About Abel Pharmboy

Abel Pharmboy is a pseudonymous, independent PhD researcher/educator trained in pharmacology and toxicology, hoping to be a voice of reason and skepticism, but equally open-minded about conventional and folkloric therapeutic agents. I take prescription drugs, I take herbs, I've worked in a pharmaceutical company, I've worked in a university, I've been awarded tenure, I've relinquished tenure...you get the picture. You'll be the judge of whether I'm objective.

"Abel" is not a typo, but rather a dedication to the American father of Pharmacology, John Jacob Abel, M.D. (1857-1938). Trained in Europe (his MD was from Strassburg), Prof Abel established the first US medical pharmacology department at the University of Michigan in 1891, then did the same in 1893 at a fledgling medical school called Johns Hopkins. He remained in Baltimore until his death. His is one case where the Encyclopedia Brittanica entry is far superior to that from Wikipedia.

In honor of Prof Abel, the American Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics awards an annual J.J. Abel Award in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics for original and outstanding research by a pharmacologist under the age of 39. During this centennial year of the society, great sport is being made of calculating one's "Abel number," the degrees of separation one is from the good professor along the lineage of one's scientific training. Prof Abel also founded the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) and the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (JPET). I guess I'd better get cracking.

Why do I write under a pseudonym? First, I've used it for quite awhile now and think it's kind of a neat pseudonym as I was raised in the suburbs but prefer rural areas. Ideally, I'd like to be on a farm in a high mountain valley if I could do research from there. I also have a deep respect for the history of my discipline and the shoulders on which I stand. I fear that Pharmacology is disappearing as a distinct course of training despite it being the original interdisciplinary biomedical science. I'd argue that the new, catchy programs in Chemical Biology owe their basic skills and principles to the foundations of Pharmacology.

My identity is a relatively open secret and is not listed here simply because there is no blogging policy at the place where I draw my paycheck. Rules there do exist prohibiting the expression of personal opinions in public forums if said opinions can be linked to the institution, a cloudy policy that is impossible to ensure in these days of Googling.

Therefore, I'll be known in this forum as Abel Pharmboy. Furthermore, statements made on this blog are solely the personal opinions of the author and do not reflect the positions of his employer or his other affiliated academic institutions, graduate training programs, professional associations, or research funding agencies.