Massengill's Chemist Defends Elixir
Massengill's chief chemist and the creator of Elixir Sulfanilamide, Harold Cole Watkins, maintained (and perhaps informed) the defense of the product, a defense that was gaining at least local steam in November 1937. Writing to the publication Drug Trade News, Watkins claimed that his company had performed its own animal experiments after news of the first elixir-related deaths [1]. "We gave forty times the human dose of the elixir to pigs and they liked it," he wrote to the journal, "They had not, of course, been taking other medicines with it."
In addition to suggesting that the deaths were somehow due to adverse drug-drug combinations, Watkins floated the idea that some of the casualties were actually caused by sulfanilamide itself and not diethylene glycol. Patients may have overdosed on the elixir, or the product was taken in combination with epsom salts or other sulfates, he proposed. Watkins went on to conclude that "[t]he solvent itself [diethylene glycol] had nothing to do with the deaths," despite very recent experimental evidence (performed at the University of Chicago), which indicated the contrary.
Watkins also boasted that he had taken the elixir himself, without consequence, after the first public warning from the AMA: "On Monday [probably October 18] I started taking the elixir, one ounce a day, in two doses, and am still here and writing to you, though I have taken four ounces in four days. Federal men and our men saw me take it." (According to Theodore G. Klumpp, the FDA's chief medical officer, Watkins claimed that he had taken a large swig of diethylene glycol, when Klumpp and inspector Ford first arrived at the company's headquarters in Bristol, Tennessee. Klumpp wrote later that he doubted Watkins's claim [2].)
Stunningly enough, Watkins also cited the study by Haag and Ambrose, "Studies on the physiological effect of diethylene glycol," which was published earlier that year in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics [3]. Although the solvent was determined by the authors to be less deadly than ethylene glycol in rats, they nevertheless observed the lethality of the substance, when given intramuscularly, intravenously, or orally to experimental animals.
Watkins further attempted to bolster whatever specious argument he was weaving by noting that the AMA reported no apparent chemical reaction between diethylene glycol and sulfanilamide in its recent distillation experiments of the company's elixir. This finding was raised by the chemist, despite the fact that the AMA found pure diethylene glycol and Massengill's product to be equally deadly in animals, and that pure sulfanilamide in proportional doses was not.
Last, Watkins noted that the use of diethylene glycol—which was "manufactured exclusively by the Carbon and Carbide Chemicals corporation"—in consumer products was not without precedent. The substance had been advertised as preventing throat irritation in a "widely known brand of cigarettes."*
* The use of diethylene glycol as a humectant in cigarettes was promoted by a number of manufacturers, including Philip Morris, in the 1930s and later. For a discussion of cigarette-related health claims in marketing, see Garner MN, Brandt AM. The physician in US cigarette advertisements, 1930-1953. Am J Public Health. 2006;96:222-232.
1. Details of deadliness of sulfanilamide revealed in comprehensive news story. The Amarillo Globe. November 17, 1937; p 7 cols 2-5.
2. Klumpp TG. FDA report on Massengill Co. October 18, 1937. Cited in Young JH. Sulfanilamide and diethylene glycol. In: Parascandola J, Whorton JC, eds. Chemistry and Modern Society: Historical Essays in Honor of Aaron J. Ihde. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society; 1983:105-125.
3. Haag HB, Ambrose AM. Studies on the physiological effect of diethylene glycol. J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 1937;59:93-100.
