Word: penicillin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fixed and mystical belief that if one antibiotic is good, two must be better, and three even more efficacious." Not so, the Wehrle team found. In a twelve-month study at Los Angeles County General Hospital, every meningitis patient got intravenous ampicillin, a fast-acting form of penicillin, while alternate patients received, in addition, chloramphenicol and streptomycin. There were five deaths among 129 patients on ampicillin alone, but 13 among the 111 who got all three drugs. Using an antibiotic combination is evidently detrimental, perhaps because it interferes with the action of ampicillin...
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but accident is the midwife. Take penicillin. Nobody could, if Alexander Fleming's staphylococcus culture hadn't spoiled. Crepes suzette would be only soggy pancakes if Chef Henri Charpentier's sauce had not caught fire. The X ray, vulcanized rubber, LSD-even America, for that matter-were all discovered by accident, and people might still be wondering why their feet are attached to the ground if an apple had not conked Isaac Newton on the head...
...Although, says Beecher, "it is known that rheumatic fever can usually be prevented" by giving penicillin to treat the recurrent "strep throats" that can cause rheumatic fever and heart disease, 109 sick U.S. servicemen were denied penicillin; two developed acute rheumatic fever, and one acute nephritis. In a related study, 500 U.S. servicemen were denied penicillin and given either sulfadiazine or no drug at all in order to compare the effects. The comparison, Beecher suggests, was distressingly clear: at least 25 of the 500 developed rheumatic fever, and one medical officer put the number as high...
...aware," says Dr. Beecher, a crusading professor of research in anesthesia, "that these are troubling charges. They have grown out of troubling practices." Other medical investigators, while agreeing with his basic tenets, are equally troubled by the way he used his data. The servicemen who did not get penicillin for strep throats, for example, were at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. When Western Reserve University's Dr. Charles H. Rammelkamp Jr. began studying them in early 1949, no one knew whether penicillin was indeed the indispensable or even the best treatment. Rammelkamp had to continue...
...Penicillin Deaths. After going through the catalogue of drugs that cause severe or fatal breakdowns in the blood-forming mechanism, Dr. Moser reminded his audience that one of the worst drug offenders of all remains one of the most valuable lifesavers available: penicillin. It is known to set off an infinite variety of allergic or "serum sickness" reactions, and causes up to 300 U.S. deaths a year. Even the mildest of drug-induced difficulties, he added, should not be minimized, for the side effects are not limited to one generation. If a woman has certain radiopaque dyes injected for gall...