US Co-Inventor of Nicotine Patch Dies

Source from:  Sat May 10, news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON (AFP) 05/12/2008

A pioneer in the fight against tobacco and the co-inventor of the nicotine patch, Murray Jarvik, died this week of congestive heart failure, the University of California said Saturday. He was 84. Jarvik, a professor emeritus at University of California-Los Angeles, was a leader in the field of psychopharmacology, the study of the effect of drugs on human behavior. Born in New York in 1923, he was among the first to examine the effects of LSD on memory and addiction. Later in his career, he turned his attention to tobacco and was "instrumental in establishing the field of nicotine research," UCLA said. "Murray was always asking, 'Why do people smoke?'" said Richard Olmstead, a UCLA associate researcher in psychiatry. "I would say that Murray's greatest impact was advancing the proposition that nicotine was the key addictive component in tobacco. In short, he was able to largely answer his question." Jarvik and colleague Jed Rose got the idea for the nicotine patch by studying "green tobacco sickness," an illness that afflicted tobacco harvesters. They learned that the workers were falling ill because nicotine was being absorbed through their skin. This discovery led to the idea for the nicotine patch, which by delivering smaller but constant doses of nicotine could enable smokers to give up cigarettes. When the pair were unable to get approval to test the idea on human subjects, they tried it on themselves. "We put the tobacco on our skin and waited to see what would happen," Jarvik recalled in an issue of UCLA magazine. "Our heart rates increased, adrenaline began pumping, all the things that happen to smokers." The patch was made available by prescription in 1992 and sold over-the-counter in 1996. Jarvik, who died Thursday, is survived by his wife, Lissey, to whom he was married for 53 years, and their two sons and three grandchildren. Enditem