Drugs & Chromosomes

LSD, the substance that was supposed to open the doors to a luminous new world of the mind, has instead opened the minds of medical researchers to a dark world of hitherto unsuspected dangers in connection with many drugs. It now appears that not only LSD, but also other, more familiar drugs may damage the human reproductive mechanism by causing breaks or other abnormalities in the chromosomes. A woman with such chromosomal dam age may have a spontaneous abortion or a stillbirth, or her child may be deformed, or develop a fatal anemia.

Evidence for these conclusions is only six months old but has been accumulating so fast that last week the National Foundation-March of Dimes called an emergency meeting of top geneticists to consider the problem.

Test-Tube Growths. X rays and other forms of radiation have long been known to cause breaks in chromosomes. So have some viruses and a few drugs used in the treatment of cancer. To these must now be added drugs of many types. Columbia University's Dr. O. Jack Miller noted that the widely used "major tranquilizer," chlorpromazine (Thorazine), has been shown to produce breaks in a few cases, and even the antihistamine diphenhydramine (Benadryl) in one case. Western Reserve's Dr. Mor ton Stenchever added the popular minor tranquilizers chlordiazepoxide and diazepam (Librium and Valium) to the list as causing breaks in animal cells, though this effect has not yet been confirmed in human patients. The antibiotics have not been shown to cause breaks, except for two compounds used only for advanced cancer. But the heart stimulant digitoxin causes breaks, said Buffalo's Dr. Maimon M. Cohen.

So far, chromosomal breaks in drug users have been shown mainly in test-tube growths of cells from the patients' blood. What disturbed the geneticists was that the breaks and other abnormalities appear to be identical with those known to be associated with some congenital disorders. At successive stages of damage and attempted self-repair, chromosomes are found with notched or broken arms, with translocations in which a detached arm of one chromo some gets stuck to another, and quadriradial or cross shapes. Such abnormalities appear in some cases of mongolism as well as in several severe forms of anemia that are accompanied by stunted growth and other physical defects, and in leukemia--to which victims of these disorders are especially susceptible.

Granted, said Dr. Cohen, specimens from healthy people will show 4% to 5% of cells with a notched or other wise damaged chromosome. But in LSD users, the rate soars to 19%, and--at least in the test tube--still higher with some other drugs. Granted also, said the panelists, that they have seen no proven case of a birth deformity in an LSD user's child, but they are investigating several suspected cases.

The experts agreed: no man or woman should take LSD during the reproductive years, except for sound medical reasons--and none of the panelists could think of a single such reason.

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