The return of rainbow diet pills.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently warned consumers about the risks of weight loss supplements adulterated with multiple pharmaceutical agents. Some of these supplements combine potent anorectics, such as amphetamines derivatives, with benzodiazepines, beta-blockers, and other medications to suppress the anorectics' adverse effects. These weight loss supplements represent the most recent generation of rainbow diet pills, named for their bright and varied colors, which date back more than 70 years. Beginning in the 1940s, several US pharmaceutical firms aggressively promoted rainbow pills to physicians and patients. By the 1960s the pills had caused dozens of deaths before the FDA began removing them from the US market. We used a variety of original resources to trace these deadly pills from their origins in the United States to their popularity in Spain and Brazil to their reintroduction to the United States as weight loss dietary supplements.

The end of drugging children: toward the genealogy of the ADHD subject.

This genealogy of the ADHD subject will demonstrate that over the course of the twentieth century a new relation between power, knowledge, the body, and ethical practices of self-formation emerged around the ADHD-type in ways that are not captured by the received critical perspective. By examining the history of knowledge and practices surrounding the ADHD-type, this work will argue that the deviant subject that was located relative to external institutional moral/juridical values or standards is replaced over the course of the century by a new intelligibility of rational self-management. A further analysis of this emergent intelligibility attempts to advance the critical understanding of the increasingly prevalent ADHD phenomenon by showing how novel drug and brain imaging technologies work to link behaviors to identity, establishing new relations of power to the subject not captured by the received medicalization perspective. This work will be of interest to anybody interested in the relations among knowledge, drugs, power, and the ADHD subject.

The DARK Side of Total Synthesis: Strategies and Tactics in Psychoactive Drug Production.

Humankind has used and abused psychoactive drugs for millennia. Formally, a psychoactive drug is any agent that alters cognition and mood. The term "psychotropic drug" is neutral and describes the entire class of substrates, licit and illicit, of interest to governmental drug policy. While these drugs are prescribed for issues ranging from pain management to anxiety, they are also used recreationally. In fact, the current opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history. While the topic is highly politicized with racial, gender, and socioeconomic elements, there is no denying the toll drug mis- and overuse is taking on this country. Overdose, fueled by opioids, is the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years of age, killing ca. 64,000 people in 2016. From a chemistry standpoint, the question is in what ways, if any, did organic chemists contribute to this problem? In this targeted review, we provide brief historical accounts of the main classes of psychoactive drugs and discuss several foundational total syntheses that ultimately provide the groundwork for producing these molecules in academic, industrial, and clandestine settings.

History full circle: 'Novel' sympathomimetics in supplements.

Since the banning of ephedrine in over-the-counter nutritional supplements a decade ago, a plethora of untested and/or unsafe sympathomimetic stimulants have taken its place. This paper argues that these 'novel' stimulants in supplements recapitulate the work of synthetic chemists at commercial pharmaceutical firms during the 1930s and 1940s, all seeking substitutes for recently successful products based on ephedrine and amphetamine. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Amphetamine-Type Stimulants: The Early History of Their Medical and Non-Medical Uses.

Amphetamine was discovered as a drug in the late 1920s, and its pharmacological effects on attention and cognition, emotions, and appetite were explored thoroughly in the 1930s and 1940s. By the late 1940s, it had achieved medical and market success as an antidepressant and was quickly gaining such success as a diet medication. In contrast, both careful testing and extensive military experience had left the impression that the drugs' benefits for attention and cognition were more subjective than real and that any objective benefits were explained mainly by the drug's mood-elevating effects. Because of its unpatentable status, methamphetamine had been introduced for all the same uses by drug firms competing with the holder of the amphetamine patent. The drugs were being widely used nonmedically and their abuse potential was becoming recognized by medicine, eventually leading to their strict control internationally around 1970.

Sons and daughters beyond your control: episodes in the prehistory of the attention deficit/hyperactivity syndrome.

Hyperactive and inattentive children have been discussed in both the pedagogic and medical literature since the nineteenth century, and many controversies associated with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been repeatedly analyzed in different contexts. The 'prehistory' of the ADHD concept-that is, up to the definition of ADHD in DSM-III and of the corresponding 'hyperkinetic disorder' in ICD-9-is outlined, with an emphasis on the literature not previously discussed in English language reviews of the subject.

Antecedents of ADHD: a historical account of diagnostic concepts.

The concept of ADHD has evolved gradually and still carries some traces of its origins. The idea of uncontrolled behaviour as a medical problem arose in eighteenth and nineteenth century accounts. It raised cultural issues about how far control was expected of children. This article traces the development of ideas with particular references to Hoffman's "Struwwelpeter", Frederick Still's "Disorders of Moral Control", minimal brain damage, and the hyperkinetic syndrome.

Rediscovering MDMA (ecstasy): the role of the American chemist Alexander T. Shulgin.

AIMS: Alexander T. Shulgin is widely thought of as the 'father' of +/-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). This paper re-assesses his role in the modern history of this drug. METHODS: We analysed systematically Shulgin's original publications on MDMA, his publications on the history of MDMA and his laboratory notebook. RESULTS: According to Shulgin's book PIHKAL (1991), he synthesized MDMA in 1965, but did not try it. In the 1960s Shulgin also synthesized MDMA-related compounds such as 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3-methoxy-4,5-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MMDA) and 3,4-methylenedioxyethylamphetamine (MDE), but this had no impact on his rediscovery of MDMA. In the mid-1970s Shulgin learned of a 'special effect' caused by MDMA, whereupon he re-synthesized it and tried it himself in September 1976, as confirmed by his laboratory notebook. In 1977 he gave MDMA to Leo Zeff PhD, who used it as an adjunct to psychotherapy and introduced it to other psychotherapists. CONCLUSION: Shulgin was not the first to synthesize MDMA, but he played an important role in its history. It seems plausible that he was so impressed by its effects that he introduced it to psychotherapist Zeff in 1977. This, and the fact that in 1978 he published with David Nichols the first paper on the pharmacological action of MDMA in humans, explains why Shulgin is sometimes (erroneously) called the 'father' of MDMA.

Stimulating a normal adjustment: misbehavior, amphetamines, and the electroencephalogram at the Bradley Home for children.

This article uses an historical case study to describe the influence of social and contextual factors on the adoption of somatic approaches to children's misbehavior. The child guidance movement and the emergence of medicalized residential treatment facilities for children influenced the theoretical orientations of physicians treating children's behavior disorders in the United States in the 1930s. Charles Bradley and his colleagues at the Bradley Home in Rhode Island defined behavior disorders in social terms but investigated and treated misbehavior with somatic tools. The use of amphetamines and the electroencephalogram reorganized concepts of maladjustment along neurological lines, even as the research relied on the Home's social priorities. Electroencephalographic investigations especially shaped an organic concept of misbehavior. Ultimately, the somatic orientation obscured the central role of local context in Bradley Home physicians' research.