It also recognized him as the discoverer of their medicinal value, a common second claim in the realm of drug law. patent declared him the inventor of amphetamine sulfate and amphetamine hydrochloride. In the meantime Alles protected his intellectual property: a 1932 U.S. Perhaps it could be used as a heart stimulant or for relief from menstrual pain. He began sharing the drug with a small, informal group of doctors and researchers for experimental use. As an asthma treatment, the chemical seemed to have no future.Īfter World War II, Benzedrine began to be prescribed for “fatigue.” College of Physicians of Philadelphiaīut Alles saw potential in a euphoria-producing stimulant-even one lacking any obvious medical application. The next week a 50-milligram shot relieved her asthma attack but left her nauseated and headache-stricken. He gave an asthma sufferer 20 milligrams by mouth two hours later she was still wheezing, despite feelings of euphoria. Bolstered by apparent success, he began testing with actual patients. Similar effects characterize a group of drugs now known as amphetamines, as Alles later named them. Mind seemed to run from one subject to another.” Still, he recorded, “Rather sleepless night. Some eight hours after taking the drug his blood pressure had nearly returned to normal. After 17 minutes he noted heart palpitations but also a “feeling of well being.” He grew chatty and at a dinner party that night considered himself unusually witty. Seven minutes later he sniffed: his nose was dry and clear. If amphetamine worked as he hoped, he’d have a lucrative, patent-protected drug that could go head-to-head with ephedrine. He took what he estimated was a nonlethal dose-five times greater than later recommendations-and prepared himself. In this case Alles had tested his compound on guinea pigs, though he couldn’t know exactly what to expect when he became his own guinea pig. In addition to feeling they had a moral duty to future test subjects, they believed their training and familiarity with a compound made them the best observers of its effects. In the early days of scientific drug discovery researchers routinely experimented on themselves. On June 3, 1929, a doctor injected 50 milligrams of amphetamine into Alles’s body. For over 40 years chemists had considered it pharmaceutically valueless, but Alles was about to prove them wrong, discovering what became the first psychoactive prescription drug-and igniting a decades-long controversy. He didn’t know it at the time, but the drug had been first synthesized in 1887 by Romanian chemist Lazar Edeleanu. Alles began to focus on a compound he called beta-phenyl-isopropylamine. The Los Angeles chemist had tried without success to improve on ephedrine, the decongestant and bronchodilator that had in recent years become a blockbuster asthma, cold, and allergy treatment for drug maker Eli Lilly. Gordon Alles thought he was testing a new asthma medicine.
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