A4.

20S

Student

Activity 4.20 Testing a new drug

Purpose
To compare William Witherings approach to drug development with methods used by drug
companies today.
Digitalis
Digitalis is a natural toxin found in foxgloves. Although digitalis can be fatal in even quite small
doses it was used for centuries in herbal remedies to treat some heart conditions. The man
responsible for bringing the use of digitalis into conventional medicine in the 1700s was William
Withering.
Read through sections in the textbook titled Digitalis and drug development (page 185)
and Drug testing today (page 186) before attempting the questions.
Q1

Make two flow charts: one outlining the

stages that William Withering went through
when he was working on digitalis, and a
second showing the steps involved in
developing a new drug today. Try to use
the same layout to make comparisons
easier.

Q2

Compare the two flow charts. What

similarities and differences do you notice?

Q3

In what way is the current system of drug

testing safer and more reliable?

Q4

What do we gain nowadays from testing

the drug on healthy volunteers first?

Q5

Why is it important to:

a randomly assign patients to the
treatments
b have a double blind trial?
(Assume the researchers are well
meaning and honest!)

Q6 Many people in the UK use alternative

therapies such as aromatherapy, homeopathy,
and reflexology.
Only a few of these have been subjected to clinical
trials, and in many cases where trials have been run
the results have been ambiguous. However, some
rigorous acupuncture trials have produced very
positive findings.
Read the brief descriptions of a few alternative
therapies below. (You can find out more details in the
New Scientist 26th May 2001 edition; it has several
articles in a special section on this subject and is
accessible on the New Scientist Archive website.
See the weblinks for this activity for more details.)
Choose one alternative therapy and design a trial to
test its efficacy (effectiveness). Remember that the
placebo effect, where the patients belief in the
procedure affects the outcome, is thought to be
particularly strong in this area, so you will need to
design your placebo with care.

In acupuncture, very fine needles are stuck into the patient at special sites. Skill is needed to
make sure the needles are accurately sited. The needles are said to influence the flow of energy
in the patient and vibrations of the needles can change the effects.
Aromatherapy is the use of volatile plant oils for physical and psychological wellbeing. In
aromatherapy, patients are treated with essential oils from plants. These may be inhaled, or
diluted in other oils and massaged onto the skin. Different essential oils are used to treat different
conditions. For example, rosemary can be used for muscle pains and dandruff, while lavender
can be used for acne, asthma and hypertension.
Reflexology is based on the idea that specific areas of a persons feet influence parts of the rest
of the body. The feet are massaged, concentrating on the areas which are thought to affect the
afflicted part.
In homeopathy, the patient uses minute quantities of substances which would, if given in much
larger amounts, produce similar effects to the patients symptoms. (For example, red onions may
be used to treat watery eyes.) The substances are diluted to extremely low concentrations. It is
believed that the more they are diluted the more effective they are.
Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology, Pearson Education Ltd 2008. University of York Science Education Group.
This sheet may have been altered from the original.

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