 1 in 5 Americans who suffer from chronic pain.”
We have asked Reuters to adjust the record.
How this happened
Eighty speakers. Two minutes each. Half on video link, cycling through ahead of schedule. Two reporters watching a livestream from the other side of the world. That is how a name lands on the wrong voice.
What happens after a wire has already pushed that mistake onto KSL in Utah, WSAU in Wisconsin, WHTC in Michigan and the Lufkin Daily News in Texas inside of an afternoon.
Corrections don’t syndicate the way stories do. Some outlets will update. Some won’t. The uncorrected version is what sits in search results and gets quoted back a year from now.
This was a federal proceeding. FDA convened it to build a record on how psychedelic therapies should be delivered when they are approved. Regulators, companies and reporters are going to cite that record.
There is a second cost, and it bothers me more. The wire had room for a line about press releases and no room for what Watkins came to say. She had two minutes with the FDA and spent them arguing that touch, neuromodulation and physical therapy during a dosing session is doing heavy lifting that very few are studying seriously. That argument didn’t get communicated to the world.
Editors Notes: An important argument is to be made around psychiatry possibly damaging our ability to investigate and roll out these treatments to many millions of chronic pain sufferers by insisting that they will be required in all psychedelic interventions. Over the last few decades, chronic pain sufferers who use psychedelics to treat their pain have clearly established that psychiatry isn’t required for safe and effective interventions. Early in the hearing at the FDA a psychiatrist from Sheppard Pratt, a psychiatric hospital in Baltimore, insisted that psychiatry were going to need to be at the helm of this deployment. We agree that they are a key ingredient in the psychedelic rollout, but disagree in that they won’t be helpful in all cases, and perhaps could heavily impact access if FDA rulings require them in all applications of these therapies.
We’ve asked Reuters to correct the record and will update when we hear back.
If you have something to tell the FDA about how these treatments should actually be delivered, the written docket is open until October 5. That record is going to outlast the wire copy.
Disclosure: Joe Moore is a founding board member of the Psychedelics and Pain Association.
