Fears Allayed

When it was first tested, the newest TB "wonder" drug, isoniazid (TIME, March 3, 1952), seemed just what the doctor ordered. But cautious physicians withheld their verdict; too many promising drugs had already turned into disappointing failures. As reports on isoniazid piled up, doctors began to suspect trouble. They observed that some strains of tubercle bacilli quickly learned to live with the drug, and they worried lest the new bacilli lead to varieties of TB that might be harder than ever to cure.

In Colorado last week, Dr. Gardner Middlebrook of Denver's National Jewish Hospital confirmed the doctors' suspicions, but calmed their fears. Isoniazid-resistant bacilli did indeed develop, said Dr. Middlebrook, but in tests with lab animals, the new bacilli proved to have lost the old virulence. And they seemed to have lost the ability to grow and reproduce in healthy tissue. Dr. Middlebrook is pretty sure that isoniazid "will not solve all the problems of tuberculosis." But he is ready to call it "the most remarkable chemotherapeutic agent yet discovered for an infectious disease of man."

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