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Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs
This is Morton Meyers' fascinating, entertaining, and highly accessible look at the surprising role serendipity played in some of the most important medical discoveries in the 20th century. Though within the scientific community a certain stigma is attached to chance discovery because it is wrongly seen as pure luck, happy accidents happen every day and Meyers shows how it takes intelligence, insight, and creativity to recognize a "Eureka! I found what I wasn't look for!" moment and know what to do next. Penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra were all discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in search of something else. In discussing these medical breakthroughs and others, Dr. Meyers makes a cogent, highly engaging argument for a more creative, rather than purely linear, approach to science.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published March 9, 2007
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Vladimir Nabokov bridged the tension between the rational and the intuitive in his observation that “there is no science without fancy and no art without fact.” - location 389
One day, when Rothstein walked into his lab, he noticed a box of detergent that was used in the lab to clean glassware. On the box, surrounded by a flashy red star, were the words “New Improved Dreft.” Comparing its label to that of an old box of Dreft, Rothstein saw that the new version contained an added ingredient—a water softener. As it turned out, this softener coated glass tenaciously and chemically bound the material Rothstein was studying (uranium ions) to the surface of the glass. His creative mind then made an extraordinary leap. He wondered about a possible analogy: If there is binding on the surface of glass, could there be binding on the surface of a cell? Seizing upon this capability of the chemical in the water softener, he went on to prove that there are binding sites on the cell surface as well. Fortune had provided him with a contaminant similar to the natural enzymes involved in transport across the cell membrane. But Fortune might have come calling in vain if not for Rothstein's ability to draw the essential analogy. Some ten years before the cell membrane could actually be seen with the development of electron microscopy, Rothstein's “accidental” discovery enabled him to show that it was a metabolically active structure containing enzymes critical in transport mechanisms. - location 408
the open mind embraces serendipity and converts a stumbling block into a stepping-stone. As Winston Churchill whimsically observed, “Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.” - location 447
Leeuwenhoek wanted to find out, by the microscopic examination of macerated peppercorns, why pepper is hot. (He thought the peppercorns might have spikes on their surface). - location 589
Classically referred to as “consumption,” human tuberculosis was then responsible for one in seven of all European deaths. - location 694
If, he reasoned, there were dye receptors—structures that received dyes—there might be drug receptors, substances fixed by microbes but not by the human host. In this way, the concept of “magic bullets” was born. His basic idea, or hypothesis, was that since some dyes selectively stained bacteria and protozoa, substances might be found that would be selectively absorbed by the parasites and would kill them without damaging the host. Ehrlich termed fighting diseases with chemicals “chemotherapy” (a term that came to be used exclusively for cancer treatments) and later allowed that “initially, chemotherapy was chromotherapy,” meaning treatment with dyes. - location 778
To remind himself of an important forthcoming task or something he must not forget, he would on occasion send himself a postcard. - location 787
protozoologist - location 813
The first patient was a ten-month-old infant severely ill with staphylococcal septicemia (blood poisoning), a condition from which no one had ever been known to recover. Treating the baby with Prontosil was a daring gamble on Domagk's part. If the child had not survived, it would not have been clear whether the drug or the disease had killed him. The child's skin turned red, and his physicians were able to calm his excited nurse only by explaining that the drug was basically a dye. - location 942
After this incident, the Hitler regime established a Nazi Party Prize that could be won only by a German of impeccable Aryan ancestry and decreed that acceptance of a Nobel Prize was forbidden. Domagk sought advice from the authorities on whether it would be possible to accept the prize. Two weeks later he was arrested by the Gestapo and forced to send a letter drafted for him by the Nazi government refusing the prize. After being released from jail, he confided in his diary: “My attitude to life and its ideals had been shattered.”10 When he was arrested a second time while traveling to Berlin for an international medical conference, he realized that he was under constant surveillance and thereafter acted cautiously to protect himself and his family. These experiences plunged him into years of depression. Only after the war, in 1947, was he able to travel to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize medal—but not the prize money, which had been redistributed. - location 1007
