The Killer Drug

It started out as just another patent medicine. During a trip to Madagascar, Paris Pharmacist Georges Feuillet, who was already turning out 15 patent drugs, developed furunculosis (boils), and began experimenting with a new remedy. He used a combination of vitamin F* and an organic tin compound containing iodine (called di-iodo-diethyl of tin), which he imagined had a healing effect on skin. Feuillet took some of his capsules, then sent them to a friend, the head of a military hospital, who tried them out on his patients and found them "successful." Soon the Ministry of Health cleared them for sale without prescription.

Ready for business. Pharmacist Feuillet handed his formula to a pharmaceutical firm for production. He called the drug Stalinon (for some of the ingredients, not for Joe), let it be known that the concoction, to be taken orally, was deadly to staphylococcus infections, mortal to boils and sties, extremely unfriendly to acne. In January 1954 thousands of boxes of Stalinon went to drugstores all over France and French North Africa.

Ready Treatment. Soon strange reports began reaching health authorities. In the Algerian village of Saint-Cyprien-des-Attafs, a French mother tried to cure one child of boils and prevent three others from getting them by giving the kids Stalinon. Within days, the four children, aged seven to 14, were dead. Here and there around France people suddenly and mysteriously dropped dead.

In Niort, a sleepy town in west central France, Dr. Alain de Lignieres took a hard look at the phenomenon. The disease began with agonizing headaches and repeated vomiting. It continued with failing vision, bellyache, urinary difficulties, ended with excruciating pain, fits of delirium, blindness, hallucinations, usually death. De Lignieres noted that three of his patients had died in this fashion after taking Stalinon, immediately phoned his suspicions to health authorities in Paris. Emergency orders went out to 14,000 pharmacies to stop sale of the drug.

By then, the brown capsules had killed 102 Frenchmen, blinded and crippled 150 others.

Deadly Testimony. In a somber Paris courtroom last month, the "Association of Stalinon Victims"--crippled survivors and relatives of the dead--faced pale, pudgy Pharmacist Feuillet, who was on trial for involuntary homicide. Also at issue in the trial: $5,000,000 in claims for damages. On the witness stand, a leading French toxicologist explained that Stalinon's death agent was the organic tin compound, which is well known to be chemically unstable and poisonous. Said the witness: "The tin deposits traveled to the brain and caused edema. The expanding brain tissue pressed against the skull and caused unimaginable pain. When trephination was performed, the brain literally mushroomed out of the head."

The original capsules, tested at the military hospital and by the Ministry, were dangerous enough, but the mass-produced capsules contained about three times as much tin compound as the experimental ones. They were made with such primitive methods (pressed in a century-old gadget that looked like a wafer machine) that no two capsules had the same dosage of tin salt and "vitamin F." When the tin began oxidizing, further increasing its poisonous effect, the manufacturers merely noted that the ingredients became darker, and added artificial coloring to the gelatin coating. The ironic climax of the toxicologist's testimony: a slide demonstrating how staphylococci, which can be destroyed by antibiotics, actually proliferated and prospered when treated with Stalinon.

Following horrifying news reports of the trial, many Frenchmen hoped that the case would lead to a clean sweep of France's antiquated pharmaceutical laws. On trial was not only Pharmacist Feuillet but in effect the French Ministry of Health, which had tested Stalinon and allowed it to be marketed. One official coolly explained to the court: "We have only about two minutes on the average to examine each new product submitted." He claimed that "nothing was wrong" with the way Stalinon was approved and that "the same thing would happen again, and we would again issue the permit."

As prosecution and defense wound up their case, Feuillet's icy calm cracked in a flood of tears. Last week he was found guilty of "gross neglect" and "unscrupulous" behavior, sentenced to the maximum penalty under French law: two years in prison and a million francs ($2,500) fine. To the Stalinon victims and their families, the court awarded $1,533,000 in damages, but they were not likely to collect: both Feuillet and the owner of the pharmaceutical firm that manufactured Stalinon deny that they have the money to pay.

* No longer considered a chemical entity in the U.S.

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