Abel Pharmboy is the nom de plume of a US state university educator and cancer researcher who holds a PhD in Pharmacology and Therapeutics and BS in Toxicology. He writes on natural product drugs and dietary supplements, issues of under-represented groups in the STEMM disciplines, science and medical journalism, the science and culture of North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado, making and listening to music and, with the help of his colleague, Erleichda, wine appreciation.
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I'm always pleasantly surprised when a topic generates enthusiastic reader feedback, particularly when comments come from long-time readers who share experiences I never knew they had or, in some cases, comment for the first time.
The topic this time was a simple reflection on my current bout of pneumonia and my being taken aback by how debilitating it has been mentally. It's taken me two days just put put together these few sentences of what will essentially be a referral post.
A very thoughtful commenter posed a question to me about what does it mean to be "really sick." What is long-term impairment? When are you "too sick" and "healthy enough?" When does chronic illness stop being debilitating and how do you get others to understand that sometimes you may look healthy outwardly but are still suffering inwardly.
So, while I was reading up on these topics I turned to the excellent new blog, The Daily Monthly, by Dave Munger, formerly the co-author of the psychology blog, The Cognitive Daily. Dave's new blog is an exciting new project whereby he will select a topic each month that he will explore in depth and breadth daily. For February 2010, Dave has tackled AIDS in America, launching with the story of his friend Charles, an old high school friend and best man at his wedding who is today living with AIDS.
I mention this story not only to draw your attention to Dave Munger's exciting new project but also because yesterday's post touched on some of the topics we've discussed here about chronic illness. The final three paragraphs of the post speak of "looking sick" vs. "being sick" and make me think more about the struggles that the chronically ill face in proving to employers and HR departments that they are actually disabled or otherwise unable to do their jobs:
It's one of the paradoxes of HIV/AIDS. If you do a good job fighting it, you end up looking like someone who's not very sick. Even Charles, who hasn't been healthy enough to work a 40-hour week for years, still gets strange looks from bus drivers when he flashes his "disabled" bus pass.
I'll be back with some of the discussions you started here but I strongly encourage you to go over and bookmark Dave Munger's, The Daily Monthly. For this month, begin here with Dave's introduction to Charles.
I have just a couple of thoughts today that I offer to the reader not for sympathy but, rather, for scientific observation and reflection.
I've been dealing with a case of bronchitis that became pneumonia. I tried to teach through it, do grant reviews, finish a book chapter, etc. but was finally ordered by my pulmonologist to recuperative bedrest at home for approximately four weeks.
When told I'd be confined to bed for a month, I thought that it would be great - that I'd get two papers and a grant renewal done and still have plenty of time for blog posts I've been wanting to get to, finish writing a couple of songs to take to the studio, get all the tax documents together, maybe learn a little CSS and webpage design and get around to a hosted personal website for the domain I've had for a year, etc.
After 10 days now, I've really done nothing more than read for short periods and sleep for long periods, with energy only for one blog post, a paragraph or two on a paper, and arranging for my classes to be taught. Twitter works, though, as 140 characters is about the limit. To be really sick - to the point of not being able to concentrate for more than 10 min - is a foreign concept. And I'm not actually *really* sick like other folks with chronic illnesses, cancer, etc.
To be unable to make your body do what you want it to is frustrating enough, especially when your little girl wants to go play in an infrequent snowfall of significance.
But I find it remarkable that an illness having nothing to do with the CNS can wreak such havoc on cognition, concentration, and motivation.
Some people might think, "wow, you've had 10 days to do *anything* you want," but it blows me away that 10 days have passed and I've done jack shit.
So today, my heart goes out to all of those who suffer with chronic illnesses every day. You have my admiration and respect.
Please forgive me for the cranky. I am still confined to bed and am only writing between fits of coughing that still occasionally drive me near unconsciousness due to hypoxia. I'm stuck at home trying to read some research literature across the VPN and proxy servers from my three faculty appointments that give me access to much biomedical research literature.
However, some journals are now no longer granting access if one's IP address does not come directly from the university, even if you are using the university VPN server. And then there's my love-hate relationship with Nature Publishing. I absolutely loved when Nature expanded to Nature Medicine and the Nature Reviews journals have been spectacular, particularly Nature Reviews Drug Discovery and Nature Reviews Cancer. But as each of these came out, it was costing another $199-265/year or so for each of these sources. Still, the content was worth it.
