Word: compound
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...similar reports multiplied, a four-university team was set up to check every malformed birth since January 1959 in West Germany's most populous state (Nordrhein-Westfalen, 15.5 million people). Chemie Gruenenthal took Contergan. and every compound drug containing thalidomide off the market. And all 18,500 doctors in Canada got a December warning from the Merrell Co.: "Kevadon should not be administered to pregnant women nor to premenopausal women who may become pregnant." U.S. investigators using the drug got a similar warning...
Mescaline is an alkaloid produced by the peyote cactus which is native to the Rio Grande regions of Mexico and Texas. As peyote, this curious compound has been used for many years; indeed, the Aztecs worshipped this plant as the chief of three great deities. More recently, the ingestion of peyote for its drug effect has spread among Indians of Mexico and the United States. There is a Christian sect (The Native American Church) based on sacramental use of peyote wafers, and there is also an impressive black market that ships quantities of the cactus to American students, beatniks...
...issue may be raised sooner than one might expect. Since mescaline became available, several other drugs with similar properties have been isolated, and some of these have very many of the qualities of Huxley's soma. The most astounding one is psilocybin, a compound isolated quite recently from a certain genus of Mexican mushrooms and now also synthesized. Psilocybin affects the mind much more selectively than mescaline, specifially stimulating those psychic effects that have been termed "broadened consciousness." It never impairs the higher mental functions, often it greatly enhances them. Visions and physical symptoms do occur but seem less intense...
...psilocybin is still not soma, the ideal drug is probably on the way. Ethical and philosophical questions raised by the availability of such a compound are staggering in complexity, yet they will have to be faced. The work going on now in Cambridge may force us to find answers to them in the very near future...
...plastic bomb, developed during World War II, has become the trademark of the S.A.O. It is a puttylike substance made by mixing two explosives, Hexogen (known as R.D.X. in the U.S.) and TNT, into a rubber compound base, and can be exploded either electrically or by fuse. Terrorists prefer the plastic bomb for two reasons: it is so stable that it can be cut into strips and easily transported; at the site marked for the blast, it is adhesive enough to stick to almost any surface ? under a window ledge, on a mailbox, or around a fence or lamppost...