In 1937 shortly after young FDR Jr. recovered from his serious infection, a small Tennessee firm named Massengill and Company, which made pharmaceuticals for animals, began marketing a sulfa drug for people. To make it more easily administered to children in a sweet liquid form, they dissolved the drug in diethyl glycol, a commercial solvent used to make antifreeze, and sold it widely throughout the South as “Elixir of Sulfanilamide.” The company tested neither the solvent nor the final product for toxicity. Within weeks, more than a hundred people died, most of them children. The company's president refused to take responsibility and came to be convicted only on a technicality: the fact that the word elixir means a medicine containing alcohol, and there was none in the product sold. Massengill's chief chemist committed suicide. The incident outraged the public, and Congress, and on June 15, 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, providing for safety tests on drugs before they could be marketed. This milestone legislation twenty years later spared the United States from the thalidomide tragedy. - location 1054
More than 60 percent of German deaths during the Franco-Prussian War were attributed to typhoid. - location 1081
During the Boer War, Wright was grudgingly given permission from the War Office to inoculate “such men as should voluntarily present themselves.” However, the army medical authorities were more worried by the body's reaction to vaccination—which often rendered a soldier unfit for several days—and therefore ordered many troopships departing for the war to throw caseloads of Wright's vaccines overboard. With only 4 percent volunteering to be vaccinated, 13,000 soldiers were lost to typhoid on the South African veld as against 8,000 battle deaths. (When giving evidence before a military tribunal, Wright was asked if he had anything more to say. His response was typically blunt: “No, sir. I have given you the facts. I can't give you the brains.”)2 - location 1084
(Fleming was generally so laconic that one of his colleagues claimed that trying to have a conversation with him was like playing tennis with a man who, when he received a serve, put the ball in his pocket.) - location 1100
Wright and Fleming made two significant observations regarding the ineffectiveness of the traditional use of antiseptic methods in curing established infections. Not only were antiseptics, such as carbolic acid, not reaching the many hidden crevasses of the deep, jagged war wounds typically caused by shrapnel, where bacteria could flourish, but the antiseptics themselves were destroying the white blood cells that were part of the body's natural immune system. - location 1110
About half of the 10 million soldiers killed in World War I died not directly from explosives, bullets, shrapnel, or poison gases but from infections in often relatively mild wounds. - location 1115
Fleming would surprise himself with a chance revelation. In November 1921 he had a cold. While he was working at his laboratory bench at St. Mary's, a drop from his runny nose fell on a Petri dish and “lysed” (dissolved) some colonies of bacteria. These common, harmless airborne microbes became translucent, glassy, and lifeless in appearance. Excited, Fleming prepared a cloudy solution of the bacteria and added some fresh nasal mucus to it. The young bacteriologist V. D. Allison, who was working with Fleming at the time, described what happened next: “To our surprise the opaque suspension became in the space of less than two minutes as clear as water…. It was an astonishing and thrilling moment.”4 Fleming had discovered lysozyme, a naturally occurring antiseptic substance present in tears, nasal mucus, and saliva. In order to gather such secretions to extend his investigations, he made colleagues, technicians, and even visitors weep batches of tears by putting drops of lemon juice into their eyes. Peering through his microscope, he marveled that bacteria in the presence of tears became swollen and transparent, then simply disappeared before his eyes. - location 1122
The extract, however, was unstable, losing its efficacy over a period of weeks, and he could not isolate and purify the active principle from the mold filtrate. To his detriment, he was not a chemist and had little background and limited resources for studies on the “mold juice,” as he called it. - location 1222
America's entry into the war in December 1941 guaranteed a total dedication to a project that would ultimately benefit battlefield casualties. Military personnel were ordered to gather handfuls of soil from around the world in the hope of tracking down a fungus that produced high quantities of penicillin. Mold from soil samples flown in by the Army Transport Command from Cape Town, Bombay, and Chungking were the front-runners. In the end, the army was beaten by Mary Hunt, a laboratory aide who one day brought in a yellow mold she had discovered growing on a rotten cantaloupe at a fruit market right in Peoria. This proved to be Penicillium chrysogenum, a strain that produced 3,000 times more penicillin than Fleming's original mold!29 This made commercial production of penicillin feasible. The laboratory assistant was called Moldy Mary for the rest of her life. - location 1364
In a disastrous fire on the night of November 28, 1942, at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, 492 people perished. Penicillin was successfully used to treat 220 badly burned casualties. But the public remained ignorant of this “miracle,” as penicillin was then classified as a military secret. With the end of the war, the necessity for secrecy came to an end, and in March 1945 commercial sales began. - location 1397
