Progress on the road to new nerve agent treatments.

In the 50 years since nerve agents were developed a great deal has been learned about their acute toxicity, treatment and prophylactic strategies. However, the currently fielded treatments are not significantly different from those available at the end of World War II. Reasons for this lack of progress and strategies to circumvent those intrinsic problems that have impeded progress are discussed, with emphasis on the development of scavengers to be introduced as prophylactics that will significantly reduce the effective dose and thus protect against multiple times the normal LD50. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.