All meds, all the time

Some thoughts on how "science news" is turning into health and medical "news you can use":

I suspect that there is a feedback loop that runs between pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions promoting their products, the desires and anxieties of consumers regarding their physical limiations and imperfections, and our elected representatives and government agencies responding to constituent pressures. More demand drives greater supply, which fuels more demand.

I'm certainly interested in health and medical articles, but I'm also concerned about sustainable energy sources, responsible manufacturing practices, buildings that withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, and bioweapon sensors in public places, among many other things. One example of a neglected topic is "clean coal technology", which was bandied about in numerous press conferences by staffers for the Obama, Clinton, and McCain campaigns. I saw maybe one or two articles in the consumer press that talked about what this term actually referred to and what the state of the art was for this technology. Another example: several years ago, I attended a conference in Washington DC on a major federal initiative establishing nanotechnology research centers at several of the national labs. When I picked up my press pass at the registration desk, the conference organizers came out to greet me personally -- apparently, I was the only media person who bothered to show up.

Ask your non-scientific friends and neighbors if they have heard about good and bad cholesterol, dietary antioxidants, and Botox parties. Now ask them if they know about the pilot projects in several cities where parts of the existing electrical grids were replaced by superconducting cables.

I'm just sayin'...

On a related note, check out this commentary in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/456702a.html

The title is "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy". Here's a sample sentence from the article:
"The drugs just reviewed, along with newer technologies such as brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips, should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology — ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself."

So how long before you have to start using these drugs just to stay competent at your job? What happens to your career if you can't afford your "enhancement" meds? What if you just want to be your own natural self? Go rent the movie "Gattica" and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Back on the Radar Screen

The last month or so, I've been either working overtime or recovering from working overtime. Two conferences, bracketing Thanksgiving week, left me wishing I was rich enough to retire from the rat race and just spend my time blogging and writing novels. Someone has to pay my mortgage, so retirement will have to wait. And the novels will have to wait until I figure out a way to make enough time and energy to get the creative juices going again. So for now, blogging it is. I've got two followers now (an overnight doubling of my fan club!).

I'm going to try my hand at summarizing science articles for the general public in this space. If all goes well, I'll continue this theme, interspersed with the general musings that you have all come to know and love (well, Todd and Linda anyway). I did the science writing thing professionally a few years ago, and as soon as I figure out how to make enough money to stay afloat, I'm going to go back to that full-time again. Tell all your friends.

Politics and Poplar Trees

When I was growing up, we had a Carolina poplar tree in our back yard, planted by the general contractor who built our house. The little tree with the broomstick-sized trunk grew into by far the tallest thing in the neighborhood, and my Dad couldn't put his arms all the way around the trunk. The tree was a good landmark for telling people how to get to my house. It was also a target for lightning. When I was away at college, the tree took a direct hit during a thunderstorm, making a loud BOOM and showering the whole back yard with bark fragments. Afterward, the tree looked ok, but there was always the danger that it would fall and crush our house. My parents hired professionals to come take the tree down. It took all day, with five different trucks coming and going out of our yard, and all kinds of ropes and pulleys. They didn't so much cut the tree down as they dismantled it. Right down to the stump shredder at the very end. But the tree, which had occupied that spot for 15-plus years, wasn't going without a fight. Its root system spanned the neighborhood, and for months afterward, the roots sent up little shoots that would get caught in your lawnmower blades and fly up and hit you in the face.

That's how I see the aftermath of this week's election. You had two political parties that served their purpose for a while, but they had gotten so gridlocked and corrupt that they threatened to completely collapse and take the rest of us with them. The election took out many of the most damaged parts of the executive and legislative branches. But the daily op-eds are like little sprouts coming out of the entrenched roots of this old rotten tree. All these pundits can talk about is how their party used the wrong tactics, and how they can position themselves better so they can get power back into their own hands as soon as possible. You don't hear them talking about how we can all work together to rebuild our nation. Oh no. They are just looking to get back on top. Well, it's time to get out the stump shredder and the lawnmower and make sure that this old rotten tree is completely gone so that whatever we put in its place has a chance to do some good.

What Kind of American?