In 1952, two years after the settlement, Waksman became the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, even though Nobel regulations allow up to three people to share it. Schatz waged an unsuccessful campaign to obtain a share of the Nobel Prize. Burton Feldman, a historian of Nobel awards, uncharitably refers to Waksman as getting the Nobel “for not discovering streptomycin.” - location 1619
In 1856 two German scientists, Albert von Kölliker and Heinrich Müller, accidentally discovered electrical activity in cardiac muscle.1 Working with frog preparations, they had excised a leg nerve with its attached muscle and had just opened the chest wall of a second frog when they were called out of the laboratory. Upon returning, they encountered an astonishing and wholly unexpected phenomenon. The muscle of the excised preparation from the first frog was contracting along with the heartbeat of the second frog. The cause was evident: they had inadvertently dropped the first frog's excised nerve end on the exposed surface of the heart of the second frog. They accidentally discovered that the heart produces an electrical current with each beat. - location 3217
In 1928 he extracted a compound from a cow's adrenal gland, not yet recognizing it as vitamin C. Thinking he had isolated a new sugarlike hormone, he named it “ignose,” the suffix -ose being used by chemists for sugars or carbohydrates (like glucose and fructose) and the igno- part indicating he was ignorant of the substance's structure. The editor of the Biochemical Journal did not share his humor and rejected the submitted manuscript. When Szent-Györgyi's second suggestion for a name, “Godnose,” was similarly rejected, he settled upon the name hexuronic acid, based upon the known six carbon atoms in the formula. He subsequently identified it as ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1937. - location 5235
Vladimir Nabokov bridged the tension between the rational and the intuitive in his observation that “there is no science without fancy and no art without fact.” - location 389
One day, when Rothstein walked into his lab, he noticed a box of detergent that was used in the lab to clean glassware. On the box, surrounded by a flashy red star, were the words “New Improved Dreft.” Comparing its label to that of an old box of Dreft, Rothstein saw that the new version contained an added ingredient—a water softener. As it turned out, this softener coated glass tenaciously and chemically bound the material Rothstein was studying (uranium ions) to the surface of the glass. His creative mind then made an extraordinary leap. He wondered about a possible analogy: If there is binding on the surface of glass, could there be binding on the surface of a cell? Seizing upon this capability of the chemical in the water softener, he went on to prove that there are binding sites on the cell surface as well. Fortune had provided him with a contaminant similar to the natural enzymes involved in transport across the cell membrane. But Fortune might have come calling in vain if not for Rothstein's ability to draw the essential analogy. Some ten years before the cell membrane could actually be seen with the development of electron microscopy, Rothstein's “accidental” discovery enabled him to show that it was a metabolically active structure containing enzymes critical in transport mechanisms. - location 408
the open mind embraces serendipity and converts a stumbling block into a stepping-stone. As Winston Churchill whimsically observed, “Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.” - location 447
Leeuwenhoek wanted to find out, by the microscopic examination of macerated peppercorns, why pepper is hot. (He thought the peppercorns might have spikes on their surface). - location 589
Classically referred to as “consumption,” human tuberculosis was then responsible for one in seven of all European deaths. - location 694
If, he reasoned, there were dye receptors—structures that received dyes—there might be drug receptors, substances fixed by microbes but not by the human host. In this way, the concept of “magic bullets” was born. His basic idea, or hypothesis, was that since some dyes selectively stained bacteria and protozoa, substances might be found that would be selectively absorbed by the parasites and would kill them without damaging the host. Ehrlich termed fighting diseases with chemicals “chemotherapy” (a term that came to be used exclusively for cancer treatments) and later allowed that “initially, chemotherapy was chromotherapy,” meaning treatment with dyes. - location 778
To remind himself of an important forthcoming task or something he must not forget, he would on occasion send himself a postcard. - location 787
protozoologist - location 813
The first patient was a ten-month-old infant severely ill with staphylococcal septicemia (blood poisoning), a condition from which no one had ever been known to recover. Treating the baby with Prontosil was a daring gamble on Domagk's part. If the child had not survived, it would not have been clear whether the drug or the disease had killed him. The child's skin turned red, and his physicians were able to calm his excited nurse only by explaining that the drug was basically a dye. - location 942
