Amazon.com
Since "opening" in 2003, Second Life has become an explosive worldwide phenomenon, inhabited by over 5 million virtual residents by 2007. Hit the digital ground running with Second Life: The Official Guide, the ultimate travel reference to this exciting new "metaverse." Get all the information you'll need to create your avatar, navigate the landscape, and build your in-World business to produce real-world profits.
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Book Description
Second Life: The Official Guide is the perfect book for anyone interested in Linden Labs fascinating Second Life metaverse. This book explores in detail every aspect of Second Lifes rich and multilayered virtual world, explains how it works, and offers a wealth of information and practical advice for all Second Life residents.
The first part of the book, Getting a Second Life, acquaints potential and new players with the Second Life world. It describes the metaverses geography as well as its society, explaining the written and unwritten rules.
The second part, Living a Second Life, deals with the practical and economic aspects of Second Life: creating and customizing an avatar, building objects, scripting, and making money.
The third part of the book, Success in Second Life, discusses ways to enjoy Second Life more. This section includes profiles of successful Second Life residents, discusses fascinating in-world events, and examines how some are using Second Life for business, training, and other purposes.
The book closes with a glossary as well as quick-reference and additional-resources appendices.
The accompanying CD-ROM features special animations, character templates, and textures created by Linden Lab exclusively for this book. The disc also guides new users through installation and includes a code that grants a special object their first time entering the metaverse.
Customer Reviews:
A Beginner's Guide to Second Life.......2007-10-09
Book was what it was advertised to be. Full of easy to understand instructions. Excellent buy.
Scatterbrained.......2007-09-22
This MAY be the best introduction to SL, I don't know, but it is not well organized or specific. There is a huge problem with any print material on SL-it is obsolete before it comes off the press. Hey, if you are into Second Life, this is as good a place as any to start. Just don't think its going to be anywhere all that you need. But then, there probably isn't ANYTHING that tells you all you need to know. One thing, read this BEFORE you create your avatar! Although then you won't know what the heck half the stuff means.
Second Life, the Cadillac of VR Sites........2007-09-22
Like Second Life itself, this book gives you the basics and then expects you to find someone willing to explain the rest. Although the book glosses over the details, it is still a very good place to start finding your way around the often bewildering world of SL. I found the chapters on "A Cultural Timeline," and "The Future and Impact of Second Life" to be of particular interest.
All in all? A good, basic introduction.
looking for more locations?.......2007-09-12
this book is great but if you are looking for more locations and things to do check out this book:
Second Life Travel Guide
Not bad and if you play SL this book will help.......2007-08-24
I am new to Second Life and was looking for a book to help me understand and the enjoy the simulation more. This book has very helpful in helping me understand more about Second Life. I recommend it for any one new to the simulation
Book Description
Human Anatomy and Physiology Lab Manual, Cat Version is a clearly written and comprehensive lab manual that guides readers through well-planned lab activities and feature illustrations and full-color photographs that help readers better understand the material. Designed to stand alone or for use with other materials, the manual offers hands-on experience with anatomical structures and physiological concepts to aid in mastery of the subject. The cat version also includes detailed dissection exercises that clearly leads readers step by step through the dissection process. Packaged with the book, the new PhysioEx™ Version 6.0 includes new Serological Testing laboratory simulations, a revised and redesigned Histology Tutorial, and online worksheets with multiple-choice answers. PhysioEx™ Version 6.0 is available in CD-ROM format and on the Web at www.physioex.com.
The Human body, An Orientation, The Microscope and Its Uses, The Cell, Histology, The Integumentary System and Body Membranes, The Skeletal System, The Muscular System, The Nervous System, The Endocrine System, The Circulatory System, The Respiratory System, The Digestive System, The Urinary System, The Reproductive System, Development, and Heredity, Surface Anatomy, Dissection Exercises.
For all readers interested in learning the basics of human anatomy and physiology.
Customer Reviews:
Great delivery!.......2007-03-14
The book came on time in top condition and at a reasonable price. Can't complain; just getting it on time was important.