During the last nasty days of the 2008 campaign season, we learned that some of us are not "real" Americans. Apparently, if you live in a city, don't vote Republican, and have no idea how to field dress a moose, you are somehow less of a citizen than those good solid folks who have to drive at least ten miles to get to the nearest shopping mall. It got even more interesting when a poster to a left-leaning email group that I follow started a discussion about African Americans and European Americans. Another poster objected to the term "European American" -- the person thought it was absurd to refer to an entire continent for one's heritage when you probably knew what country your ancestors came from. African Americans, on the other hand, could claim an entire continent as their point of origin because slavery had erased all evidence of their country of origin.

This doesn't quite sit right either. Unless your family came to the US fairly recently, you probably have ancestors from a wide smattering of nations, European and otherwise, and many African Americans have a very good idea where their ancestors came from. The bigger question is -- is this really relevant anymore? I could call myself Caucasian, a term no longer restricted to people whose ancestors are from the Caucasus. I could call myself white, but I'm really kind of a pinkish beige, and parts of me get quite tan in the summer. Many of my ancestors came over here before there was a United States of America, but calling myself a Native American has misleading connotations. Why not just call myself an American and be done with it? For that matter, why not just call myself a human being? Does nationality do anything besides divide and antagonize people?

Oh what a beautiful morning

The results are in, and we have a new President-elect. The old divide-and-conquer strategy didn't work. People weren't so much scared of a guy with a funny name as they were worried about the way ahead. Survival skills gained in a Vietnamese prison camp or on the Alaskan tundra were not deemed as relevant to running our nation as community organizing skills gained on the south side of Chicago. There is not a "real" America and a "fake" America, there is only the United States of America. Please, please let us stop flinging mud at each other, roll up our sleeves, and get busy working TOGETHER to rebuild the good things that have been damaged and destroyed in recent years. Yes, we can.

So Now We Wait...

I arrived at my polling place at 7:15 this morning -- a civic sacrifice of significant proportions for this night person. I had intended to arrive at about 6:45 or so, but that was just too much to ask. Apparently, anyone who arrived at 7:00, when the polls opened, had the same one-hour wait that I did. Which is truly amazing, since the line stretched halfway down the block, down one hall inside the elementary school, down another hall, took a u-turn and snaked back down those same two halls, and only then did you get inside the school cafeteria where you could sign in and actually vote. Kudos to the poll workers who kept things running so smoothly. Montgomery County Maryland is firmly in the Obama camp, but we had four ballot questions to decide as well, plus our folks in the House of Representatives and a smattering of judges and school board members. Today was the last hurrah for touch screen-only balloting in our county. We will go to optically scanned paper ballots in 2010. After today's vote, we will know whether we can vote early (instead of merely absentee) next time as well. Just seeing all those good folks lined up to cast their votes this morning made it worth the wait. It's 5:00 PM, and the first exit poll results should be trickling out just about now. So now, we watch and wait...

Sound Bites and Still Pix

On October 18, The Washington Post published a very brief comment I made about a photograph in one of their Metro section articles. The comment appeared on their Saturday "Free For All" page, which is where they publish readers' grammatical nitpicks, complaints about coverage (or lack thereof), and comments on the appropriateness of photos. Here's what my comment looked like after the editors got through with it:

Packing Them In
Megan Greenwell's article on churches in Prince George's County ["Still Flocking to Prince George's," Religion, Oct. 11] was accompanied by a large photo of First Baptist Church of Glenarden's sanctuary filled with people. Clearly visible was a bright pink slide on one of the projection screens, with the message "Let's talk about Sex." Humorous, yes, but irrelevant to the focus of the story. Was this the best shot your photographer could come up with?
[end]

I thought that captured it pretty well, since the article itself was about people who had moved away from Prince George's County, but still attended their old churches out of a continued sense of connection to their community. The photo made it look as though the church was using sensational topics to draw people in.

In today's Post Free For All section, Robert Braxton of Fairfax writes:
Sects in the Church

In my opinion, Post readers go overboard in second-guessing the selection of photographs to print. The latest example was the letter from Nancy McGuire ["Packing Them In," Free for All, Oct. 18]. In a culture where unplanned pregnancy among teenagers remains a problem, I fail to see humor in a screen projecting the words "Let's talk about sex." And anyone bothered by that in a church must be unfamiliar with the biblical directive "know thy wife."

