SUN-TAN FROM A PILL

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28020, 14 July 1956, Page 11

SUN-TAN FROM A PILL

Tests In United States [By RON TARRANT] This week I swallowed a small capsule which gave me a brown suntan after two hours’ exposure Jo the New York sun. There was no blistering, no tenderness, and no peeling—just a comfortable warmth that soon disappeared. The capsule is prepared from an inexpensive drug. If present tests satisfy United States drug authorities, the “sun-tan pills'’ may be sold in Australia in time for this year’s surfing season. Thousands of tests during the past months have satisfied researchers that the pills will enable even people with sensitive skins to bare their winterpale flesh to the sun without burning. The capsules contain a drug called 8-methoxypsorelen, or Bmop for short. It is prepared from the ammi majus plant, that grows as a weed on the banks of the Nile and in other parts of the Middle East. Since the thirteenth century it has been known that extracts from seeds of the plant were moderately effective in treating vitiligo, the disease that covers the skin with white blotches. Three years ago. while studying the effects of Bmop on vitiligo, a University of Oregon research team discovered its potential for preventing sunburn.

Preliminary tests on people who never had been able to hoid a sun-ian previously, were so successful that the United States Public Health Service granted 72,000 dollars towards research. Scientists found that, unlike ordinary sun-tan oils that screen the sun's rays outside the body, Bmop works internally to build up a person’s natural defence against sunburn and speeds the process of suntannmg. Some doctors have been prescribing the capsules for patients, and one prominent person who has used them is the actress Jayne Mansfield. She uas advised to take them after she received a severe burning at the beach. She was so sore that she had to play love scenes at arm's length in the New York stage play. “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” She now keeps several capsules handy in case the gets caught in the sun again. But a group of less enchanting “guinea-pigs” also have been testing tHe pills with great success.

They are inmates of Arizona State Prison who for several months have been baring their backs to the scorching desert sun in the interests of science—and for five dollars a day. Forty-seven prisoners. all fairskinned, recently stretched out in the gaol’s baseball field for an hour and had their first sunbaking for five months. Those who had taken the pills quickly received a tan. Most of the others were burnt, some badly. The United States Federal Pure Food and Drup Administration has not yet approved general sale of the sun-tan pills, known by the trade name of oxsoralen.