Letters

Older chemist luncheons

I enjoyed reading Joseph F. Bunnett's letter "Silver circle events" and agree with his well-expressed wishes for "Plus 65 Luncheons" at national ACS meetings (C&EN, Dec. 6, 2004, page 4).

There is another reason, besides death and chronic diseases, why such luncheons might not be well attended. During one's working career as a chemist, the expenses incurred for going to national meetings are generally covered by one's company or university. I am 76 and retired and, unfortunately, have not attended a national ACS meeting since I retired, primarily for that reason. However, if the ideas expressed by Bunnett in his last paragraph were to come to fruition, I would be very tempted to attend a national meeting and the "Plus 65 Luncheon." I am also quite certain that there are many other 65-plus chemists who would agree with Bunnett's ideas.

Richard D. Stacy
Montrose, Colo.

Marching to success

In the article " 'Marching In' on NIH-Funded Drugs," there is a topic that I would like to clarify for the benefit of your readership (C&EN, Sept. 20, 2004, page 34).

At issue are the rights of the federal government afforded under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which provides our government the right ("march-in" right) to ensure that inventions made with taxpayer dollars get commercially developed to benefit taxpayers. These rights were written into the act to prevent the owners of intellectual property developed with federal funds from "sitting on" technology, thereby keeping it from the public.

The Xalatan case is an excellent example of how this legislation works for patients. The confusion in Susan R. Morrissey's story arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the word "developed" means in the context of bringing a new drug to market. Morrissey states: "This drug [Xalatan] was developed in the early 1980s at Columbia University and licensed to Pharmacia Corp., now Pfizer. The National Institutes of Health, through the National Eye Institute, contributed more than $4 million to support the development of this drug." The implication is that $4 million paid for a fully developed drug, tested for safety and efficacy, ready for the public. This is extremely inaccurate. Let's look at the facts.

NIH funded Laszlo Z. Bito's Columbia University laboratory during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bito hypothesized that certain molecules (prostaglandins) that are naturally occurring in the body could lower intraocular pressure (IOP). At the time, this was considered a radical idea, as larger doses of prostaglandins had been shown to increase IOP. Bito discovered that, in very small doses, prostaglandins could actually lower IOP. With this important insight, the hard work of the drug development process could begin. Pharmacia (now part of Pfizer) began looking for specific compounds that mimic the desired chemistry, tested them in animal models, tested them in people for safety and efficacy, and finally--12 years and hundreds of millions of dollars later-- introduced an important new product for the treatment of glaucoma.

The difference between Bito's important work and the marketed product Xalatan is like the difference between Fleming's observation of a bacteria-killing mold in a flask and the research, development, and manufacturing triumphs required to make penicillin an effective antibiotic. To suggest that academic insights, even remarkably important ones, are easily or cheaply translated into effective medicines reflects total ignorance of the real process of drug development. The story of Xalatan is a success story--for Pfizer, for Columbia, for Bito, and most of all, for patients and physicians. Pfizer has a successful product. Columbia earned $31 million from Pfizer in 2003 alone, and will earn more than $100 million over the life of the Xalatan license for research conducted in its labs and paid for with taxpayer funds. Bito will earn a substantial portion of those royalties. But the big winner is the patient--Xalatan is now the number one prescribed IOP-lowering agent in the U.S., with more than 100 million prescriptions written worldwide. This was the intent of the Bayh-Dole Act, and it is working.

NIH plays a critical role in funding important biomedical research that provides broad benefits to the pharmaceutical industry and to society in general. But we need to distinguish between important theoretical work and the application of this work to develop new medicines. NIH itself has looked at this question and found that NIH research played an important role in the development of just three of 47 important medicines over the past few years. We need to continue to support the important mission of NIH, but at the same time, we need to better understand and to explain to the public how this important research is actually translated into the medicines we use every day. The Xalatan case is an excellent example of how the current system accomplishes this mission.

John LaMattina
President, Pfizer Global Research & Development

Safety at school

Poorly maintained chemicals on university campuses pale in comparison to concerns at primary and secondary schools (C&EN, Nov. 22, 2004, page 43).

Around 1988, as Tulsa Section chairman, I was asked to follow up on a safety issue in local schools. A high school chemistry stockroom was being transferred to another school by custodial staff during the summer. No one would have ever known had the truck not hit a curb, "breaking" something in the back. Smoke brought firefighters, who opened the truck to find bottles standing loose on the floor (not even in boxes).

