Anti-Radiation Drug Quest

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30233, 11 September 1963, Page 16

Anti-Radiation Drug Quest

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, September 10. The search for a drug to protect people against atomic radiation has been only partly successful so far, according to an American chemist, Professor G. W. Stacy, who is visiting Auckland. “No drug has been announced Which is sufficiently non-toxic to be useful,” he said at Auckland University today. Professor Stacy is closely connected with the quest for anti-rad iation drugs, since Washington State University, where he is professor of organic chemistry, has a contract from the United States Army to synthesise possible chemicals. "We have prepared eight

so far, and although they all confer some immunity in experimental animals, they are all too poisonous for human use," he said.

"They would make anyone who took them at a level high enough to give protection against radiation very, very sick.” A number of other laboratories throughout America were working on the seme problem and preparing drugs for testing at the Walter Reed Army Reseanh Institute in Washington, DC., but so tar none of the drugs tested gave more protection than the original one discovered at the Argonne National Laboratories in 1959, and aU were very toxic. “We want one that gives

the protection and is of low enough toxicity to be useful,” said Professor Stacy Professor Stacy is visiting Australia and New Zealand during his sabbatical leave, with the aid of a grant from the petroleum research fund of the American Chemical Society. He will work with New Zealand and Australian chemists on a project of interest to petroleum chemists, involving the synthesis of sulphur-containing chemicals found in petroleum

A former chairman of the committee on chemical education of the American Chemical Society, Professes Stacy is studying aspects of education in New Zealand during his visit.