Annual Review of Pharmacology

The Annual Review of Pharmacology for 1967 contains some 20 reviews, including a review of reviews by Dr. Chauncey D. Leake. As might be expected from this type of review book, the quality and substance of the individual reviews varies considerably. Most delightful reading is the introductory biography by Dr. C. Heymans of the University of Ghent, Belgium. Dr. Heymans not only recounts his own experiences and career, but also traces very nicely the origins of pharmacology as a science. He points out why pharmacology departments will probably remain with medical schools: "Let us never forget that pharmacology is above all a biological and medical science." There seems to be little doubt now of the value of annual reviews. They are here to stay and obviously serve a very useful function in allowing scientists to survey a large portion of the current literature. A good review is current and critical as well, and yet not too diffuse in scope. Examples of what this reviewer believes to fulfill this criteria are the reviews by Bush and Sanders (Metabolic Fate of Drugs: Barbiturates and Closely Related Compounds), Heidelberger (Cancer Chemotherapy with Purine and Pyrimidine Analogues), West and Toda (Cardiovascular Pharmacology), Ferry (The Autonomic Nervous System), Eranko (Histochemistry of Nervous Tissues: Catecholamines and Cholinesterases), and Scoental (Aflatoxins). Several reviews are devoted to "timely" subjects, such as the one on Psychotonimetic Agents by S. Cohen, but little new or critical is presented. Subjects like the "Biochemical Mechanisms of Drug Action" are also best left not reviewed, since the subject is too broad to be covered in any meaningful fashion, although Porter and Stone do a creditable job. The final paper, "Review of Reviews" by Leake, is of interest in that he joins several other distinguished pharmacologists (Walter Modell, for example) in criticizing the FDA for imposing "unwise bureaucratic restrictions" on scientific endeavors of pharmacologists. He also brings up another important question that has been debated recently-whether or not "double blind" studies or other statistical ways of estimating the value of new drugs is ethical since in a sense patients are not treated as individuals. These and other moral problems such as organ transplantation are important ones and certainly are topics for further thinking and debate by all pharmacologists.