In its crudest form, quinine, it has been used for 400 years and...

In its crudest form, quinine, it has been used for 400 years and is quoted as being the first chemical drug to fight infectious disease. To call it "new, untested and dangerous" sounds hyperbolic.

Quinine, drug obtained from cinchona bark that is used chiefly in the treatment of malaria, an infection caused by the protozoan parasite Plasmodium, which is transmitted to humans by the bite of various species of mosquitoes. During the 300 years between its introduction into Western medicine and World War I, quinine was the only effective remedy for malaria; as a specific treatment for this disease, quinine benefited a great many people. The treatment of malaria with quinine marked the first successful use of a chemical compound in combating an infectious disease. Quinine was first synthesized in a laboratory in 1944; however, synthesis of the drug on a commercial scale is not economically feasible.