Book Description
With its distinctive investigative approach to learning, this laboratory manual encourages students to become active participants in the science of biology. While teaching basic concepts and laboratory procedures important for all biology majors to learn, the authors also invite students to pose hypotheses, make predictions, conduct open-ended experiments, collect data, and then apply the results to new problems. Laboratory exercises are divided into three categories – directed investigations, thematic investigations, and open-ended investigations.
Customer Reviews:
free book for sale?.......2007-01-03
The book is everything I expected, except for the tape on front of the cover. I tried to remove the tape and lo and behold, the printing under the tape says "FREE COPY". I don't think it's right to get a free copy of a book from the publisher then sell it. So although I'm pleased with the book, I'm disappointed in the deception.
Book Description
Human Anatomy and Physiology Lab Manual, Main Version is a clearly written and comprehensive lab manual that guides readers through well-planned lab activities and feature illustrations and full-color photographs that help readers better understand the material. Designed to stand alone or for use with other materials, the manual offers hands-on experience with anatomical structures and physiological concepts to aid in mastery of the subject. Packaged with the book, the new PhysioEx⢠Version 6.0 includes new Serological Testing laboratory simulations, a revised and redesigned Histology Tutorial, and online worksheets with multiple-choice answers. PhysioEx⢠Version 6.0 is available in CD-ROM format and on the Web at www.physioex.com.
The Human body, An Orientation, The Microscope and Its Uses, The Cell, Histology, The Integumentary System and Body Membranes, The Skeletal System, The Muscular System, The Nervous System, The Endocrine System, The Circulatory System, The Respiratory System, The Digestive System, The Urinary System, The Reproductive System, Development, and Heredity, Surface Anatomy.
For all readers interested in learning the basics of human anatomy and physiology.
Customer Reviews:
Not pleased.......2007-09-09
I am not happy to report that we never received the book we ordered. We ordered the book on August 4, 2007 and told shipment would arrive by August 24th. On August 24th, we wrote in that we had not received the book. We never received a response from Amazon. On August 26th a duplicate of the book had to be purchased from the University Bookstore as the school term had begun and we were still without the needed book. The only positive thing I can say is that after submitting a claim on the purchased book, our money was promptly returned.
Good Work.......2005-09-12
I was pleased with the arrival time of this book and the quality of material that arrived. Thanks
Book Description
The laboratory exercises in this manual are coordinated with Inquiry into Life. The text emphasizes how we can apply biological knowledge to our own lives and to our relationships with other organisms. Although each laboratory is referenced to the appropriate chapter in Inquiry into Life, this manual may be used in coordination with other general biology texts. This manual can be adapted to a variety of course orientations and designs. There are a sufficient number of laboratories to permit a choice of activities over the length of the course. Many activities may be performed as demonstrations rather than as student activities, thereby shortening the time required to cover a particular concept.
Customer Reviews:
Lab Manual.......2007-03-14
The book was in tact but I found out later that some pages in the index were missing. Good book overall.
Amazon.com
That the United States government engaged in dangerous biological research during World War II will come as no surprise to Americans jaded by revelations of secret medical experiments and radiation exposures. But that the accident-plagued facility where it happened--and continues to happen--is just off the coast of Long Island may alarm many readers of Michael Christopher Carroll's Lab 257. Carroll, an attorney by trade, gamely takes on complex microbiology and shady government record-keeping in telling the story of Plum Island, home of the Animal Disease Center--no place for a casual picnic. The lab, initially set up by the Army to research ways of destroying Soviet farm animals (and to keep them from destroying ours), has often dealt with bacteria and viruses that can be passed from animals to humans. Carroll draws compelling causal links between Plum Island and the introduction of Lyme disease, West Nile virus, and duck enteritis, all non-native germs that wreaked sudden havoc in North America, and all germs that Plum Island scientists were allegedly working with. With hurricanes and terrorists on his mind, Carroll asks readers to imagine a scenario in which the Plum Island lab might release pathogens into the most densely populated area in the country. He ends the book with two chilling questions. First, does the United States need a research facility that investigates animal pathogens with potential for human transmission? Second, considering that Plum Island never had a particularly good safety record, is it the right place for such a facility? Lab 257, while occasionally veering into unsupported speculation, introduces key questions to the debate on biological security in the 21st century. --Therese Littleton
Book Description
Nestled near the Hamptons, the fashionable summer playground of America's rich and famous, and in the shadow of New York City, lies an unimposing 840-acre island unidentified on most maps. On the few on which it can be found, Plum Island is marked red or yellow, and stamped U.S. government—restricted or dangerous animal diseases. Though many people live the good life within a scant mile or two from its shores, few know the name of this pork chop-shaped island. Even fewer can say whether it is inhabited, or why it doesn't exist on the map. That's all about to change.
Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island on the edge of the largest population center in the United States is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore.
Based on innumerable declassified government documents, scores of in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, Lab 257 takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations including virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers who were denied assistance in diagnosis by Plum Island brass, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly 1999 West Nile virus outbreak.
An exploration of the complex world of microbiology, viruses, and bacteria, Lab 257 also shows how the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which ran Plum Island for the last half century, is far more than wholesome grade-A eggs and the food pyramid. The book probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism. And for those interested in questions of national security and safety, it is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes.
Lab 257 will change forever our current understanding of Plum Island -- a place that is, in the words of one insider, "a biological Three Mile Island."
Customer Reviews:
Interesting and frightening read.......2007-04-11
I picked up this book on a whim because I love the conspiracy theory-type books about all the shady government projects. As it turns out, this book really disturbed me.
Carroll, an attorney, wrote this book over the course of seven years, during which he requested government documents under the FOIA, conducted interviews with current and former employees of Plum Island, researched the connection to US-harbored Nazi scientists, and the inevitable decline of lab conditions under the new American trend of "privatization". Carroll visited the island himself before his access was pulled; he never states exactly why this happened. The book outlines the creation of the labs, how and why the island location was chosen (prevailing winds blow out to sea rather than inland, or so they said at the time), how it went from the US Army's jurisdiction to the USDA, and from there how the program went into a long, slow decline in standards, safety, and hazards. The chapter on the hurricane was terrifying in itself - you can feel the terror the maintenance workers must have felt knowing how helpless they were to prevent a potential "biological meltdown".
The book brings up some interesting potential connections between the labs on Pulm island and the relatively sudden appearance of Lyme disease and West Nile virus. Even if the research into animal diseases is the absolute truth, you still can't help but feel incredibly suspicious that the highest concentration of both Lyme and West Nile began in and around Connecticut and Long Island - the closest points of civilian population to Plum Island. Couple that with the discussion of bird migration and mosquito infestations, and you're inspired to do further reading on your own to uncover more of the truth - you can't take anything at face value, but any time the US government is involved on this large of a scale, healthy skepticism of government denials is required.
For those who wonder if we aren't already seeing "bioterror" attacks in the form of salmonella and e. coli attacks on our food manufacturing facilities and mad cow disease ravaging British livestock, this book is a must read on the programs that Richard Nixon supposedly ended in 1972.
The U.S. Government exposed...again........2006-12-13
I don't know about most American's, but I for one am fed up with the insane amount of government corruption. Every day there is something new discovered, or admitted by the government that shows how the principle that one's government should benefit them and protect them before anything else is falling apart. Lab 257 exposes the truth about some of the nation's greatest mysteries, including the outbreak of both Lyme disease and the West Nile virus, both unseen in the United States until after Plum Island's research on the substances, both originating in the area immediately surrounding the island. Carroll ultimately allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the nature of the Biological Time Bomb known as Plum Island, but as for me, it is quite obvious that the American government is not always working for its people. The sad truth, the harsh truth, must be known; reading this book is essentially to destroying the ignorance so prevalent in the mass society we live in, the ignorance towards politics and just what exactly is going on in terms of biological research. The greatest threat to America is not from Islamic terrorists, but from its own government's lack of care for the most dangerous of situations. Plum Island is one startling example of such blatant disregard, and Lab 257 ingeniously exposes the true nature of its past, present, and frightening future.
Worth your time!.......2006-08-08
Quick read that will really make you question your government. While the intentions were good in the beginning..it just goes to show what happens when we get lazy about certain things (security) and start neglecting important details.
This one will have you scratching your head about the intelligence of our government. I only wonder if this would happen in a post 9-11 America.