But today, I am cranky. Not because of lack of access to research publications but rather because I have been shut out to a book review and a news review by two of my favorite science writers, Steve Silberman and Melinda Wenner Moyer, respectively. One of these episodes on any other day and I'd probably be fine. But two? On the same day?
Steve just wrote for Nature a review of Rebecca Skloot's new book while Melinda apparently has a killer article in Nature Medicine on the search for drugs beyond statins to manage cardiovascular disease.
But to gain access to these, I need to pay $32. Each.
A few weeks ago, we discussed (1, 2) some of the drugs confiscated by authorities who searched the Sedona resort room occupied by self-help guru, James Ray, following the October 2009 deaths of three followers who paid nearly $10,000 each for his Spiritual Warrior retreat program.
Late this afternoon, Ray was arrested - the best news and supporting information continues to come from The Prescott (AZ) News, with a sidebar to the lower right of the story that links to their extensive timeline of coverage:
The Yavapai County Grand Jury returned a "true bill" on 3 counts of Manslaughter against Ray early this afternoon. The Yavapai County Superior Court issued a warrant for James Ray as a result of the indictment.
The warrant was served by YCSO detectives at Ray's attorney's office in Prescott and he was arrested around 3:30 P.M.
Sheriff Waugh would like to thank the victim's families for their patience while the Sheriff's Office completed a thorough and comprehensive investigation. The County Attorney's Office also provided assistance to YCSO detectives as they conducted hundreds of interviews and gathered evidence to support today's indictment. With the arrest of James Ray, Sheriff Waugh hopes the families of the three victims will now have some measure of closure to this tragedy.
Ray was transported to the Sheriff's Prescott Office to begin booking procedures. He will eventually be transferred to the Camp Verde Detention Center for final processing.
Ray's bond has been set at 5 million dollars.
Indeed, it is the families of the victims that deserve justice and some sense of closure.
If nothing else comes out of the tragic deaths of these three people, perhaps self-styled gurus will be on notice that their pocket-lining antics will fall under greater scrutiny and accountability.
With all the technopop, hip-hop, sampling, and all kind of nonsense in music today, it's always refreshing to see an incredible songwriter kick total and complete ass with just a glorified wooden box, some steel strings, and her/his own voice.
This is Lake Claire/Atlanta-based singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins singing perhaps his biggest hit, "Lullaby (Rock-A-Bye)" in the studio of WRVR in Memphis back in 2006. This is a killer version enhanced further by his great taste in wearing a Colorado state flag T-shirt. Joining him is Clay Cook, another Atlanta musician who was instrumental, as it were, in the launch of John Mayer's career.
For the music readers here at Terra Sig, Shawn wrote this song in open-G tuning: GGDGBD. The chords themselves are quite easy to play and the resonance of the open strings makes this such a great progression but I can't for the life of me work out the syncopation - how he does the spoken word thing over that amazes me further.
Shawn is also active in the 12 Bands project to raise funds for pediatric cancer research and family support.
For our readers in the northeastern US, Shawn will be at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia this coming Wednesday the 27th and at City Winery in New York City on Thursday the 28th.
If you want more, here's a terrific version of "Shimmer" from the Durango Songwriters' Expo in Colorado Springs last fall. The first 2:30 is a funny story about his first visit to Australia.
Here's a great, last-minute opportunity to interact one-on-one with a major player in the field of environmental and dietary influences on gene expression. From the Duke University Office of News and Communications:
Charles Darwin famously reasoned that genetic traits change over many generations through natural selection, but the new field of “epigenetics” is finding that nurture can change nature more directly. Duke Professor Randy Jirtle will discuss epigenetics and answer viewers’ questions during a live “Office Hours” webcast interview at noon (17:00 GMT) Friday, Jan. 22, on Duke’s Ustream channel.