Besides, have not churches always dealt in sects?
[end]

I actually agree with Mr. Braxton's point about the need for such conversations, but that wasn't really the point I was making. Did Mr. Braxton not read carefully, was he just using my comment as a springboard for his own, or was my point really not clear?

Magical Thinking and the Vanishing Middle Class

This current economic upheaval got me to thinking about how hard it's gotten to live a middle class life lately. As is often the case, one thought ties in with another, and this particular thought latched itself onto a ballot issue that Maryland residents will be voting on next Tuesday -- do we want the state to install thousands of slot machines to raise revenue for our schools, save the horse racing industry, and keep those gambling dollars in-state?

I'll explain. When I was growing up in the sixties, it was relatively easy to get a good solid job without an advanced degree, and to hold that job until you were ready to retire -- with a proper pension, of course. You didn't have to aspire to a six-figure salary or put in a 60-hour workweek just to keep the wolf away from the door. If you were the ambitious type, you could start out working in the company mailroom, work your way up the company ladder, and go as high as your talents and temperament would allow.

That doesn't seem to be the case any more. Many of the people I know are one pink slip or one medical crisis away from the edge. Many of my friends owe a year's salary or more for credit card bills, medical bills, car payments, you name it. And not all of them are out-of-control spenders. Employees are considered disposable commodities, and if the stock market tanks just when you were planning to retire, you can watch your 401(k) vanish before your very eyes.

Here's where the slot machines come in. My theory is that when people feel helpless and out of control, they turn to magical thinking. Maryland is in need of some serious tax money right now, and they are hoping to get it from folks who are hoping against all evidence that they are going to hit that one big win that is going to put them on easy street. Or at least pay off a few bills. When all your other options are in the dumpster, gambling starts to look pretty good.

You see a lot of magical thinking going on with all the "reality shows" on television. Contestants perform in talent contests, eat worms, bicycle across New Guinea, whatever, trying to win that million-dollar prize. Some of them are quite good, but others make you wonder what the heck they were thinking when they signed up. They all want that big chance at fame, that wad of money, whatever that one big thing is that will get them out of their humdrum everyday lives.

Magical thinking takes over when there's no clear path to lead you upward. That path has been slowly but surely erased over the last 30 years. Remember "rightsizing" and "flattening the organization" from the 1980s? The organizations didn't really flatten so much as they raised the top levels, lowered the bottom levels, and shaved the supporting pillars between the two levels until they were pencil-thin. With no middle levels, you either had to be born at the top, get incredibly lucky, or work like a maniac to make that one big leap. Don't even think about settling down in a nice mid-level job -- those jobs are a vanishing breed. Come to think of it, don't even think about settling, period. Because that pink slip may come at any time. When your whole future is looking like a crapshoot, buying those lottery tickets and playing those slot machines starts to look less and less irrational.

My hope is that once these financial castles in the air have finally crashed down to earth, we can all get busy and start building solid foundations again. Real people making real stuff and earning real incomes so that they can pay real money for the things they really need. Is this idea any more hopelessly naive than the idea of building an entire society on debts, derivatives, and slot machines?

And so it begins...

You've read my philosophical musings on the Washington Ethical Society email chat list (or not). you've been moved to write my editor about the scintillating articles I've written for Chemical Innovation, Today's Chemist at Work, and Modern Drug Discovery (or not). You've checked the "me too" box 'neath my pithy comments about numerous articles in the Washington Post online (or not). And now, you're reading the very first blog posting on The Word Chemist. Can you feel the magic? Maybe a tiny exotherm? A slight increase in your entropy?

Blogging was one of those things that I've been meaning to do for a while, but did I really have anything to say that hasn't been said in all the other squillion and one other blogs out there? Perhaps not, but it's all in the way you say it, isn't it? I was actually trying to resurrect a dusty old legacy Blogspot account (pre-Google) so that I could post a comment on my sister's blog, Still Designing Stuff. I got stuck in screen-cycle hell and the only way out was to start completely from scratch, which inolved setting up my own blog, which involved creating an initial posting, so here I am.

To follow: assorted detritus from an ever so slightly left of center mid-generation baby-boomer, living ever so slightly outside our nation's capital. (Our nation being the USA, for all my many fans around the globe.) And so it begins...