Premature Pill Talk

"A new pill that costs 15-c- looks like your best bet to protect against atomic-bomb radiation," read an A.P. dispatch last week out of Burlington, Vt., citing "top nuclear scientists." The A.P. went on: "You could store it in your medicine cabinet just like aspirin ... If you had 15 minutes' warning of an atomic or H-bomb attack, you could gobble one of the pills." Unfortunately, all this was Utopian wishful thinking.

The facts, reported by Dr. David G. Doherty of the Atomic Energy Commission's famed Oak Ridge National Laboratory: several compounds built around S, 2-aminoethylisothiuronium (or AET) have been given to rats and mice, monkeys and dogs. Then the animals have been exposed to radiation. Figuring that 400 r. (see SCIENCE) will kill half the animals or human beings exposed to it, Researchers Doherty and Raymond Shapira doubled the dose. Whereas all untreated animals died, nearly all those given a suitable dose of AET survived.

Main trouble: AET is not yet ready even for testing on humans, let alone for the bathroom medicine chest, because it causes too many undesirable side effects--including nausea and a drop in blood pressure. How soon trials in human volunteers can begin, no man knows. (First subjects would be cancer patients who might be able to take higher and more curative doses of radiation.) Other snags: AET must be taken at least 15 minutes before exposure to radiation, gives full protection for only about an hour. It may take years to find related chemicals that will be less toxic and give greater protection for longer periods.

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