Hurricane Bob, Hurricane Katrina = Government Keystone Cops.......2006-03-14
Read and become informed of an enemy within, your? government's arrogance coupled with incompetence. But they did stay at a Holiday Inn Express! With leaders like these who needs enemies? Plum Island brings on the West Nile virus, Lyme disease & many more. Yes, the point of origin, Plum Island USA, a biological laboratory doing dangerous germ/bacterial warfare expermintation. Your tax dollars are killing you! Surprize, Surprise! Well researched by an author who lived it for more than 5 years before publishing. The mainsteam press won't touch this! Its simply too true. Off limits for public consumption. You be the judge.
Lab 257.......2006-03-01
Carroll has done his homework - he documents all the chilling incidents in the history of this "lab of terror." His speculations on the origins of Lyme Disease are thought-provoking, too. A good read with a lot of detail.
Book Description
Praise for Allen & Harper's Laboratory Manual for Anatomy and Physiology
"Connie Allen and Valerie Harper...have done an excellent job of preparing an A & P lab manual that students will appreciate and instructors will find easy to teach."
--Moges Bizuneh, Ivy Tech State College - Indianapolis
"I am very impressed with the quality and the readability of this lab manual."
--Karen K. McLellan, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
"....this lab manual is an excellent one. It is well-written, has just the right amount of written text, and contains very good illustrations, photos, lab activities and questions."
--Janet Lichti, Ivy Tech State College - Lafayette
Also available
PowerAnatomy, An Online Laboratory Manual
Connie Allen, Valeria Harper, Susan Baxley
ISBN: 0-471-44558-4
PowerAnatomy combines over 100 of Primal's exquisitely detailed, 3D models of the human body, along with text, exercises, and review materials.
Fetal Pig Dissection: A Laboratory Guide, 2nd Edition
Connie Allen and Valerie Harper
ISBN: 0-471-70138-6, Paper
Cat Dissection: A Laboratory Guide, 2nd Edition
Connie Allen and Valerie Harper
ISBN: 0-471-70141-6, Paper
Customer Reviews:
Satisfied Customer.......2007-10-05
Hello Seller,
Simply, thank you for the commitment of customer satisfaction. I recieved my books in the condition as described, and they arrived on time. Keep up the great work. One happy customer is one that is kept.
Everything you need to know in one place.......2006-04-10
This book complements the textbook well. It also includes some things that are not in the text, such as working with the electron microscope and so on. A good way to prepare for your lab exams and test your knowledge of the information. I definitely recommend it :)
Great deal !!!!!!!!!!!.......2006-03-14
Thanks, the book was in new conditions, just as promise! I made a good deal with them. Fast shipping!!!! Thank You!!!!!!!! AAA+++++++
Great Purchase.......2005-09-26
This was an emergency buy, and was a great one! Great book and great service.
Thanks!
Book Description
Benson's SHORT is designed for a 1 or 2-semester A&P course where no single dissection specimen is used. In addition to the dozens of effective exercises, this lab manual is unique in that students are asked to label many of the figures to reinforce concepts. It is self-contained, detailed, and very logical in its approach. Because of its detailed content (textual material, line art, photos, and histology micrographs), it is generally not necessary to take the course textbook to the lab.
Book Description
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.
Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness.
A strange and colorful story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel.
For thousands of years, humans had sought medicines with which they could defeat contagion, and they had slowly, painstakingly, won a few battles: some vaccines to ward off disease, a handful of antitoxins. A drug or two was available that could stop parasitic diseases once they hit, tropical maladies like malaria and sleeping sickness. But the great killers of Europe, North America, and most of Asia—pneumonia, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, meningitis—were caused not by parasites but by bacteria, much smaller, far different microorganisms. By 1931, nothing on earth could stop a bacterial infection once it started. . . .
But all that was about to change. . . .
