Tranquil But Alert

The European lynx and the Australian dingo are usually among the least tractable animals when captured and put behind bars. Equally ready to use fang and claw are baboons, and the rhesus monkeys on which so much medical research depends. But in the San Diego Zoo, a lynx that had bloodied its nose in a savage dash against the side of its cage was treated with a new tranquilizing drug mixed in its food, and was soon gamboling like an alley kitten. An attendant put his fingers through the wire of a tranquilized dingo's cage, and the big dog licked them gently. Baboons and lab monkeys calmed down the same way. Most important, they were not knocked out to the point of being dopey, but remained active, with full muscular coordination, and apparently retained possession of whatever faculties nature gave them.

This week the new tranquilizer goes on sale (by prescription only) throughout the U.S., with encouraging evidence that it will have the same effect on 70% or more of anxious, tense and hostile humans as it has on dingoes. Trade-named Librium by New Jersey's Roche Laboratories, it is technically methamino-diazepoxide, a synthetic chemical unrelated to previous ataractic drugs. Finding the right dose for individual patients is admittedly tricky. But the manufacturers claim that when this is achieved, Librium comes close to producing pure relief from strain without drowsiness or dulling of mental processes. Also claimed: unusual freedom from harmful side effects--the commonest one reported, with high doses, is impaired coordination.

Severest test of the drug's powers was made by Houston's Dr. John Kinross-Wright on state prisoners at Huntsville, Texas. Patients treated there, he reported, were "classical psychopathic personalities with lifelong histories of antisocial behavior." In the penitentiary they were mutilating themselves, setting fires and starting fights. On Librium most of them became "placid and alert, despite their tension-provoking environment."

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