Protonsil: image from https://www.sciencehistory.org/museum/permanent-exhibition Humans have been at odds with small factions of bacteria and viruses since the beginning of our existence. Waves of Black Death swept across Eurasia, anthrax infected livestock, blight created the potato famine. There is plenty of death and disease encoded in microbial DNA but there is also lot of good. Yet even before we knew much of anything of the genetic code, we knew how to protect ourselves. Beginning with vaccines and improved hygiene, diseases like smallpox (a virus) were held at bay well before the d ..read more

C. difficile colitis: By Nephron – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8171031 In 2010 Tim S. caught a cold. He was twenty-six at the time, his lungs compromised by muscular dystrophy, a neurodegenerative condition that he has managed for much of his life. Because Tim lacked the ability to cough and clear his lungs, colds predictably led to pneumonia. This time around, it was silent pneumonia. Tim was given Augmentin, a powerful combination of penicillin and an enzyme inhibitor aimed at penicillin resistant bacteria. As a so-called broad spectrum antibi ..read more

Back behind our home is a pine. A tall, sturdy, straight-up eastern white pine, Pinus strobus. My arms reach maybe a half of the way around. Its bark is chunky like small woody bricks. And the ground is covered in soft brown needles from years past. During the 2020 pandemic, a day after the president suggested we look ahead rather than mourn the tens of thousands of loved ones gone, I took a walk. And there was that tree. Maybe it sprouted around the First World War or before. Maybe a couple of kids who walked by an unremarkable seedling were drafted and killed in that war. Or maybe they survi ..read more

I wrote this back in 2007. Reposted two years ago when my son treated his bone bruise with some Aleve and a few beers. Then, a couple of weeks my daughter, sniffling through a cold and suffering from a cough, mentioned she had googled the mix of over-the-counter meds to make sure there were not bad interactions. She had taken pharmacology in college. Since not everyone has benefited from studying the impacts of drugs on their bodies including the all too often problem of combining drugs,  I thought it’s worth a re-post. Over ten years later, the basic message Be Careful What You Mix ..read more

Sometimes discoveries are made when you are looking for something else. I was searching through scientific journals for some history of chemotherapy and rosy periwinkle, when my husband Ben’s grandfather – James D. Havens – popped up. Ben never met his grandfather, but our walls are covered with his artwork — intricate colorful woodcuts and watercolors. James Havens was both an artist and the first American treated with insulin in the U.S. I knew this, but hadn’t expected to find a connection while reading up on plants and chemotherapy. “Sunflower” by James D. Havens. 1939. Featured image is ..read more

I have few really clear memories from being a kid. But there are a handful of photographic images of human cruelty and failure that have been seared into memory. One is the execution of Ruth Snyder in 1928, in the electric chair. I wasn’t alive then, but those of you who flipped through Time-Life’s This Fabulous Century series published in the late 1960’s (bound with actual fabric suggestive of each decade) probably remember that one. She was a 32 year old mother, and murderer. Another was the photo of Nguyễn Văn Lém’s execution on the streets of Saigon in 1968. And then there was the ima ..read more

[Introduction to a guest article written by Sophie Letcher.] Depressed with the news and in need of a good distraction, I headed down to the local animal shelter “just to look.” Famous last words. The next day, Nali, a nine-week old spayed female, fresh off the operating table, joined our household. My husband Ben had one condition for our new addition, that I handle the litter box. Sure, sure, I said. Small price to pay.  As the designated scooper, it has become my job to fill the dreaded box. Fortunately the choices in litter available today promise to all but clean the box. These are ..read more

A recent article in the New York Times about EPA’s attempt to reject data from the increasingly powerful field of epidemiology, alluded to a particularly dark episode in the recent history of chemical testing. A time when pesticide companies were so desperate to prove their chemicals “safe” that they turned to human testing. This wasn’t in the 1930s or 50s or even 60s, but this particular rash of human tests took place in the late 1990s. Let that sink in. Cuyahoga River In the 1970s, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emerged from the country’s smog choked cities and combustible riv ..read more

ON THE FOURTH of July, 1985, as the sun shone and the temperatures rose, people celebrated by eating watermelon. Then they got sick — becoming part of one of the nation’s largest episodes of foodborne illness caused by a pesticide. The outbreak began with a few upset stomachs in Oregon on July 3; by the next day, more than a dozen people in California were also doubling over with nausea, diarrhea, and stomach pain. A few suffered seizures. All told, the CDC estimated that more than 1,000 individuals from Oregon, California, Arizona and other states, along with two Canadian provi ..read more

Hey there. Here’s some good news. Our president can apparently declare a toxicant isn’t toxic, and poof, just like that it’s not. Take asbestos (“100 percent safe, once applied,” according to the toxicologist in chief.) If you learn one thing in introductory toxicology, it’s that asbestos can cause mesothelioma. It’s a textbook kind of cause and effect relationship particularly in older ship yard and construction workers. If only they had you around to declare them healthy before they died of mesothelioma. Another brief toxicology lesson Mr. President. Nothing is 100 percent safe. We all ..read more