—from The Demon Under the Microscope
Customer Reviews:
The Story of the Sulfa Drugs.......2007-09-24
Within the first fifty pages this book took it's place in my top ten non-fiction works. It includes history, science, biography and business wrapped together in a fast-paced and clear manner. It's a shock to see some of the often fatal diseases our grandparents faced that today have been all but forgotten. A world where a boil, insect bite, or cut finger could result in an ugly death. The author states that this is a book about "antibiotics," he includes the sulfa drugs to be part of this class, rather than just the traditional antibiotics derived from molds. With his description the author is being a bit disingenuous, I suspect to help market his book. The book is about the sulfa drugs which were the first effective and industrially manufactured family of drugs. This entire class of drugs have been all but forgotten. The details of the discovery and use of traditional "antibiotics" is well documented. I personally might have skipped a book subtitled "The Story of the Sulfa Drugs". I am very happy to have been slightly mislead and directed to this excellent history.
Sulfanilamide is still on the American market.......2007-05-06
It's not mentioned in the book, but it is marketed as AVC Cream, most commonly placed on gauze and packed into the [...] after hysterectomy. Other dosage forms are long obsolete, but this one is still in use and probably always will be.
We hear all the time about antibiotic resistance, but most of us don't even think about what life was like before the drugs even existed. This is why home births really were safer prior to World War II, due to all the germs floating around in hospitals and NOTHING that could be done if infection struck. People, especially children like Hildegard Domagk, died from diseases we hardly bat an eye at now, and the drug got the ball rolling. I'm guessing we don't hear about it like we do with penicillin because it's not in general use any more.
This book is mostly the history of sulfanilamide, the first really effective systemic antibacterial drug. The drug had some really weird side effects, so it probably wouldn't be considered safe by modern standards. It also addresses political and business issues surrounding the drug and is a mini-bio of its discoverer, Dr. Gerhard Domagk. Who's Hildegard? His daughter, who got a deadly infection after being poked with a needle and was one of the first people who life was saved by this drug. Last I heard, she was still living and would be in her late 70s.
I purchased the book because of the chapter on the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster of 1937, a very dark chapter in American medical history that has largely been forgotten to the point where I have never conversed with a fellow pharmacist who has ever heard of it. We associate the Massengill corporation with douches (LOL) but yes, that's who made it, and no, nobody tested the concoction to see if it was safe for human consumption before sending it out on the market, where it could be sold without a prescription. Sulfanilamide does not dissolve readily in alcohol or water, but it does dissolve in diethylene glycol (antifreeze) so that's what was used, causing the deaths of 107 of the 353 people known to have taken it. The History Channel did a program on this a few years ago called "Elixir of Death"; the author who was working on a book of this title who was prominently featured in the program died in a car accident shortly before it aired in 2003.
I also had the privilege of seeing Thomas Hager read from his book on C-Span II's Book TV. This was quite interesting to hear perspectives straight from the author.
Great read.......2007-04-14
What a wonderful sweep through a seemingly simple but world changing set of discoveries. How scary the world was before antibiotics! How much the discovery detailed in this book not only changed the world of pharmacy, it impacted who becomes an M.D. and how they do their job, and so one. I highly recommend this book.
The first miracle drug...before penicillin. A story that deserved to be revived........2007-04-11
Some dolt on a bicycle slammed into me yesterday. Fortunately I did not break any bones, but the bruises are giving me an uncomfortable time since then. After rinsing both knees with chlorhexidine and iodine, I was not concerned; if there was an infection, antibiotics would take care of it.
But it wouldn't have been that way seventy years ago, when the most you could do to prevent a wound from getting infected...was wait, and perhaps apply some crude remedies. That was how it had been for two hundred years. For all the progress we had made, bad bugs still mostly got the better of us. It is appalling that about fifty percent of deaths in WW1 were from infections that riddled shrapnel wounds, and not from explosives or gunfire themselves. Once infection set in and gas gangrene made its hideous appearance, all one could do was wait, and maybe hope that the suffering would end soon...until sulfa drugs appeared on the scene.
That era of sulfa drugs, and not the one of penicillin, was the first heroic age of antibiotics. Most of us, if asked to name the first wonder-drug antibiotic, would name penicillin. But long before penicillin, sulfa saved thousands of lives. Without sulfa around, Hoover's son died. With sulfa, FDR's son, and Winston Churchill, survived. Thomas Hager has done an excellent job in bringing this forgotten but extremely important story to life in "The Demon Under the Microscope". The former biographer of Linus Pauling has shown us how different it was to suddenly have a drug that cured infections that previously would have almost certainly killed you. The time until the 1930s was a scary time, with every kind of Strep and Staph waiting to kill you after entering your body through the slightest cut, and diseases whose names we don't even remember now were rampant and much feared. It was sulfa that first declared war on and largely eradicated all these infections.