The science of epigenetics explores the molecular activity that influences the expression of genes. Jirtle emerged as a pioneer in the field with a 2003 study in which he showed how the genetic expression of a baby mouse’s fur color could be altered by changing its mother’s diet during pregnancy. Recent stories on epigenetics by NOVA, Time and the Washington Post have cited his research. Jirtle’s lab chronicles developments in the field on the Geneimprint website
I'm a bit under the weather today but I wanted to at least share with you an interesting career development consideration pointed out by the always-excellent medicinal chemist blogger, Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline.
Here's a topic that I was discussing with some colleagues not too long ago: how much do we need to know about each other's specialties, anyway? I'm assuming that the answer is "more than nothing", although if someone wants to make the zilch case, I'd be interested in hearing it done.
A nice comment thread has developed there. Lowe writes from the perspective of a chemist in a pharmaceutical company but I believe that his considerations extend to academic research as well, especially with the increased emphasis on interdisciplinary and translational research.
I consider myself fortunate to have been trained in pharmacology when "true" pharmacology departments were more abundant (i.e., not just a bunch of in vitro biochemists). Having to interact with chemists, stop-flow enzyme kineticists, physiologists using in vivo and organ bath systems, and physicians with research laboratories, I feel that I can be somewhat conversant on a variety of issues outside my immediate research area. Being able to explain the chemistry of glucuronidation sites or the clinical pharmacology relevance of high plasma protein drug binding are obvious extensions of what I should know. I've also learned to recognize when it may not be appropriate to ask a chemist colleague for more than a milligram or two of a new compound.
But knowledge beyond that, I think, is even more important for my research program and department. I tell students that you never know where you will end up working and a breadth of knowledge is important to develop even while pursuing the myopic drilldown of PhD dissertation research. Particularly if one ends up in a drug company, you will have to interact often with team members across the drug development pipeline and many go/no-go decisions will be made because of limitations outside your area, no matter how novel your pharmacological target may be. And yes, it is a problem in trying to make a drug out of a compound that only dissolves in DMSO.
So I'll throw open Derek's question to those of you in academia: How much chemistry do you expect biologists to know or how much biology should we expect chemists to know? Some of it is simple courtesy and helps develop mutual respect among research colleagues. But some of my colleagues think that the wider you can think, the more likely it is for your research program to make greater impact. (I can't find it right now but I recall Brown and Goldstein holding forth somewhere on how a strong basis in chemistry is essential for physician-scientists). There's no one right answer and I am certain there is no consensus, and I feel that the need for breadth will vary based on how far along one is in one's career.
But in your area, how much do you expect yourself and your trainees to know in areas afield?
This past weekend's international science communication conference, ScienceOnline2010, also saw the first, final hardback copies of Rebecca Skloot's long-awaited book make it into the hands of the science and journalism consuming public. Moreover, an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has just appeared in the new issue of Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine. And already, those online science communicators who left the conference with Skloot's book are registering their praise via this Twitter feed that was so active it was a trending topic at the science aggregator, SciencePond.
The story of the rural, Virginia woman who descended from slaves and developed cervical cancer in the early 1950s is notable most obviously for her tumors giving rise to HeLa, the first immortalized human cell line continuously maintained in culture. I have noted previously my enthusiasm for this story as both a long-time admirer of Skloot's writing and the fact that HeLa played a central role in my PhD thesis work and first papers from my independent laboratory.
But as a historically black college professor at a predominantly liberal arts school, I want to make clear that Skloot's book is of far broader appeal than just the scientific community. So I was delighted to see some page referral hits from Skloot's site which told me that my pre-press comments in that regard had been posted in academic publicity of the book.
It seems that bodybuilding supplement makers are challenging erectile dysfunction supplement makers to see who can recall the greatest number of products adulterated with undeclared, unapproved drugs.
In this case, an internet retailer of the following supplements has issued a voluntary recall of the following supplements sold between June 1, 2009 and November 17, 2009. The recall follows an FDA warning letter on detection of undeclared, synthetic anabolic steroids in these products:
Charles Darwin famously reasoned that genetic traits change over many generations through natural selection, but the new field of “epigenetics” is finding that nurture can change nature more directly. Duke Professor Randy Jirtle will discuss epigenetics and answer viewers’ questions during a live “Office Hours” webcast interview at noon (17:00 GMT) Friday, Jan. 22, on 