The fire marshal and I inspected high school stockrooms, finding a nightmare: no climate control; "stuff" with poor or nonexistent labels; closets under stairwells as stockrooms; and large quantities of degraded chemicals--picric acid, heavy metal salts, bottles of HF, cyanide compounds, mercury, and more junk than you can imagine.

What happened next? I contacted a local chemical reseller. We set up a "recycle" process to transfer the surplus and degraded chemicals to his company for repackaging where feasible and for disposal where not feasible. More than 80,000 bottles of chemicals were recycled. This included more than 800 lb of elemental mercury and hundreds of bottles of cyanide compounds. The company sold some, paid the school system for some (such as mercury), and disposed of the rest innovatively. The cyanide compounds were given to a local metal-plating business for use in their plating baths. The school system was happy. Their problem was solved, and they actually made a small profit. The chemicals were beneficially used, and nothing ended up in a hazardous waste landfill.

The Oklahoma Education Department became interested, and plans were made for a statewide public school cleanup in partnership with the chemical company. However, legal issues of liability, transportation, and state environmental agency concerns got in the way. As far as I know, nothing further was done.

Thanks for bringing this serious issue to the forefront. Perhaps innovative recycling could solve some of the waste issues?

David C. Thomas
Naperville, Ill.

About a decade ago, on a Saturday afternoon, I faced a safety officer who had come to my office to demand that I give him a bottle of wet picric acid, which he claimed was dangerous and unstable. I refused his request and told him, in effect, that he was talking nonsense. The safety officer became angry and started shouting.

The remedy for ignorance and superstition is education. In response to this incident, I devised an organic lab exercise, "Synthesis and Safety Testing of Picric Acid," and I included in the prelab handout stories culled from other institutions about the hysterical behavior of "safety people" upon discovering picric acid on the premises.

Students in the organic lab subsequently synthesized small quantities of picric acid and tested dry samples, folded between small pieces of aluminum foil, for shock sensitivity with a weight that fell from measurable heights through a pipe. Detonation of the sample was indicated by scrolling of the foil, since the impact of the weight itself was noisy.

Of about 150 students, only two reported detonation of the picric acid with the weight falling from the maximum height of 1 meter, and I suspect these reports were false positives from air compression. Since I anticipated this result, the students performed an identical test on commercially available, dry benzoyl peroxide in order to make the lab more interesting. The benzoyl peroxide detonated uniformly with the weight falling an average of about 14 cm.

When I read in C&EN that "picric acid is unstable and is highly explosive as a solid" and "highly sensitive to shock, heat, and friction," I think the magazine should include a disclaimer concerning the scientific accuracy of its contents.

My original dispute with the safety official was resolved by the intercession of the department head, who requested that I send the safety person a memo affirming that the picric acid was all converted to picryl chloride. I was only too happy to oblige, since picryl chloride is considerably more dangerous than picric acid, and the memo effectively demonstrated the ignorance of the safety official about the safety of chemicals.

G. David Mendenhall
Houghton, Mich.

Reversing metabolic syndrome?

I read Maureen Rouhi's article on metabolic syndrome with interest (C&EN, Nov. 22, 2004, page 83). I was dismayed to find one only short paragraph with the vaguest of information on nutrition that can prevent or reverse this syndrome. I was expecting to at least see some mention of how low-carbohydrate diets are being shown to be effective in reversing the syndrome.

Think about it. Insulin resistance comes about as a result of our body being bombarded, day after day, with high doses of glucose from high-carbohydrate foods. Throw in a healthy dose of fat for storage, and you have a recipe for disaster.

On the other hand, limiting the amount of carbohydrates in the diet eliminates the insulin roller coaster, leaving the body to maintain a steady and reasonably low blood glucose level. Fats are used for energy rather than being stored, in many cases reversing obesity. Triglycerides are significantly lowered, good HDL is increased, and LDL is slightly decreased. Glycation is also reduced as a natural consequence of blood glucose never getting to high levels. All of this serves to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

One does not need a magic pill to reverse metabolic syndrome. One simply needs to eat more like our ancestors, whose nutritional needs developed mostly prior to the advent of agriculture and the introduction of a significant and consistent source of carbohydrates. They most certainly developed prior to the supersized meal of fatty meat on a carbohydrate holder, with carbs as a side and carbs as a drink.

Leonard Rosenkrans
Hannibal, Mo.

Chemistry's failings in the U.K.

