Comment on “Photochemical Activities of N‐Nitroso Carboxamides and Sulfoximides and Their Application to DNA Cleavage”

This Correspondence reports on a structural and mechanistic misinterpretation of an observed EPR spectrum, a misleading presentation of DNA cleavage data, and the physicochemically unsupported assignment of nitric oxide as a major DNA cleaving agent in the article cited in the title. No, not NO! Based on the spectroscopic and mechanistic reassignment of the EPR spectrum of a nitroxide radical and a reinterpretation of DNA cleavage data presented in the title paper, it is reasoned that intercalated amidyl radicals and/or higher nitrogen oxides, but not NO radicals, were responsible for site‐selective single‐strand scission of DNA.