After this incident, the Hitler regime established a Nazi Party Prize that could be won only by a German of impeccable Aryan ancestry and decreed that acceptance of a Nobel Prize was forbidden. Domagk sought advice from the authorities on whether it would be possible to accept the prize. Two weeks later he was arrested by the Gestapo and forced to send a letter drafted for him by the Nazi government refusing the prize. After being released from jail, he confided in his diary: “My attitude to life and its ideals had been shattered.”10 When he was arrested a second time while traveling to Berlin for an international medical conference, he realized that he was under constant surveillance and thereafter acted cautiously to protect himself and his family. These experiences plunged him into years of depression. Only after the war, in 1947, was he able to travel to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize medal—but not the prize money, which had been redistributed. - location 1007
In 1937 shortly after young FDR Jr. recovered from his serious infection, a small Tennessee firm named Massengill and Company, which made pharmaceuticals for animals, began marketing a sulfa drug for people. To make it more easily administered to children in a sweet liquid form, they dissolved the drug in diethyl glycol, a commercial solvent used to make antifreeze, and sold it widely throughout the South as “Elixir of Sulfanilamide.” The company tested neither the solvent nor the final product for toxicity. Within weeks, more than a hundred people died, most of them children. The company's president refused to take responsibility and came to be convicted only on a technicality: the fact that the word elixir means a medicine containing alcohol, and there was none in the product sold. Massengill's chief chemist committed suicide. The incident outraged the public, and Congress, and on June 15, 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, providing for safety tests on drugs before they could be marketed. This milestone legislation twenty years later spared the United States from the thalidomide tragedy. - location 1054
More than 60 percent of German deaths during the Franco-Prussian War were attributed to typhoid. - location 1081
During the Boer War, Wright was grudgingly given permission from the War Office to inoculate “such men as should voluntarily present themselves.” However, the army medical authorities were more worried by the body's reaction to vaccination—which often rendered a soldier unfit for several days—and therefore ordered many troopships departing for the war to throw caseloads of Wright's vaccines overboard. With only 4 percent volunteering to be vaccinated, 13,000 soldiers were lost to typhoid on the South African veld as against 8,000 battle deaths. (When giving evidence before a military tribunal, Wright was asked if he had anything more to say. His response was typically blunt: “No, sir. I have given you the facts. I can't give you the brains.”)2 - location 1084
(Fleming was generally so laconic that one of his colleagues claimed that trying to have a conversation with him was like playing tennis with a man who, when he received a serve, put the ball in his pocket.) - location 1100
Wright and Fleming made two significant observations regarding the ineffectiveness of the traditional use of antiseptic methods in curing established infections. Not only were antiseptics, such as carbolic acid, not reaching the many hidden crevasses of the deep, jagged war wounds typically caused by shrapnel, where bacteria could flourish, but the antiseptics themselves were destroying the white blood cells that were part of the body's natural immune system. - location 1110
About half of the 10 million soldiers killed in World War I died not directly from explosives, bullets, shrapnel, or poison gases but from infections in often relatively mild wounds. - location 1115
Fleming would surprise himself with a chance revelation. In November 1921 he had a cold. While he was working at his laboratory bench at St. Mary's, a drop from his runny nose fell on a Petri dish and “lysed” (dissolved) some colonies of bacteria. These common, harmless airborne microbes became translucent, glassy, and lifeless in appearance. Excited, Fleming prepared a cloudy solution of the bacteria and added some fresh nasal mucus to it. The young bacteriologist V. D. Allison, who was working with Fleming at the time, described what happened next: “To our surprise the opaque suspension became in the space of less than two minutes as clear as water…. It was an astonishing and thrilling moment.”4 Fleming had discovered lysozyme, a naturally occurring antiseptic substance present in tears, nasal mucus, and saliva. In order to gather such secretions to extend his investigations, he made colleagues, technicians, and even visitors weep batches of tears by putting drops of lemon juice into their eyes. Peering through his microscope, he marveled that bacteria in the presence of tears became swollen and transparent, then simply disappeared before his eyes. - location 1122
The extract, however, was unstable, losing its efficacy over a period of weeks, and he could not isolate and purify the active principle from the mold filtrate. To his detriment, he was not a chemist and had little background and limited resources for studies on the “mold juice,” as he called it. - location 1222
America's entry into the war in December 1941 guaranteed a total dedication to a project that would ultimately benefit battlefield casualties. Military personnel were ordered to gather handfuls of soil from around the world in the hope of tracking down a fungus that produced high quantities of penicillin. Mold from soil samples flown in by the Army Transport Command from Cape Town, Bombay, and Chungking were the front-runners. In the end, the army was beaten by Mary Hunt, a laboratory aide who one day brought in a yellow mold she had discovered growing on a rotten cantaloupe at a fruit market right in Peoria. This proved to be Penicillium chrysogenum, a strain that produced 3,000 times more penicillin than Fleming's original mold!29 This made commercial production of penicillin feasible. The laboratory assistant was called Moldy Mary for the rest of her life. - location 1364
