In the News: Larissa Schuster

From CNN.com:

http://tinyurl.com/4bfb8n

Chemist gets Life for Husband's Acid Vat Murder

A biochemist was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for killing her estranged husband by knocking him out and stuffing him into a vat of acid, possibly while he was still alive.

(snip)

Prosecutors said Schuster and her former lab assistant, James Fagone, first immobilized Timothy Schuster with a stun gun and a chloroform-soaked rag. Then they bound his hands and feet, dumped his body headfirst into a barrel while he was still breathing and poured hydrochloric acid on him.

At work, my colleagues and I have been watching this story unfold. If you are into grisly details, you can google this lady's name and read the blogs of local reporters covering her trial. It is truly horrific what she was convicted of doing. It is hard to fathom that someone could do this to another living being.

I don't know which is worse: (1) that a biochemist used her powers for evil instead of good or (2) that she didn't know that there are better things one can use to dissolve a body than concentrated HCl. She was trained in the chemistry of biological systems and that was the best she could come up with?**


**I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek but in my lab at work, we were able to come up with a dozen things off the top of our heads that would have worked better. Just sayin'.

An Open Letter to Judge Joseph Doherty

For those who are unaware, the following open letter is regarding a criminal case stemming from an incident of dog abuse in Connecticut. The crime occurred in January 2008, but public outcry has been building since the case first came to light. The following are links that discuss the case:

http://www.wfsb.com/news/15048042/detail.html (some graphic pics)
http://www.pet-abuse.com/cases/12959/CT/US/ (site updates as case proceeds through the courts)

To the Honorable Joseph Doherty:

I am, admittedly, a HUGE dog lover. However, I do not see how anyone claiming to be human could read about the case of Saverino Cruz and the pit bull "Baby" and not be outraged. Even the most jaded individuals would be shocked at the details of this case.

I have read several accounts describing what occurred in January and I am aware the man at the center of this case is an illegal immigrant. I am also aware that many of the taxpayers in Connecticut would balk at paying the expense of incarcerating a citizen of another country (but when you established so-called "sanctuary cities" in defiance of federal law, I would suggest that you invite such problems but that is a soapbox for another day).

But please consider the facts of the case. This man found out while at work that his son was injured. Did he go straight to the hospital to check on his son? No, he left work in the middle of the day and went home to deal with the dog. I would submit he already had a vague notion of what he was going to do. Furthermore, he had the entire drive home to come to his senses. Instead, he brutalized a chained and caged dog.

I ask you to consider one other point: what happens when another human angers this man (animal abuse is a known indicator of future violent behavior)? If he doesn't serve time (or worse, gets off scot-free as his lawyer proposes), the greatest tragedy will not be that some one got away with animal abuse. It will be that the justice system had the opportunity to stop this man before he kills/maims someone's child, wife, mother, father, etc. and instead allowed it to slip away.

In the News: Pipeline Woes

From Chemical and Engineering News (Ann Thayer reporting):

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i18/8618notw9.html

Major drug companies have been taking their lumps recently as drug candidates fail to impress regulators and falter in clinical trials. These setbacks bode ill for the industry overall. At FDA's current approval rate, the number of new drug entities reaching the market in 2008 could hit a new low.

Merck & Co. is among the hardest hit. The company received a nonapprovable letter from FDA on April 28 for its new cholesterol-lowering drug Cordaptive, a combination of niacin and laropiprant.

(snip)

On April 25, the FDA also said no to an allergy drug containing Merck's Singulair and Schering-Plough's Claritin. This letdown comes after the partners reported poor clinical results in March for the cholesterol-lowering combination drug Vytorin.

(snip)

Meanwhile, Bristol-Myers Squibb and its partner Medarex learned that FDA wants additional clinical data to demonstrate the benefit of ipilimumab, an antibody designed to improve immune responses against cancer cells. The request means the companies will not be able to file for approval this year.

Bad news came earlier in development for other firms. Partners Genentech and Biogen Idec said last week that Rituxan failed to meet any of the goals in a late-stage trial of lupus patients. The antibody drug is approved for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And Sanofi-Aventis reported initial results showing no benefit from its new antidepressant, saredutant.

So will this latest news mean more layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry?

Merck has already annouced it will cut 1,200 jobs from its sales force as its stock price dropped 7% on the day of the FDA announcement. Stay tuned for more on pipeline woes.....

In Memoriam: Dr. Albert Hofmann

It came across the wire a few days ago that Dr. Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, died at the age of 102 of a heart attack.

Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

(snip)

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

(snip)

“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. “I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”

Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.

More can be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/5yys85 (NYT webpage)

In the News: Problems with Botox?

Newsweek has published a report of new evidence that Botox may be inflitrating the central nervous system and finding its way into the brain:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/131749

A New Reason to Frown

Does Botox get into the brain? Troubling research contradicts earlier findings about the treatment.

By Sharon Begley

In a reversal of the usual sequence in science, researchers have discovered, after millions of people have received the drug, something fundamental about how Botox can act. Contrary to what turned up in preclinical testing, botulinum toxin can travel along neurons from the injection site into the brain, at least in lab animals....

Within three days, the toxin had migrated from the whisker muscles to the brainstem, where it disrupted neuronal activity. "The discovery was quite serendipitous ... and surprising," Matteo Caleo, who led the study, told the journal Science. "A significant portion of the toxin is active where it's not intended to be." That stands in contrast to the findings of earlier studies, which suggested that the neurotoxin is completely broken down at the injection site into innocuous compounds and does not migrate beyond it—or if it does, only into the bloodstream or lymph system.

In the News: Impersonating Doctors, Doctor?

I'm a little late with this one but I have been on vacation.....Chemical and Engineering News (CEN) reported on March 10, 2008, the following:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i10/8610notw1.html

Scientists in Germany with U.S. Ph.D.s face charges for posing as 'Dr.'

AT LEAST SEVEN U.S.-educated scientists working at the Max Planck Society's (MPS) prestigious research institutes in Germany have faced or are facing criminal charges for impersonating a "Dr." The maximum penalty for this crime is one year in jail.

It didn't take long for the MSM (main stream media) to pick up the story and run with it. CEN reported on March 17, 2008 that Germany education ministers have begun to back down and allow US researchers to use their titles.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i11/8611notw7.html

However, what has been described as a cultural misunderstanding by some, has been ascribed some darker motives by others. The Washington Post reported the following:

http://tinyurl.com/2ehms4

The German doctor rule has been in effect since the 1930s, but it has been only sporadically enforced in recent years.

That changed last fall, when an anonymous tipster filed a complaint with federal prosecutors against seven Americans at the prestigious Max Planck Society, which operates 80 scientific research institutes across Germany. Federal authorities forwarded the complaint to prosecutors and police in at least three states, who decided to take action.

Some have questioned why were only Americans charged as the Society hosts Ph.D. researchers from around the world--all of whom presumably use 'Dr.' as their title.

But whatever the motive of the "anonymous tipster", it is unfortunate that the Max Planck Society has a received a black eye over the matter as they do interesting and pertinent scientific work there.

Funny of the Day: Subprime Primer

Someone once said that every bit of humor has some truth in it. Here is a humorous (well, as funny as this situation can be) and truthful take on the subprime mess. IMHO, the only thing that would make it more truthful would be if there were a slide 46 that shows the American consumer bending over with a jar of Vaseline while the Fed runs around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Caution: Contains some obscenities and may be NSFW. Also, it is a large file so it may take a while to load if you are on a slow connection. This link takes you to Google Documents.

http://tinyurl.com/2kvosz