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 .p166 [[ | ]]		  .p162 Rachel Carson shown nature's wonders by mother Maria
 .p163 1929 attended Johns Hopkins, masters thesis 1932, not allowed to continue PhD program
 .p164 1937 September Atlantic Monthly article Undersea
 .p164 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Sea_Wind | Under the Sea Wind ]] 1941
 .p165 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_Around_Us | The Sea Around Us ]] 1951
 .p166 1.3 million copies in 32 languages

Pandora's Lab

Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

  • Paul A. Offit, M.D. . 2017 . 500 OFFIT 2017 . Hillsboro Library

  • p001 Introduction

  • p015 Chapter 1 - God's Own Medicine

  • p016 alpha-narcotine papaverine thebaine

  • p022 Alexander Wood invented first hypodermic needle 1853 to administer morphine (rather than orally), believed that injection would "cure the appetite" for morphine addiction.

    • "Pandora" repeats myth that morphine overdose injection killed his wife, who actually outlived him by 10 years.

  • p024 Heinrich Dreser responsible for aspirin and heroin and codeine at Bayer AG

  • p025 Eli Lilly "safe" heroin distributed over-the-counter without prescription in the US in 1900, JAMA "standard of care" in 1906

  • p025 1906 JAMA: heroin standard of care for many respiratory ailments; by 1910 doctors aware of addiction, use declined

  • p027 next, thebaine a different opium compound. oxycodone the synthetic form in 1916,

  • p028 Purdue OxyContin time release tablet releases immediate addictive dose if chewed

  • p041 Chapter 2 - The Great Margarine Mistake

  • p043 Ancel Keys urged fat restriction

  • po44 1977 McGovern report food guidelines authored by Nick Mottern non-scientist reporter

  • p048 The 1977 report conflated unhealthy saturated fats with healthy, essential unsaturated fats (some double bonds between carbons)

  • p050 margarine unhealthy trans-fats

  • p051 Cis-unsaturated fats (two adjacent "missing" hydrogens at a double carbon bond) are liquids because the molecules bend and don't stack into a solid

  • p052 Trans fat molecules straight and unhealthy

  • p053 Crisco Crystalized cottonseed oil, hydrogenated

  • p054 CSPI Center for Science in the Public Interest

  • p054 and NHSA(?) pushed trans-fats as a healthy alternative
  • p055 replacing trans-fats with other unsaturated fats reduced heart disease by 33% (or 53%)

  • p056 vLDL worse than LDL, HDL best

  • p056 Food and Additives Amendment grandfathered pre-1958 foods, Institute of Medicine petitioned transfat removal in 1994

  • p057 Harvard nutritionist Walter Willett recommended margarine in 1980s, "sending them to their graves prematurely"

  • p057 2006 FDA required trans-fats on nutrition labels
  • p058 products with less than 0.5g transfat can claim 0g transfat on the nutrition label
  • p058 avoid "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil on nutrition label
  • p059 "Welsh study showed exactly the opposite" (that trans-fat was bad)

  • p061 Chapter 3 - Blood From Air

  • p062 farming without artificial fertilizer feeds less than 4 billion people.

  • p063 Fritz Haber 1868-1934

  • p066 1912 Germany imported 900,000 tonnes of nitrates, mostly from Chile, potential naval blockade

  • p067 University of Karlsruhe and BASF, more German Nobel Prizes

  • p068 N₂ triple bond "strongest in nature" 945 kJ/mol (natural carbon monoxide 1072 kJ/mol is 50-100 ppb)

  • p070 Robert Le Rossignol engineered first tabletop "Haber" process

  • p071 Output increase from 0.005% to 8% "logarithmically better" oopsie, should be "exponentially better"

  • p071 Industrial scaleup by Carl Bosch, founder of IG Farben

  • p072 by 1911, 8000 pounds of ammonia per day

  • p072 1913 Oppau plant produced 60,000 tons of ammonia per year

  • p073 "Today" 130 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer

  • p074 Ammonia Production Plants—A Review

  • p074 M.W. Kellogg 1960s most efficient ammonia manufacturing

  • p074 Chinese obesity, 30% of Beijing overweight
  • p075 Donaldson Louisiana largest nitrogen producing plant, 8 million tonnes per year

  • p075 dead zone in Gulf of Mexico larger than New Jersey

  • p076 excess nitrogen also from food animal manure
  • p077 1914 Germany invaded neutral Belgium, Haber and 90+ other German scientists signed manifesto defending the war
  • p078 1915 Haber produces 150 T/day ammonium nitrate explosive

  • p078 1917 Leuna plant produced 240,000 T/y

  • p079 Speer: If Allies had focused on destroying Leuna plant, WWII could have ended in eight weeks