In a disastrous fire on the night of November 28, 1942, at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, 492 people perished. Penicillin was successfully used to treat 220 badly burned casualties. But the public remained ignorant of this “miracle,” as penicillin was then classified as a military secret. With the end of the war, the necessity for secrecy came to an end, and in March 1945 commercial sales began. - location 1397
In 1952, two years after the settlement, Waksman became the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, even though Nobel regulations allow up to three people to share it. Schatz waged an unsuccessful campaign to obtain a share of the Nobel Prize. Burton Feldman, a historian of Nobel awards, uncharitably refers to Waksman as getting the Nobel “for not discovering streptomycin.” - location 1619
In 1856 two German scientists, Albert von Kölliker and Heinrich Müller, accidentally discovered electrical activity in cardiac muscle.1 Working with frog preparations, they had excised a leg nerve with its attached muscle and had just opened the chest wall of a second frog when they were called out of the laboratory. Upon returning, they encountered an astonishing and wholly unexpected phenomenon. The muscle of the excised preparation from the first frog was contracting along with the heartbeat of the second frog. The cause was evident: they had inadvertently dropped the first frog's excised nerve end on the exposed surface of the heart of the second frog. They accidentally discovered that the heart produces an electrical current with each beat. - location 3217
In 1928 he extracted a compound from a cow's adrenal gland, not yet recognizing it as vitamin C. Thinking he had isolated a new sugarlike hormone, he named it “ignose,” the suffix -ose being used by chemists for sugars or carbohydrates (like glucose and fructose) and the igno- part indicating he was ignorant of the substance's structure. The editor of the Biochemical Journal did not share his humor and rejected the submitted manuscript. When Szent-Györgyi's second suggestion for a name, “Godnose,” was similarly rejected, he settled upon the name hexuronic acid, based upon the known six carbon atoms in the formula. He subsequently identified it as ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1937. - location 5235
January 16, 2021
This is an excellent book about the many scientific discoveries over the years, but specifically those that were discovered by 'accident'.
".... many of the most essential medical discoveries in history came about .... because someone stumbled upon an answer and, after some creative thought, figured out what problem had been inadvertently solved."
Some of these serendipitous discoveries include: Viagra, antidepressants, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, surgical gloves, the Pap Smear. All were discovered while looking for something else.
The book concludes with the importance of scientists to embrace the evidence wherever it leads and to recognize any new possibilities, without being hindered from using their natural talents for finding the truth with a 'passionate intensity'.
The author goes on to stress the need to encourage this kind of research. "We must consider whether our current educational obsessions and fashions are likely to help or hinder serendipity in the future and ask how we can nurture a penchant for serendipitous discovery in today's children and future generations."
Nathan Kline is quoted and it seems to summarize the intent of this book:
"If we were to eliminate from science all the great discoveries that had come about as the result of mistaken hypotheses or fluky experimental data, we would be lacking half of what we now know (or think we know)."
".... many of the most essential medical discoveries in history came about .... because someone stumbled upon an answer and, after some creative thought, figured out what problem had been inadvertently solved."
Some of these serendipitous discoveries include: Viagra, antidepressants, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, surgical gloves, the Pap Smear. All were discovered while looking for something else.
The book concludes with the importance of scientists to embrace the evidence wherever it leads and to recognize any new possibilities, without being hindered from using their natural talents for finding the truth with a 'passionate intensity'.
The author goes on to stress the need to encourage this kind of research. "We must consider whether our current educational obsessions and fashions are likely to help or hinder serendipity in the future and ask how we can nurture a penchant for serendipitous discovery in today's children and future generations."
Nathan Kline is quoted and it seems to summarize the intent of this book:
"If we were to eliminate from science all the great discoveries that had come about as the result of mistaken hypotheses or fluky experimental data, we would be lacking half of what we now know (or think we know)."
May 18, 2023
This book provides illuminating insights into the failings of the modern scientific method and how a new approach can embrace the power of independent thinking and creativity. I learned a lot from this book and I’m excited to keep exploring these ideas in future books.
