Cortisone Shortage

An assistant cashier in a New Jersey bank, arrested last January for embezzling $9,000 from his till, had a shocking story to tell. He was a sober, hard-working family man, a devoted husband, father of six children. He told authorities he had taken the money to buy cortisone for his wife, who had suffered for years from crippling arthritis. The drug had made a new woman of her. While the dosage continued, she was free of pain, able to leave her bed and care for her children. But the cost was great--close to $8 a day.

The cashier's indictment for theft was not pressed. Last week he had a new job (washing cars in a Newark garage), but his wife was back in bed again. There was virtually no cortisone to be found, at any price, for her treatment.

Throughout the nation there were other arthritis sufferers in the same fix as the cashier's wife. Since the hormone was first placed on the market about four months ago, many have come to depend on it as the best source of relief for their agonies. Its virtue for the arthritic lies in continued doses, yet drugstores are stacking up piles of prescriptions for cortisone in their files and giving the customer vague promises. A Long Island druggist nostalgically recalls filling an order of 20 vials of cortisone two months ago with no trouble. Now he has none to give customers, who frantically offer "to pay anything." Some unscrupulous dealers are reported ready to sell what supplies they have at double the recommended price.

From the panic that accompanied the sudden shortage a tide of rumors sprang up: cortisone was being hoarded by the Government, being shipped to Russia, being bought up by gamblers to dope race horses, being bootlegged in a nationwide black market. In New York, the department of health began an investigation. The truth about cortisone is apparently less dramatic than the rumors.

Last week Merck & Co., principal manufacturers of cortisone, took full-page ads in the New York Times, Herald Tribune and other metropolitan newspapers to explain: "The shortage is actually caused by a problem more fundamental than black-marketing. This problem is one of supply. Merck is producing enough Cortone [their trade name for the drug] to care for tens of thousands of patients, but the demand for cortisone involves hundreds of thousands. This demand cannot be satisfied by present methods of manufacture The present starting material is cattle bile an organic substance limited in supply. Before cortisone can be made in sufficient quantities, a new, more plentiful starting material will have to be found."

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