Periodic Tabloid

We take our mostly disease-free status for granted. But go back even one generation and fear ruled whole communities. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has created a fascinating and visually intriguing timeline showing this history.

What's the most synthetically complex drug on the market? Hydrocortisone. A CHF oral history with former Merck chemist Max Tishler provides a behind-the-scenes look at its development.

I recently saw Bjorn Lomborg’s new movie, Cool It, about global warming. Lomborg starts from the position that global warming is happening, and he then moves on to what we should be doing in response. I think it’s fair to say that technology plays a big part in his thinking about what we should do. None of this is new.

This past Friday, I was in Washington, D.C. to present the first of CHF's findings from our year long oral history project of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Twice this year and a dozen times in the last four decades, I have had a reason to celebrate modern medicine and the chemistry behind it. This series of blog posts explains how I would have died if I had the same injury 100 years ago. Today's medical malaise: Smallpox and Polio.

During a recent oral history interview I conducted, the increasingly complex partnerships between industry scientists and university scientist was discussed. Today's situation is in stark contrast to very causal collaboration and consultation relationships described by some of CHF’s older oral histories.

Twice this year and a dozen times in the last four decades, I have had a reason to celebrate modern medicine and the chemistry behind it. This series of blog posts explains how I would have died if I had the same injury 100 years ago. Today's medical malaise: surviving a missile explosion.

I’m pretty sure our scientific descendants will think us weird, but maybe not as strange as the Renaissance and early modern practitioners of science appear to us. Specifically me.

Twice this year and a dozen times in the last four decades, I have had a reason to celebrate modern medicine and the chemistry behind it. So I am starting a new series of blog posts explaining how I would have died if I had the same injury 100 years ago. I will begin with my most recent brush with medical malaise: bacterial infection.

Just over a week ago I had the opportunity to hear Nancy Hopkins speak. She did not speak about her biology research focused on zebrafish, but instead she spoke in her capacity as an expert on women in science.