Read
September 18, 2022As the history of gunpowder shows, sometimes the things people discover have nothing to do with what they set out to find. As it turns out, the history of medical milestones is filled with these kinds of unexpected discoveries, and this is precisely what author Morton A. Meyers covers in his 2007 book, Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. Penicillin, Valium, and Viagra are just a few of the major medical discoveries that happened by pure accident. So if you like stories of kismet and unexpected twists and turns, we recommend heading over to Happy Accidents.
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History is full of troublesome substances.
Certain substances are always going to be dangerous. Sometimes, there are ways to replace these substances with something better, but other times, the benefits outweigh the risks.
In the case of mirrors, the dangerous material wasn’t even doing that great a job. Early mirrors were made through a process that involved layering glass with tin foil that had been exposed to liquid mercury. So not only were they corrosive and potentially poisonous but they also didn’t do a great job of providing a reflective image.
Fortunately, in 1856, German chemist Justus von Liebig came up with the new and improved mirror. Liebig mixed a silver/amine complex with a sugar solution and then applied this mixture to a glass surface. The sugar molecules would then be oxidized by the silver, which resulted in the sugar becoming a soluble acid that, in turn, allowed the mixture to be reduced to an extremely reflective layer of elemental silver.
There is, however, one dangerous catch. If the silver/amine solution isn’t used right away, it can undergo further reactions that will turn it into silver nitride. This substance is so unstable that it can explode for seemingly no reason at all!
Then there’s diazomethane. This is a chemical compound that has a long list of incentives to explode – including sunlight, heat, and sharp edges. As a result, it requires immense care and special, polished glassware when being used. Oh, and did we mention that it’s highly poisonous as well?
The thing is though, diazomethane can work wonders. It’s one of chemistry’s great reagents. This means that by adding diazomethane, chemists can get a whole range of reactions to take place with the greatest of ease. Yes, it’s temperamental and toxic, but it’s also one of the most helpful tools in a chemist’s toolbox.
But if we’re talking about toxic substances, we have to mention one that is practically synonymous with poison: cyanide. If you’re wearing a gold ring, necklace, or watch, there’s a good chance that cyanide was used to extract and purify that gold.
Back in 1887, a Scottish chemist and two doctors from Glasgow invented the MacArthur-Forrest process, which involves using a cyanide solution to dissolve gold from bits of ore. Some places have banned the process due to the inherent danger of using large amounts of cyanide-infused water. But given how cheap the process is, and how high the demand for gold remains, it’s still used today.
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Some discoveries came at a heavy cost.
Among the biggest developments in the early twentieth century was our understanding of radioactive substances.
One of the first clues came in 1896 when the French physicist Antoine-Henri Becquerel found that uranium salts could cause photographic plates to become exposed. Becquerel knew that uranium compounds were emitting some sort of radiation.
Becquerel’s findings piqued the interest of Marie and Pierre Curie, who ran a laboratory specializing in the research of crystals and magnetism. Marie began a rigorous search for other substances that emitted similar radiation. This led her to the element thorium and the mineral pitchblende. Through pitchblende, she isolated two new radioactive substances, polonium, named after Marie’s home country of Poland, and radium.
This work took years of effort and a whole lot of pitchblende. It wasn’t until 1902 that their work culminated in a dissertation by Marie that ended up being awarded two Nobel Prizes. But what the Curies didn’t realize was that every day they were being poisoned by the radiation. In fact, the couple’s lab books remain dangerously radioactive to this day. They’re stored in lead-lined boxes and require protective clothing to handle.
Still, it would be some time before the danger was really understood. In 1913, a piece of the puzzle was discovered by two British physicists, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy. They found that radium was actually the result of decaying uranium atoms. This meant that one element could have multiple forms, which Soddy dubbed isotopes, after the Greek words iso and topos, meaning “equal” and “place.”
But rather than seeming a danger, radioactive elements first showed signs of healing benefits, especially when it came to stopping the spread of cancerous cells and skin diseases. When this came to the public’s attention, some entrepreneurs ran with the idea of selling radioactive toothpastes and skin creams. One such product was a tonic called ‘Radithor,’ which boasted that every bottle contained a dose of radium.
