Personal Exploration and the Unknown Frontier

Portrait of Marie Curie, by R. chido Hanečková

As expeditionary voyages became more common during the early Renaissance period this sense of exploration spread across the land.  It permeated the cultural atmosphere of Europe and led to a fascination with discovery. People were excited - and rightly so - as these explorers would bring back new ideas, new stories, and new possibilities.

But physical exploration isn't the only way to discover new worlds of possibility.  During the Reformation many people found their world expanded with a similar set of new possibilities: religious and ideological freedoms.  This brave new world of ideas and opportunity would be just as inspiring to the reformers as those voyages had been to the watching public.

Five Theses on Re-humanizing Medical Research

Sleeping sickness isn't on our research agenda
because most victims are too poor to pay

In this age of the booming information economy, we face new challenges to human progress. As seen in previous eras, the "invisible hand" described by Adam Smith as guiding the economy can be interrupted by certain expressions of self interest, such as monopolies and trusts.


A problem that the medical research community faces is an overemphasis on profit and an under-emphasis on people. Though medicine can never fully be dehumanized, we have seen repeated compelling examples of when medical research has been stalled, derailed, or falsified to meet business agendas.


In light of this ongoing conflict to bring the care for humans back into healthcare research, I would like to present five theses for your consideration.

Hot Spots in Immunology Revisited

A cancer patient receiving immunotherapy

In this blog post, I'd like to take a closer look at the three issues I originally presented in my previous blog post. In an attempt to make the issues more accessible to those outside of the scientific community, I'd like to briefly discuss historical connections to these issues and how communication affects these issues.

1. Balancing Efficacy and Side Effects in Cancer Immunotherapy 

Hot Spots in Immunology

• Vaccination
  Due to a falsified study published by an unscrupulous doctor, vaccination has become the public scapegoat for Autism. A huge amount of research has been done to verify this connection. Each new study has found the original claim of vaccines causing Autism to be false, but the public belief still exists. Many parents have gone to great lengths to prevent the vaccination of their children. The nation has recently been suffering from outbreaks of Measles, a virus that can be easily be kept out of the population when the majority of citizens are vaccinated. The reported cases and death toll of this outbreak are climbing fast. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/health/measles-update-cdc-800-cases/index.html

• Balancing Potency and Side Effects in Cancer

New Worlds in Nuclear Physics

One of the primary reasons of maritime exploration during the 15^th-16^th centuries was to advance the commercial interests of nations such as Spain and Portugal. Indeed, Christopher Columbus searched for a westward route to the rich islands of East Asia. Ferdinand Magellan expanded this objective and reached the Spice Islands in the western Pacific Ocean.

Scientific exploration also seeks for treasure, but this treasure is the treasure of knowledge. As scientific experiments build our knowledge, we increasingly have a better idea of what the unknown is like.

One region of discovery in science today is the known isotopes of the chemical elements. These can be plotted by proton and neutron number. As we do a three-dimensional plot of proton number, neutron number, and the logarithm of the lifetime, we obtain what looks like a landmass with a mountain range in the middle. This is what nuclear physicists call the “nuclear landscape”. As each new isotope is discovered, we in a sense discover a new small piece of the nuclear landscape.

My Picture of Orcas Island, WA

A frequent criticism of nuclear physics is that all of the expense of experiments usually results in a small number of atoms of short-lived isotopes. Critics see the enormous cost of experiments as worthless considering the seemingly underwhelming results of fleetingly-lived atoms.

However, the study of nuclear physics has led to enormous technological advancements over the last 100 years. If Henri Becquerel never placed a piece of uranium on a photographic plate in the dark, then we would have never understood the concept of radioactivity. If Ernest Rutherford never bombarded that gold foil with alpha particles, we would have never entered the new world of nuclear physics. If Frederick Soddy never bothered to study the different lifetimes of a substance with the same chemical properties (which would later be known as protactinium), then our knowledge of different isotopes of uranium (fissile vs non-fissile) would never have come to fruition, and nuclear fission would never have become a major power source for the world. Therefore, the study of nuclear physics has given us profound technological advancements and advantages over time.