At the center of the sulfa story is the remarkable doctor and biochemist Gerhard Domagk. Domagk was an officer in WW1 and saw thousands needlessly die around him in agony, all because nobody could prevent the infection that set in after they were hit. After the war, Domagk went through a succession of jobs and finally ended up at Bayer, where he had a trailblazing career in the discovery of new cures for old infections. Building upon Paul Ehrlich's convictions about azo dyes as bacteriocidal agents, he and his colleagues tested hundreds of analogs, until he hit on the right one. This was the beginning of SAR as we know it today. And here, we can see the chemist's tragedy. Domagk tested the compounds, but it were two chemists who actually made them. Yet, they were excluded from the prize that Domagk would gather. This was not his fault, but really the workings of the Swedish committee, which did not behave this way for the first and last time. Patriotic and yet conscientious, Domagk stayed put after Hitler came to power, losing himself in his work to distract himself from the injustice that was taking place around him. In 1939, he was awarded the Nobel prize, but the Nazis did not allow him to accept it. Bayer itself became connected with the notorious IG Farben, which designed hydrogen cyanide vials (Zyklon B) for the gas chambers.
There is much in the book that is eye-opening, and sulfa is only one chapter in a book that also deals with medical history and the social history of science. There were several things I was unaware of; one revelation was that the modern American university model is based on the German model. The Germans were the world leaders in both industry and academia, and the modern and highly successful trend of close collaboration between industry and academia was already widespread in Germany. For all their philosophical bent, the Germans never saw any contradiction between pure and applied research, and the university-industry collaboration and connection led to very fruitful research in engineering and medicine. The modern patent regime too was pioneered by German industry.
The most important fact which I was not aware of was the pivotal albeit unfortunate role that sulfa played in revitalizing the FDA and granting it powers to implement laws that made it mandatory for manufacturers to display warnings and ingredients labels on their products. Before that, almost anyone could set up shop and sell metals, elixirs, and liquids that promised cures for everything from syphilis to baldness, a practice that went back two hundred years. But in the 1930s, through a series of unfortunate events, a concoction of sulfa in, of all the things, ethylene glycol, was sold extensively in many states. Today, we would be horrified at such large-scale use of an industrial solvent for mixing a drug. But at the time, there were almost no laws that required manufacturers to list such petty things as solvents on their bottles. The FDA was a skimpy and ineffectual agency at the time, with a few dozen agents scuttling around to mainly keep a check on excessive profit making. After the sulfa-ethylene glycol concoction was sold, a wave of death began that did not stop until several hundred people died, and public outrage changed the face of the FDA- and the way in which drugs are developed, manufactured and sold in the US- forever. After the tragedy, the FDA acquired new powers that it could have only dreamt of before. Of course, it took the thalidomide tragedy to have the kind of strict FDA regime that we have today, but the sulfa tragedy started it all, and made drugs substantially safer for the public.
An amusing and ironic chemical fact also accompanies the discovery of sulfa. Even though it were the Germans who pioneered its development, it was a French group that discovered the most important fact about the drug; that it was not the azo chemical linkage, but the benzene sulfonamide group that was key to the action of the drug. Once they discovered this fact, all bets were off for the Germans, because the potent part of sulfa turned out to be benzene sulfonamide, a cheap bulk chemical that could not be patented! Even if the Germans tried to quickly get past this handicap by synthesizing new derivatives at a terrific pace to outnumber their French colleagues, the cat was out of the bag, and they could never top their initial success.
Gradually, sulfa made it everywhere, and into the United States through the perspicacity and interest of two Johns Hopkins researchers. It began to be marketed in every form and colour and flavour, as every derivative and analog. In the 1930s, it became the drug of choice for treating every imaginable kind of Strep or Staph infection, most of which it effectively tackled. Cure by sulfa was touted as a miracle cure, with its relentless and wondrous effect on cases that only ten years ago would have been totally hopeless. But as a drug, sulfa had already fallen behind. Penicillin had arived on the scene. In due course, resistance would develop to both drugs, albeit relatively gradually to sulfa.
