Pause

Published: January 30, 2010

Queen Square, London.

It seems strange that, though this square is almost totally silent—not a car and barely a person in sight—I am metres away from hundreds of people, mostly very unwell, lying or sleeping silently in their beds. Most of humanity, and most phases of our lives, are so loud and violent that it seems eerie that so many people could so resign themselves to silence.

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Fashionable pharmaceuticals

Published: December 18, 2009

The pharmaceuticals industry has an obsession with novelty. We want better drugs with fewer side-effects, but too often newness is correlated (wrongly) with an improvement in quality. One new drug that is twice as good at treating an illness as its predecessor is better than five drugs each offering a one per cent improvement on the first. ‘New’ drugs which appear on the market often seem to be derivatives of the well-tested substances which precede them and not genuinely novel drugs.

Consider escitalopram, a relatively new SSRI antidepressant. This is not a new drug in any meaningful way—rather, it is an enantiomerically pure form of the older, off-patent antidepressant citalopram. (In chemistry, a chemical’s connectivity—the order in which groups are bonded to one another—is referred to as its stereochemistry, and chemicals can have different forms or enantiomers as a result of these different ways of connecting the groups together.) Citalopram is a mixture of two enantiomers; isolate one and you’ve got escitalopram.

While escitalopram does seem to have better clinical efficacy at treating depression, it can’t really be said to be new in the way that, say, fluoxetine (Prozac) was when it hit the market in the late 1980s. Fluoxetine was seen as revolutionary when it was introduced, but its efficacy—and that of its more modern siblings—is still only barely better than placebo. Is it possible that nothing better has come along in more than twenty years?

A number of other drugs—amineptine, tianeptine, moclobemide and selegiline among them—have shown great promise in treating depression and, may indeed be suitable for general mood enhancement. Amineptine was withdrawn from the market because of its slight stimulant effects, never to be manufactured again. (Surely a substance which could genuinely and consistently improve one’s mood would be addictive by definition?)

The other three drugs have been shown to be promising antidepressants and mood enhancers but there seems little interest in comparing their efficacy with that of fluoxetine, the de facto treatment for depression in a number of countries. We are eager to test new drugs but no-one is willing to spend money testing ‘old’ drugs. Tianeptine isn’t even licenced for sale in the US, presumably because it is now off-patent and no company has any incentive to push for FDA approval.

If big pharma isn’t going to look into vintage pharmacotherapies, shouldn’t governments be willing to do so? If the purpose of bodies like NICE is to find the most effective treatment at the lowest cost, don’t they have an incentive to investigate other drugs; to scour the literature for candidate substances and fund studies of drugs which showed promise but were left languishing?

Update: yohimbine is another interesting drug which languishes in scientific obscurity. Potentially quite a useful aphrodisiac and treatment for erectile dysfunction, this study into its effectiveness asks why so little data on it is available, concluding that its off-patent status is a serious disincentive for further investigation into its clinical efficacy.

Despite such a long history and encouraging activity, the drug has not yet been subjected to scientifically rigid human clinical trials. … Recent studies have been designed with a lack of insight and complete disregard of those fundamental studies. … Dose-response investigations are not available, alternative routes of administration have not been investigated… Synergistic activity with other drugs was last studied nearly four decades ago. Assessments of various populations were carried out in very limited cohorts and only in the most general terms. …

Yohimbine is an old drug. As such it does not enjoy patent protection or commercial viability. Until molecular/formulation changes can be brought about … serious investigation of the drug will remain in limbo.

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The Immortality Brigade

Published: November 27, 2009

I was lucky enough to be published in the November edition of UCL’s student newspaper Pi. The week prior I’d attended a miniature version of the annual Singularity Summit (though I was sadly unable to make it to the real thing in Manhattan a couple of weeks before). Discussions with the editor of the science section of the newspaper suggested that a précis of the events, along with a primer on the Singularity for the uninitiated, could make for a stimulating read.

The finished piece (minus final subedits from the editor) can be found here.

