Doctor gave amphetamines to famous patients

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33093, 7 December 1972, Page 21

Doctor gave amphetamines to famous patients

(By

BOYCE RENSBERGER,

, of the "New York Times." through N.Z.P.A.)

NEW YORK, Dec. 5. For many years Dr Max Jacobson, a 72-year-old general practitioner in New York, has been injecting amphetamine — the powerful stimulant the drug culture calls “speed”—into the veins of dozens of *be country’s most celebrated artists, writers, politicians, and jet-set-ters.

Many patients of the German-bom doctor swear by the potions he concocts in his office and insist—without always knowing what is in the injections—that he has helped them achieve success. Most say that his shots give them boundless energy and more productive and pleasurable lives.

But at least a few of the doctor’s patients have left, complaining of bad reactions and enslaving addictions to the amphetamine. Used over a long period of time in large doses, the drug produces symptoms resembling those of paranoid schizophrenia. Withdrawal produces a profound mental depression that can last for weeks or months. Some of Dr Jacobson’s patients say that his treatments have wrecked lives and destroyed careers. In one instance, a patient died from what the medical examiner called acute “amphetamine poisoning.” Dr Jacobson’s unusual practice—his use of amphetamines and the prominence of so many of his patients — affords a rare glimpse into a little-known facet of the drug abuse problem in the United States. Dr Jacobson is the best known of a small number of New York doctors who specialise in prescribing and administering amphetamines not to treat disease but to boost the mood of healthy patients. Far from the typical picture of rag-tag youths dosing

themselves with illegallyobtained drugs, the story of Dr Jacobson and his patients is one of wealthy and famous adults depending on a licensed physician for their completely legal injections.

Although Dr Jacobson acknowledged to the “New York Times” that he often mixes amphetamine into the medications he injects, patients are seldom told that the mixture contains anything beyond vitamins and hormones. The doctor would not reveal which patients received amphetamine and which, if any, did not. The most famous of the doctor’s patients were President and Mrs Kennedy. Dr Jacobson frequently visited the White House and often travelled with the Kennedys. In 1961, for example, he went with the President to Vienna for the summit meeting with Mr Khrushchev and, Dr Jacobson said in an interview, gave the President injections there.

In addition to the Kennedys, other persons who were or are patients of the doctor include Truman Capote, Cecil B. deMille, Eddie Fisher, a Congressman, Mr Alan Jay Lerner, Claude Pepper, of Florida, Otto Preminger, Emilio Pucci, Anthony Quinn, and Tennessee Williams. It cannot be said with certainty that the Kennedys, or, with a few exceptions, any other specific patient received amphetamine. It is known, however, that Jacobson uses unusually large amounts of amphetamine in his practice. The doctor’s office reported that Dr Jacobson buys amphetamine at the rate of 80 grams a month. This is enough to make 100 fairly strong doses of 25 milligrams every day. According to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which has investigated Dr Jacobson at different times over almost five years, a review of the doctor’s records showed they were unable to account for a substantial quantity of amphetamines that had been

purchased. In 1969 the bureau ordered seizure of all controlled drugs in Dr Jacobson’s possession, an action he contested in a suit that is still pending. At all hours of the day or night patients go to Dr Jacobson’s office at 56 East 87th Street—sometimes to his home—to receive the injections. Some go once a month, some weekly, some very day. Dr Max Jacobson is a physician of the old school with, according to many patients, a bedside manner that instils trust and admiration.

Although he is 72 years old, he looks 20 years younger. With his dark hair (most of which he still has), black-rimmed glasses, and blue blazer over a turtleneck, he could be a fiftyish executive at the country club. For all the rich patients he has had, the doctor does not appear to have become wealthy himself. He lives in a modest middle-class apartment in a luxury building on East 86th Street with paperback murder mysteries in the bathroom and a television set on a wheeled cart in the living-room. Even so, he enjoys the money of others from time to time by, for example, going on African safaris with Prince Radziwill or hobnobbing with movie stars and jet-setters. Although Dr Jacobson readily acknowledged in interviews that his preparations included amphetamines, he insisted that the dose levels he gives were too small to produce a “kick” or to lead to dependence when administered in the quantities as directed. Dr Jacobson said that the most amphetamines he ever put in his concoctions would yield a 25-milligram dose with each injection. Usually, he said, the dose was less. Dr Jacobson also acknowledged that he had taken his own medicine for many years.

A New York doctor who treated President Kennedy, and who refused to allow his name to be used, told

the “New York Times” that although he warned the President not to take shots from Dr Jacobson, he believed there might have been at least one occasion when Dr Jacobson gave Mr Kennedy injections. “When I heard about that incident, I made it very clear that I was not going to tolerate this,” the doctor recalled. “I said that if I ever heard that he took another shot, I’d make sure it was known. No President with his finger on the red button has any business taking stuff like that.” One of Dr Jacobson’s patients was Mr Mark Shaw, a photographer who at the peak of his career was grossing more than a million dollars ($NZ840,000) a year and was an intimate of the Kennedy clan. At the time of his death he was married to Pat Suzuki.

Shortly before President Kennedy’s assassination, Mr Shaw published a book of photographs entitled “The John F. Kennedy’s.” It contained a number of pictures of the Kennedys at play. One depicts the President on an outing with Prince Radziwill and Dr Jacobson during a 50-mile hike from Palm Beach toward Miami. Mr Shaw dedicated the book “To my friend and company, Dr Max Jacobson.” Mr Shaw died in New York on January 26, 1969, at the age of 47. When the Medical Examiners’ Office called, Dr Jacobson insisted that Mr Shaw had had a history of heart disease and that he had died of a heart attack.

The autopsy by Dr Michael Baden, associate medical examiner, showed another cause. There was no evidence of heart disease, but Mr Shaw’s internal organs were laden with methamphetamine residue (methamphetamine is a form of, amphetamine). There was heavy scarring and discolouration along the veins in Shaw’s arms — the “tracks” of someone who repeatedly injects himself with drugs.