Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

their confidence. Certainly the medical practitioner would feel more
confidence in a new drug brought to his notice if all the possible
sources of danger were carefully indicated.’ (Willcox, 1928).
1930 Isolation of digoxin from Digitalis lanata (Smith, 1930).
In the Lubeck Municipal Hospital 249 infants were given oral doses
of BCG 167 between late February and Mid-April 1930. By June 67
infants had died and 80 were critically ill. Eventually approximately 75
died. The BCG had been contaminated with tuberculosis bacilli.
1931 Sir William Willcox gave a warning as to the control of drugs:
‘The great variety of drugs in common use which might act as liver
poisons and produce dangerous toxic jaundice showed how
necessary it was that, before they were placed on the market, these
drugs should be submitted to careful toxicological and therapeutic
tests on the human subject as well as on animals. The medical
profession should be fully informed, not only of the therapeutic
properties of new drugs, but also of the dangers which might arise
from idiosyncrasy or overdosage. At present doctors were
insufficiently informed of the dangers resulting from the new drugs
introduced into the country in increasing amount. The present
system of scheduling poisons was quite inadequate to keep pace
with the rapid developments of the chemical manufacturing
industries, which were daily launching new and imperfectly tried
complex organic drugs on the market...The system of control and
sale of drugs possessing powerful toxic properties was most
imperfect and unsatisfactory, exposing the people of this country to
great danger from the taking of new drugs advertised as possessing
wonderful curative properties, without any mention of their toxic
effects.’ (Willcox, 1931).
Notices appeared in ‘The Telegraph’ on the 31 st July:
‘The Medical Research Committee (UK) announce that they have
appointed a Therapeutic Trials Committee, as follows, to advise and
assist them in arranging for properly controlled trials of new products
that seem likely on experimental grounds to have value in the
treatment of diseases.’ They examined 59 drugs between 1931 and
1939. The instigators of the Committee were the Association of
British Chemical Manufacturers who had made representations to
the Medical Research Council for an official scheme for the clinical
testing of new remedies which in laboratory tests had given promise
167 BCG = Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine with efficacy of 70-80% against TB