Domagk spent the last days of his life in gloomy peace, distraught by his country's destruction, and somewhat validated by the thousands of lives he had saved. Sulfa is still used for topical purposes.
We now know that sulfa competes with PABA (para-amino benzoic acid) for the synthesis of dihydrofolate, an essential hub in the synthesis of folic acid. Sulfa and further related research led to, among other things, Methotrexate, a widely used current drug in cancer therapy. But in the end, what befell sulfa has befallen other antibiotics. The bugs have become resistant. When sulfa and penicillin were discovered, they were regarded as miracles. Perhaps we need another miracle for bad bugs today, and the age of fervent antibiotic research might be coming back to haunt us. But it should not be forgotten that sulfa was the first miracle drug, before penicillin.
Before Penicillin.......2007-01-18
Everyone knows how penicillin revolutionized medical treatment of infections, most know about how Alexander Fleming discovered it, and some even know how Howard Florey and Ernst Chain took the discovery and made it something that could be used practically. Everyone knows that penicillin was a miracle drug, but almost everyone has forgotten that it was not the first miracle drug. The sulfa drugs came a decade before, producing unprecedented cures that physicians and patients thought of as miraculous; and then the penicillin-type antibiotics surpassed them. The history of the sulfa drugs is told in _The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug_ (Harmony Books) by Thomas Hager. It is clear that sulfa deserves much more attention in the history of medicine than it has gotten. By some definitions, since they are not made by living organisms, sulfa drugs are not really antibiotics, but they certainly fought microbial infections in their time, and got medicine beyond the limits of mere antisepsis or disinfecting. They also proved a model for scientific evaluation of drug effectiveness.
Chances are that you have never even heard the name of the doctor whose work is the backbone for this story, Gerhard Domagk. Domagk makes a tenacious but unspectacular hero, working day after day through clinical trials, mostly with mice, but he was inspired by his harrowing experiences as a medic in the First World War to fight against the infections he had seen there caused by the strep germ, a feared killer, one that killed in many different ways, infecting tissue, blood, or spinal fluid. For five years, there were no results of his labwork, until he was sent a molecule with sulfonamide attached to it. Sulfa worked in mice; did it work in humans? It is quite amazing to read about how the drug was tested for human use, because it is nothing like the trials of any new drug today. The tests did not involve, for instance, assigning patients randomly to drug versus placebo groups, or doing double blind testing. The drug was simply leaked to hospitals who had serious cases, patients who had gotten all the usual treatments and were simply going to die if nothing out of the ordinary was tried. Domagk was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1939, and was thrilled to be following his heroes Koch and Ehrlich. But because four years previously, the Peace Prize had been awarded to a German pacifist, Hitler had forbidden any German citizen to accept any further Nobel. Not only could Domagk not claim his award, he was put in jail for being "too polite to the Swedes" who awarded the prize. After the Nazi blight was cleared away, Domagk was able to claim his prize in 1947, when sulfa was old news. When he gave his speech of acceptance, he alluded to the emergence of resistant strains of bacteria, a prescient warning which could not have been fully appreciated by his audience at the time.
The main reason the sulfa revolution has been forgotten, of course, is that the first miracle drugs were followed by more broadly powerful antibiotics starting with penicillin. Researchers testing the new medicines used many of the laboratory procedures Domagk's team had initiated, and also did not have to face the previous pessimism that taught that chemicals would never be able to fight infection. It might be that sulfa's greatest contribution to medical history was a needed increase in medical confidence. Hager's fine history highlights sulfa's role in industrial, medical, social, and military changes of the time; sulfa did far more than just kill strep germs.
Book Description
This lab manual is for a one or two-semester majors level general biology lab and can be used with any majors-level general biology textbook. The labs are investigative and ask students to use more critical thinking and hands-on learning. The author emphasizes investigative, quantitative, and comparative approaches to studying the life sciences.
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