  • p081 1916, Haber chief of Chemical Warfare Service, 2000 scientists
  • p081 chlorine gas, immediate death, heavier than air and spreads down into trenches

  • p081 violation of 1907 Hague Convention, signed by Germany

  • p082 Haber releases 150 tonnes of chlorine near 1915 Ypres, witnessed by future Nobel Prize winners Otto Hahn, Gustav Hertz, James Franck, and Hans Geiger

  • p083 Haber's chemist wife Clara, first Phd for German woman, suicide 1915 after Fritz supervises chemical weapon attack

  • p084 Haber's son Hermann 1946 Nov 9 suicide in Watertown NY age 44. Hermann's daughter Claire researched antidote for chlorine gas, also committed suicide

  • p085 Fritz Haber also produced phosgene and mustard gas for warfare

  • p086 more than 1M disabled and 26K killed by WW1 chemical weapons

  • p086 Treaty of Versailles also forbid chemical weapons

  • p087 Haber exported them, calling his production "oil and refinery plants"
  • p088 Jewish ancestry Haber forced to resign after Hitler
  • p090 Carl Bosch died 1940, depression and alcoholism

  • p091 Chaim Weizmann meets exiled Haber in Switzerland

  • p092 Haber dies 1934, buried in Basel Switzerland

  • p093 Haber also developed Zyklon as a pesticide

  • p094 Several Haber relatives murdered with Zyklon B at Auschwitz and Treblinka

  • p131 Chapter 5 - Turning the Mind Inside Out

  • p132 Jeffrey Dahmer 1992 guilty of 15 counts of murder, 1994 beaten to death by fellow inmate

  • p132 Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz 1935 lobotomy

  • p134 20 more patients and many elsewhere

  • p135 Phineas Gage 1848 frontal lobe destroyed, behavior and personality damaged

  • p136 Moniz 1949 Nobel Prize, despite objections
  • p146 Lobotomies survived through early 1970s because (1) desperation (2) full mental hospitals (3) hospitals hideous
  • p147 Lobotomies weren't much worse than treatments like electroshock

  • p147 Julius Wagner 1917 malaria therapy

  • p148 syphilis spirochetes killed by high temperatures of fever

  • p148 some Americans go to Mexico for malaria therapy to cure (imaginary) chronic Lyme disease

  • p148 Manfred Sakel insulin shock therapy

  • p148 Typical comas one or two months, many died
  • p149 lobotomies "the therapies of despair"

  • p150 Walter Freeman "drive through lobotomies"

  • p151 Weston State Hospital 228 patients in 12 days, 22 operations in 135 minutes

  • p152 25% of patients "surgically induced childhood", permanently institutionalized,some had 2nd and 3rd lobotomies
  • p152 patients "adjusting to level of domestic invalid or household pet"
  • p153 3% died of bleeding, 3% permanent seizures, 2 of 11 children died from cerebral hemmorrhages

  • p153 Yale's John Fulton "Why not use a shotgun? It would be quicker!"

  • p153 AMA and APA silent, media misinformed public

  • p154 without the press (Saturday Evening Post, New Your Times) lobotomies wouldn't be widely accepted

  • p155 Rosemary Kennedy lobotomized age 23

  • p155 attending nurse quit the profession
  • p156 John Kennedy secretly visited Rosemary once, no other family visited in 25 years

  • p156 1959 movie Suddenly Last Summer "lobotomy positive"

  • p156 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest negative

  • p157 Asylum American horror film

  • p157 Thorazine

  • p157 1955 Tofranil antidepressant and Miltown anti-anxiety mind-numbing drugs

  • p159 72yo Freeman's last lobotomy 1967, patient died of cerebral hemorrhage, license lost
  • p159 Freeman died of colon cancer in 1972 at age of 77. Now regarded by many as a monster, and American Mengele
  • p160 Joseph Kennedy never looked at a lobotomy patient before Rosemary's disabling operation

  • p161 Chapter 6 - The Mosquito Liberation Front

  • p161 Rachel Carson alerted by newspaper editor Olga Huckins about DDT bird kill

  • p162 Rachel Carson shown nature's wonders by mother Maria
  • p163 1929 attended Johns Hopkins, masters thesis 1932, not allowed to continue PhD program
  • p164 1937 September Atlantic Monthly article Undersea

  • p164 Under the Sea Wind 1941

  • p165 The Sea Around Us 1951

  • p166 1.3 million copies in 32 languages

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  • p191 Chapter 7 - Nobel Prize Disease

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  • p213 Chapter 8 - Learning From the Past

  • p214

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  • p241 Epilogue

  • p241

  • p243 Acknowledgements

  • p273 About the Author

  • p275 Index

PandorasLab (last edited 2026-05-15 06:01:03 by KeithLofstrom)