Likewise, if Christopher Columbus never sailed west to find a new route to the Far East, then our knowledge of the Americas would have been postponed. Instead, the discovery of the Americas eventually led to the creation of the United States of America, a beacon of freedom to the world.

Enlightenment Restrictions on Female Scientists

Currently, I am working on a bachelors degree in Microbiology, planning to continue on to achieve a master's degree in a Physician's Assistant program. Because of this, I was interested in societal trends regarding women in science during the Enlightenment Era.

In the Renaissance, learned women went against the social grain. Educating women was really only seen in the upper class. Some fathers taught their daughters their trade, but even then it wasn't really very academic. Educated women were seen as neglecting their homemaking roles.

In the Enlightenment, however, these societal trends actually became enforced through restrictions. Women were not allowed to access certain instruments like microscopes. A microbiologist cannot get very far without her microscope. Even midwives had restrictions on the tools they could use.

As the study of science became more structured, there began to be right and wrong ways to do it. Somewhere along the line, being male became part of the "right" way.

As a woman pursuing a career in science in a world very concerned with social equality between men and women, it would be really easy to point to these restrictions as the birth of an oppression women continue to be hurt by. That, however, is not the point I would like to make.

I would like to be thrilled at how far we have come. I have access to a microscope. In fact, I have a favorite microscope that I race others in my class for. And I win. I draw pictures with bacteria on differential media plates:

My professor is a fantastic woman with a PhD. My teaching assistants in both of my science classes this semester are highly capable and confident female peers. I don't think women should at all be ashamed of their position or opportunities in science. In fact, with the men having such a head start, we should be very proud of how far we have come. The only restrictions we have now are the ones we put on ourselves.

Image Credit: Courtney Hilton

The Father of Microbiology

Bacillus megaterium

This rod-shaped bacteria is Bacillus megaterium. This bacteria produces penicillin amides which is used to make commercial penicillin. I performed this gram stain last week, but scientist have been observing microbial life for much longer than that.

The first drawings of bacteria were done by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1676. Leeuwenhoek was what we would call today an optometrist. He made the lenses for peoples' glasses. As he experimented with ways to increase magnification, he developed the earliest form of a microscope, which looked rather like a glorified magnifying glass.

When he discovered the power of this microscope, he began looking at everything he could. Eventually, he had the idea to scrape plaque off people's teeth and examine it under the lens. That is when he saw microscopic little creatures and drew these images.

His drawings are detailed and accurate enough that scientists today can say with significant confidence which bacteria he observed. His discovery of microbial life earned him the title of "Father of Microbiology".

I think Leeuwenhoek's story is highly characteristic of the Enlightenment Era. With this sense of individualism from the Renaissance and the thrill of discovery from the voyages, amateurs everywhere were making monumental discoveries like this.

Image Credit: Courtney Hilton

Observation and Truth

We live in a world where we have literally just about every piece of information that we could need in the palm of our hands.  (Literally. We all have smartphones).  And not only that, but the information that we can find is usually valid and has some sort of evidence to support it.  This practice of having information that is backed by evidence is a product of the Enlightenment period, which has greatly shaped the world that we live in today.

Before this time period, of course individuals sought growth and learning.  After all, that’s what the Renaissance was all about.  However, it was during the Enlightenment that people started looking for validity in the information flowing around.  

There was a man by the name of Francis Bacon in this time period of the Enlightenment who was known for being a philosopher over the scientific method.  He is well-known for his thoughts regarding observation and truth. He made the following statement

“Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in through of the course of nature.  Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”


This quote marks a crucial turning point where people began looking to science for answers.  It was no longer as common to accept thoughts and theories without any evidence or observation.  This was a huge leap in progress for the world, and because of it, we have access to so much free flowing information that can be validated through evidence.

Image credit: by Frans Pourbus