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Thinking of the children

Published: August 24, 2009
The scant paragraph in the Volunteering Services Unit weekly email asked simply for ‘two or three enthusiastic scientists to assist with running a school science club’. Not wanting to turn down an opportunity to affirm our scientific prowess, four volunteers-to-be enlisted and met for coffees in the Bloomsbury Café opposite the monolithic facade of the Chemistry building.
Under the wing of Dr Andrea Sella, UCL chemistry lecturer and demonstrator extraordinaire, we set about planning a series of hour-long sessions suitable for the seven- to eleven-year-olds we would eventually be working with. Never short of innovation, UCL’s online learning environment became the electronic home of the Gillespie Science Club as we worked to collaborate on designing sessions and assemble a rota for the four of us, scheduling two people per session while ensuring that everyone was worked evenly as their respective schedules allowed.
The sessions themselves had a central theme—demonstrating the properties of dry ice, making glow-in-the-dark jelly, simulating a scale meteor strike; the usual—and involved giving a brief presentation on what we would be doing and then moving our aspiring young seekers of knowledge to a demo area where we performed our experiment, either a demonstration if dangerous substances were involved or in small groups in which they could each have a go.
The first few sessions went fairly smoothly, though for most of us it was the first time we’d worked with children and our charges’ capacity for belligerence (of the most endearing and inquisitive kind) did, at times, seem unending. After a time, however, something remarkable happened: we started to get comments from parents, some of whom had never before heard of the science club, expressing their admiration for what we were doing. We had, it seemed, gained a reputation as bringers of empiricism—and of fun.
We had not only become men and women of some repute in the primary school community (with Dr Sella, the man behind the scenes, being nothing short of a celebrity) but we gradually learned how best to capture the attention of the students and keep them engaged while developing in them the skills needed of future scientists, and indeed of future non-scientists if they are to fully understand the world around them. Long-winded presentations were a no-no, but any opportunity for the kids to show of their knowledge was lapped up. Some children were louder than others, but with some effort we worked to ensure the quieter ones were heard.
One thing that every one of us noticed and was astounded by was the children’s curiosity. Almost all of our tutees asked lots of questions, some of them very astute. Most people, it seems, learn to suppress this curiosity for one reason or another. With luck, there will be ten boys and girls out there who continue to ask questions of their teachers and superiors, and never stop doing so. See if you can spot them.

I was given the task of writing a piece on the primary school science club I help run which is to appear in UCL’s Volunteering Services Unit (VSU) annual review as a showcase of the work the Unit funds. This is what I came up with—comments and suggestions are much appreciated.

The scant paragraph in the VSU’s weekly email asked simply for ‘two or three enthusiastic scientists to assist with running a school science club’. Not wanting to turn down an opportunity to affirm our scientific prowess, four volunteers-to-be enlisted and met for coffees in the Bloomsbury Café opposite the monolithic facade of the Chemistry building.

Under the wing of Dr Andrea Sella, UCL Chemistry lecturer and demonstrator extraordinaire, we set about planning a series of hour-long sessions suitable for the seven- to eleven-year-olds we would eventually be working with. Never short of innovation, UCL’s online learning environment became the electronic home of the Gillespie Science Club as we worked to collaborate on designing sessions and assemble a rota for the four of us, scheduling two people per session while ensuring that everyone was worked evenly as their respective schedules allowed.

The sessions themselves had a central theme—demonstrating the properties of dry ice, making glow-in-the-dark jelly, simulating a scale meteor strike; the usual—and involved giving a brief presentation on what we would be doing and then moving our aspiring young seekers of knowledge to a demo area where we performed our experiment, either a demonstration if dangerous substances were involved or in small groups in which they could each have a go.

The first few sessions went fairly smoothly, though for most of us it was the first time we’d worked with children and our charges’ capacity for belligerence (of the most endearing and inquisitive kind) did, at times, seem unending. After a time, however, something remarkable happened: we started to get comments from parents, some of whom had never before heard of the science club, expressing their admiration for our work. We had, it seemed, gained a reputation as bringers of empiricism—and of fun.

We had not only become men and women of some repute in the primary school community (with Dr Sella, the man behind the scenes, being nothing short of a celebrity) but we gradually learned how best to capture the attention of the students and keep them engaged while developing in them the skills needed of future scientists, and indeed of future non-scientists if they are to fully understand the world around them. Long-winded presentations were a no-no, but any opportunity for the kids to show off their knowledge was lapped up. Some children were louder than others, but with some effort we worked to ensure the quieter ones were heard.

One thing that every one of us noticed and was astounded by was the children’s curiosity. Almost all of our tutees asked lots of questions, some of them very astute, and we did our best to encourage it. Most people, it seems, learn to suppress this curiosity for one reason or another. With luck, there will be ten boys and girls out there who continue to ask questions of their teachers and superiors, and never stop doing so. See if you can spot them.

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Pharmacotherapy

Published: August 20, 2009

hicoverangle

I like to think I’m quite good at picking birthday presents. A loaded Oyster card for an aspiring Londoner, a copy of Gray’s Anatomy for a soon-to-be medic, and those trinkets, of little monetary value and which without context would be meaningless but, given to the right person, invoke a fond memory—mementoes of events shared.

For some years I’ve been interested in the writings of David Pearce, a philosopher who describes in lucid detail his vision for eliminating suffering from sentient life. His chef d’œuvre, The Hedonistic Imperative, is a philosophical manifesto proselytising and elaborating upon the moral urgency of this goal and how it might technically be achieved and is as much a philosophical text as a scientific and literary one. He combines mellifluous prose with a solid understanding of the bioscience needed for ‘paradise-engineering’: genetics, molecular biology, nanotechnology and what he lyrically calls “the biochemistry of bliss.” It’s an undoubtedly provocative read.