The pending closure of the university of Exeter's chemistry department is only one example of the 28 chemistry degree programs that have been shut down in the U.K. since 1996 (C&EN, Dec. 6, 2004, page 5).

Until October of 2003, I was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Kent, in England. At that time, that university closed its chemistry program. Unlike my colleagues, because of my U.S. citizenship, I was able to escape career Armageddon by returning to the U.S.

From 1999 until 2003--my time in Britain--the greatest dismay over the predicament of U.K. chemistry was not the closures, but the human reaction to the closures by U.K. academe. The leader of a major organization of British chemistry professionals made public statements that clearly amounted to "Okay, but just draw a line at the elite chemistry departments." British leaders of large, multinational pharmaceutical companies stated at professional social events that (carefully paraphrasing) they think it's good to get rid of the weaker chemistry programs. Some heads of chemistry departments even made proclamations to key industrial representatives that they should "forget" research in entire major subdisciplines at their universities. At my own department, there was a noted unwillingness to stand up to the closure or to otherwise protest its implementation.

The point that I am making is the following: Please don't treat the calamity of academic chemistry in the U.K. as an undeserved evil that suddenly beset the British Islands through no doing on the part of its inhabitants--or for that matter by academic chemistry. Nor is it entirely the fault of its government. We do the best for science by helping to build each other up, not by kicking each other when we're down, nor by shooting ourselves in the feet.

Fenton R. Heirtzler
Reno, Nev.

Pyrites demystified

In response to the letter "chemistry roadblock," pyrites are sulfide compounds and the cause of most "acid mine drainage" (C&EN, Dec. 6, 2004, page 4). When pyrites are exposed to oxygen and water, as in moist air, reactions that produce sulfuric acid and related compounds occur. The most extreme case known is at Iron Mountain Mine, Shasta County, Calif. A U.S. Geological Survey study published in Environmental Science & Technology [34, 254 (2000)] required developing new methods to measure the pH, with results as low as –3.6. Yes, that's negative.

In practical terms, you do not expose pyrites to air unless you are prepared to handle the potential for major environmental disaster from the acid. And Pennsylvania is one of the states most affected by the problem (more commonly from coal mines, whereas western states are more affected by copper and other metal mines), so they are very sensitive to the possibility of starting more acid mine drainage sites.

Harry V. Ellis III
Chicago

New year's resolution

Every year, C&EN goes through a stage where it bemoans the lack of funding for science and, in particular, for chemistry. This is usually juxtaposed with comments about the lack of interest of the student body in chemistry, and how the profession, especially the postgraduate population, is being kept alive by foreign students.

Please resolve not to do this again in 2005. The simple reason that chemistry is unattractive is that it is very hard to learn, and the rewards for this effort, especially the salary levels, are poor relative to other professions requiring the same level of dedication and skill.

Correcting this situation is straightforward: Graduate fewer chemists and limit (but do not stop) importing foreign students so that a shortage of chemists develops. Only when the chemistry skills of post-graduate chemists are valued in the same way as an M.D. is valued will the profession achieve the status it deserves. If this requires some professional license, so be it.

Malcolm L. Watts
Kennett Square, Pa.

ATTENTION READERS

Do you work with people from many different backgrounds and cultures? If so, C&EN would like to hear about your workplace and how your employer supports a diverse and thriving work environment. We are gathering the information for an upcoming story on employment and diversity in the chemical industry. Contact Assistant Editor Louisa Wray Dalton at l_dalton@acs.org by Feb. 14. Confidentiality will be respected in all cases. Readers who do not have access to e-mail may send information by fax to (202) 872-8727 or by mail to the attention of Dalton at Chemical & Engineering News, 1155--16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036.

CLARIFICATION

Jan. 3, page 36: Jeannette E. Brown believes she was the first African American woman to receive a degree in chemistry from the University of Minnesota.

CORRECTION

Jan. 17, page 26: Eli Lilly's Dec. 31 stock price fell 19.0% from the end of 2003. Johnson & Johnson's stock price rose 22.8% over the same period.

ACS MEETING TRAVEL CHANGE

If you are making plans to travel to an ACS meeting--be it national or regional--please note that Delta is no longer offering special ACS fares. Delta has restructured its fares, and in doing so, it has canceled its contracts with organizations, including the American Chemical Society.

United and US Airways continue to provide special fares for 2005 ACS meetings. Go to http://chemistry.org/meetings for details on the ACS travel program.