Chemical Mutagenesis and Drugs of Abuse in Man—A Current View of the Problem

Abstract

From 1958 through 1962 evidence accumulated that the drug thalidomide, when taken by pregnant women between the 34th and 50th day after the first day of the last menstrual period, resulted in ear and limb deformities to the fetus. The drug, given by prescription throughout Europe, acted in such specific fashion that the observed types of malformations could be correlated with the time of drug ingestion (Lenz, 1971). The teratogenic action of this presumably mild tranquilizer on the fetus not only alarmed the general population but most forcefully alerted the medical community to the possible harmful potential of other chemical agents on man. Concern was voiced in many quarters about the need to evaluate other drugs and chemicals with regard to their possible interference with fertility, production of malformations in the offspring, or carcinogenesis in the individual himself. Just a few years later, in 1967, the phenomenon of chemical mutagenesis as it extended to the chromosome level was dramatically brought to the attention of an already alerted public. In that year chromosome aberrations were reported from in vivo and in vitro cultures of human leukocyte chromosomes in which the drug under evaluation was lysergic acid diethylamide (Cohen, Marinello, and Back, 1967; Irwin and Egozcue, 1967).