What better gift, then, for a blossoming polymath?

HI is not yet mainstream, and it’s not available in book form at all. Unafraid of intellectually challenging birthday presents, I set about binding my own copy of the treatise.

hitextscreen

The method is not exact, but after looking at as many DIY bookbinding tutorials as I could bear I settled on what I thought was the best and most efficient way of making a hardy, hand-bound book. Typeset in nicely-kerned Helvetica and Univers 45, the book was printed on A4 paper, two-to-a-side, four-to-a-page in eight-sheet signatures (the industry term for a single ‘fold’ of sheets. Have a look at the spine of a commercial book; you’ll see them). Each signature had four holes put through its centre, and with the folded signatures stacked on top of each other they were sewn one to the second, the second to the third and so on; a kettle-stitch.

The book-block assembled, a simple card cover was cut and glued to the spine. A day of drying later and a contrasting navy slip case assembled to protect the book, it was ready for the finishing touch: a decal symbolic of Pearce’s message.

hifrontcover

It’s highly stylised, but it’s there: the molecular structure of MDMA, the so-called ‘penicillin of the soul’ the empathogenic-entactogenic effects of which provide perhaps a glimpse of a possible world which Pearce believes, someday, we may inhabit.

For my favourite pharmacologist.

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Misandry in the media

Published: July 11, 2009

The recent discovery by scientists at Newcastle University and the North East England Stem Cell Institute that human sperm can be artifically cultivated from stem cells has captured the attention of the British media. It has also served to further strengthen the opinion that unlike the near-universal condemnation of racism, sexism is widespead and broadly tolerated in our society.

“The real ethical issue here is that we do not foreclose the beneficial possibilities of research through prejudice or fear.”

Articles bearing titles such as ‘Men are redundant, but let’s keep them anyway’ and ‘The end of men?’ have appeared in volume suggesting that this scientific breakthrough is an opportunity to eliminate men from human civilisation as it makes them wholly redundant. Of course, even the most cursory look at the research itself reveals that this technology only allows for the production of sperm from embryos derived from male stem cells. Still, the sudden rush to suggest that men are now disposable and the casualness with which this is proposed is troubling for a number of reasons.

These articles posit that the ‘purpose’ of men, if human life has a purpose at all, is solely to allow for the production of children. The suggestion that men could be excised from society now that male sex cells can be produced synthetically leaves its proponents open to the counter that artifical wombs will make women equally redundant as the meiotic processes which underpin reproduction would then be wholly replaceable.

It also shows that the authors of such articles suffer from a deep cognitive dissonance: most people would recoil in horror at the suggestion that some technological advance would mean that, say, ‘blacks could be done away with’ and yet this statement is morally equivalent to suggesting the elimination of men—both create arbitrary distinctions based on biological categorisations. T-shirts bearing the juvenile and sexist slogan ‘boys are stupid, throw rocks at them’ are widely available. How long would an ‘Asians are stupid, throw rocks at them’ T-shirt survive before being recalled? Why the disparity? While the reportage is mostly intended to be tongue-in-cheek and few journalists are genuinely prophesying the downfall of men, the fact that this is even jokingly suggested shows that sexism towards men is tolerated in a way that other prejudices are not.

The media have also for the most part been myopic in their reportage. This discovery could prove to be an inadvertant step on the way to a posthuman future, one in which the limits of gender will be transcended and reproduction will no longer be the privilege of the fertile. The production of artifical sex cells means that same-sex couples could potentially have a child that is genetically their own; indeed, it even allows a woman to be both father and mother of her child.

Arguably, the random realignment of genes which underpins the production of sperm and egg will someday be eliminated in favour of a more egalitarian genesis. Bioethicist John Harris believes that the technology increases human choice by allowing infertile men to recreate their own sperm and so should be heralded as a breakthrough. He astutely points out that women have for many years had the option of artificial insemination and that “the real ethical issue here is that we do not foreclose the beneficial possibilities of research through prejudice or fear.”

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Hello, world.

Published: July 7, 2009

So, here it is. The very first in what will hopefully become a long line of posts.

Ultimately, I want this to become a corner of the internet I can call my own—part stream of consciousness, part formal essays. The idea that this domain has been unused for years surprises me a little when I think of it, as I classically enjoyed tinkering with my website and showing off my work. Some frisson of self-consciousness must have brought an end to that as it has most of my online projects, but here I am again, come full circle, with a website once more—hopefully a little more refined than the hand-codings of a thirteen-year-old—and with it a new-found online presence.

In a few hours’ time this post will be indexed and cached by Google and the Internet Archive, a fossilised carbon copy of this tract. To some that immortality might be reason alone to publish; to me it’s a reason not to. But then, everyone is afraid of sucking. And everyone is afraid of starting. So let’s begin.

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  • Selected writings

    by Henry.