Clever Buggers - Chemists

Thank goodness for anesthetic! I know some people are brave enough to have dental work without being given a ‘painless’ injection – even the needle alone can be a painful experience! My eyes are like dinner plates when I see that crowbar-size needle approaching.

Those life giving, lifesaving, life enhancing, life prolonging, and elective surgeries are all made possible because some clever chemist(s) found the miracle that is anesthetic.

Whenever it was that someone discovered the fermentation process could produce a brew powerful enough to blow your head off was arguably among the earliest of chemists.  Even as alcoholic drinks evolved, chemists found that pure alcohol could be used as fuel and solvents – including methylated spirits, which has been drunk by the desperate, but with disastrous results.

While on the tack of mind-altering substance, some sulphur-dioxide-chemists have responded to the apparent need to produce synthetic so called ‘legal highs’. They produce product ahead of regulatory authorities, as one brew is banned, the clever chemists create a new version that will eventually be banned, but in the meantime, remains lucrative for the manufacturer and dire for the user.

There has always been a ready market for stupefying chemicals from those first blow-your-head-off alcoholic brews to the newer, dangerous stuff brewed in labs by amateur chemists.

My father often waxed lyrical about Louis Pasteur because our dairy had the earliest pasteurizing plant in the city. While we joked about ‘past-your-eyes’ the process was very important in halting the spread of tuberculosis (consumption) through cows’ milk.

Pasteur took a huge risk in treating a nine year old boy who was bitten by a rabid dog with vaccine taken from infected rabbits.  The vaccine had only been tested on 50 dogs, but the results must have encouraged Pasteur to try it on the boy. It proved successful.

Perhaps he took the risk, because he had lost three of his own kids to typhoid and knew the pain of loss.

Somewhere around 1862 the professor Pasteur, was going to expel any student caught smoking, so most of them resigned with only seven non-smokers remaining. He must have recognised the dangers of filling the lungs with tobacco smoke.

The emergence of toxic-chemists allows big business to soak up discretionary spending – actually it is not discretionary, when it is habitual, it becomes mandatory. Smoking is one use of discretionary money, but an addicted person really, really needs to spend that money.

In the same way, stronger fragrance has been added to personal and cleaning products with additives chemically manufactured and often as dangerous as tobacco smoke.

If people want to use products with ambergris or the glands of animals to tart themselves up, that is over to them, but the manufactures want to make keep the formula a commercial secret. Well nobody would buy product with whale spew or animal glands listed as ingredients eh?

But why is the fragrance in deodorant or toilet freshener and all between, a commercial secret when damaging chemicals are freely used? Anyway smell the artificial stuff and compare it with the real – they haven’t done well. 

The world’s seas are full of plastic and the disposal of waste plastic is a concern. Leo Baekeland would be surprised that his early invention of Bakelite, the first type of plastic, has progressed so far.  

Old Leo patented 55 inventions, among them Velox photograph paper, which together with his partners, he sold the rights to for what could be considered a bargain for the purchases, Kodak.

Baekeland was a clever bugger all right but maybe the chemicals got to his head because he became a recluse and ate his food directly from cans.  A bit eccentric that!

About half of the very young I took to hospital suffering from malaria died because of the disease! A sobering experience and fact.

We used the prophylactics, paludrine and chloroquine but we stopped using them because of the side effects, instead we followed the example (right or wrong) of the locals, preferring to treat the disease with mefloquine when/if we contracted it. However, most Africans can’t afford the cost of the medicine nor mosquito netting over their beds.

The malaria parasites have grown stronger because full doses of the treatment are unaffordable, so half a dose provides enough improvement but allows the parasite build resistance.

As a malaria survivor, I’m grateful to the clever chemists who developed mefloquine and other malaria medicines and continue on with the work.

Clever chemists have found ways to make life easier for diabetics and asthma sufferers and the vaccines they produce are lifesaving – and not without risk.   

Marie Curie died through exposure during her research on radium as have others in their particular fields of research so we should never forget them.

 White coats with test tubes – clever buggers!