Medicine: Drug for Drunks

The discovery was an accident. Copenhagen's Dr. Erik Jacobsen, 45, likes to try out new drugs on himself before giving them to his patients. One night before going to a dinner party he swallowed a couple of pills made of tetraethyl-thiuram-disulfide; they were supposed to be good for intestinal worms. To his surprise, Dr. Jacobsen found that any form of alcohol revolted him. When he sipped even a small glass of beer, his face got red, his heart started to pound and he had trouble getting his breath.

The drug looked like a good bet for alcoholics. Other anti-worm medicines (e.g., the common cleaning fluid carbon tetrachloride) are sometimes fatally poisonous when mixed with alcohol. During the past year, two of Dr. Jacobsen's associates have treated 500 alcoholics with the drug; they called it "antabus" (from anti-abuse). By last week 450 of the patients still had a loathing for alcohol after only one dose of antabus.