Medicine: Relief Without Addition?

The trouble with painkilling drugs is that the more effectively they do their job, the more likely they are to cause addiction. Morphine is the outstanding example, and medical chemists have been trying since the turn of the century to produce an equally potent but nonaddicting painkiller. Time and again they have been disappointed, but last week their hopes rose once more. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was ready to approve release of a new analgesic that New York's Winthrop Laboratories say is "in the morphine range of potency" but is nonnarcotic—and, they hope, nonaddicting.

Developed by two Winthrop chemists, Dr. Sydney Archer and Dr. Noel Albertson, the drug has the chemical name pentazocine and is trade-named Talwin. In six years, it has been tested on 12,000 patients and has relieved severe pain associated with surgery, injuries, cancer, childbirth, bone diseases arthritis and dental conditions. The pa- tients obtained about as much relief a they would have from morphine, but did not require increasing doses. Th side effects, such as nausea and dizziness, were usually mild. Government agencies are not yet willing to say flatly that pentazocine is nonaddicting, but they say it does not "support addiction" and need not be put under narcotic controls.

Distribution of pentazocine is expected to begin in about a month. At first it will be available only for injection but Winthrop expects to apply later this year for approval of an oral, tablet form.