Experimental Chemotherapy

the heart of all pharmacological inquiry and the hope of chemotherapy. According to Lasagna, although drug effects are generally viewed as an inevitable sequence of phenomena induced by a stimulus, i.e., by an active chemical, pharmacological variables such as route and dose are insufficiently specified and the problems of the personality, attitudes of subjects and experimenters, or the characteristics of the experimental setting are almost invariably ignored. When animal and human behavior is studied as the effect of a drug, a number of "non-pharmacologic" variables arise. It carn be recalled that the psychology of individual differences arose from problems of variability of measurement in astronomy attributable to the "personal equation." Similarly in psychopharmacology (as in clinical pharmacology) non-drug, "non-specific" factors are found to "interfere" with accurate evaluation of the efficacy of drugs. While this is a practical impetus to a consideration of non-specific factors in drug action and historically an accurate description of the motivation which launched researches into the placebo response, the real underlying challenge of psychopharmacology is an appreciation of the various levels of analysis required in pursuit of the basic question of the organization of behavior from the biochemical through the experiential and symbolic. The notion that a given stimulus is an inviolate or unanalyzable constant, or that the conditions the experimenter holds constant therefore have no effect on behavior is attacked by Lasagna, Beecher and Kluver. Knight reports on the problem of variability of the base line and scores the use of tests which themselves have low reliability. Students of psychotomimetic drugs will find relevant the discussion by Malitz and Beecher. That personality need not be a non-specific factor but can be systematically studied is approached by DiMascio while Kornetsky presents evidence that the degree of response from animals to one drug is correlated with the response of the same animals to other drugs. Himwich contributes an extensive review of drugs which affect brain amines. By providing a moderately comprehensive bibliography he partially reverses a trend of cross-quoting the work of only a single laboratory which has eventuated in a lamentable cross-sterilization in this area. A clear exposition of the specificity of drug action at the biochemical level is not to be found in this volume and this represents an inherent danger in the study of non-specific factors: i.e., that even when behavior rather than chemical or organ change is the effect measured, the specific actions of a drug (its stereotypical patterns) at various levels of analysis may not be investigated. For the involved student and scientist the brevity as well as the subject matter of this volume should recommend a brief perusal and more prolonged reflection. DANIEL X. FREEDMAN