Drugs: Painkiller

Drug researchers have long searched for a painkiller as effective as morphine, without morphine’s potent addictive powers. Over the years, two dozen or more painkilling drugs have been touted as meeting these requirements. But on careful clinical evaluation, their analgesic effects always seemed to diminish steadily along with their reduced addictive tendencies.

Last week the American Chemical Society whipped up the familiar enthusiasm for pentazocine, a drug developed by Sterling-Winthrop Research Institute. Synthesized from coal tar, pentazocine has been tested at Baylor University School of Medicine in Houston. “With this drug,” says Baylor’s Dr. Arthur S. Keats, “the fear of addiction in chronic pain will be eliminated.” But because further tests are needed, not until December will the Food and Drug Administration be asked to approve pentazocine for general prescription use. And it will take much longer to show whether it is really better than many disappointing predecessors.