Sadly, this claim was true. One victim of Radithor was the Pittsburgh steel company owner, Eben Byers, who claimed to drink as many as three bottles of Radithor every day and served as a spokesman for the tonic. In 1932, he lost his life to bone cancer and had to be buried in a coffin lined with lead. As for the silver lining of the story, his death led to a federal crackdown on products like Radithor, and new laws requiring testing and approval before such products could enter the market.
---
It took decades before the effects of leaded gasoline were revealed.
As the story of Radithor shows, sometimes profits and chemistry lead to disaster. Another unflattering chapter in the history of chemistry belongs to tetraethyl lead.
Developed in 1921 by General Motors head Charles Kettering and chemist Thomas Midgley Jr., tetraethyl lead was added to automotive gasoline to allow the fuel to burn more evenly. And while it did just that, it also caused harmful amounts of lead to be released through exhaust fumes.
Despite many deaths occurring during the manufacturing of ethyl gasoline, as it was called on the market, Midgley swore at a press conference that tetraethyl lead was safe. He even held some under his nose for dramatic effect. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Midgley had already been trying to recover from lead poisoning.
The full picture of lead contamination wouldn’t become clear until 1965, after the work of American geological chemist Clair Cameron Patterson was published. Patterson didn’t set out to uncover lead contamination. He was actually studying the decay of uranium and lead isotopes as a way of establishing dating techniques. In 1956, he estimated the Earth’s age at around four and a half billion years old – a calculation that has withstood scientific scrutiny.
So, Patterson had taken samples from around the world and analyzed the lead levels. He published his findings in a book called Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man. It revealed that the introduction of tetraethyl gas to cars and planes around the world had quickly become the number one contributor to lead contamination on the planet. This wasn’t just affecting the atmosphere. The lead was poisoning water and the food chain as well.
The dramatic increase was too much for some scientists to believe, but Patterson’s data checked out, and many countries began to ban lead from gasoline, paint, water pipes, and other products.
But that’s not the end of the story for the chemist Thomas Midgley Jr. In 1974, only a year after the Environmental Protection Agency began phasing out ethyl gas, we became aware of another planet-harming invention tied to Midgley and Charles Kettering: Freon.
---
Modern research techniques have led to the development of life-saving drugs.
There’ve been experimental ancient Egyptians, ambitious alchemists in China, and studious European chemists during the Age of Enlightenment. Throughout history, one thing has remained true: we have an urge to derive healing and life-extending medicines from the remarkable variety of molecules on the planet.
In 1988, a Nobel prize was given to three scientists who reflect our modern efforts in the unending quest for new medicines. Two of those scientists were American colleagues Gertrude Belle Elion and George Herbert Hitchings. Their innovative research techniques helped develop effective drugs to fight malaria, cancer, bacterial infections, and HIV/AIDS.
What Elion and Hitchings pioneered was the making of purine derivatives. This is a class of compounds that help form biomolecules such as DNA. Having a purine framework gives researchers a great first step in making new drugs, and who knows where we’d be now without their work.
The third honoree of the 1988 Nobel prize was the Scottish physician and pharmacologist Sir James Whyte Black. He’s responsible for two of the world’s best-selling drugs, or at least the compounds that are used in those drugs: cimetidine, which treats ulcers, and propranolol, which treats heart disease.
Another significant step forward in drug development came in 2010 when the combined forces of the drug company Merck and the bio-engineering company Codexis cracked the long-standing goal of engineering enzymes.
Think back to that volatile but handy reagent diazomethane. Having the right enzyme during a synthesis process can make all the difference. It can make reactions run smoothly, cleanly, and quickly, which is what every chemist desires.
Merck’s primary goal was to improve the synthesis of one of its diabetes medications, sitagliptin. So they brought in Codexis, and soon they were running a series of computer model variations, searching for the right enzyme to do the job. After running over 36,000 variations, they finally found what they were looking for: an engineered enzyme that ended up having 27 of its amino acids altered.
This was a huge landmark for the creation of synthetic drugs, and it could dramatically change not only medical chemistry but also the field of chemistry altogether. While enzyme engineering is still slow and costly right now, it’s likely just a matter of time before improved techniques and processing power make it more effective and commonplace.
---
History is full of troublesome substances.
Certain substances are always going to be dangerous. Sometimes, there are ways to replace these substances with something better, but other times, the benefits outweigh the risks.
In the case of mirrors, the dangerous material wasn’t even doing that great a job. Early mirrors were made through a process that involved layering glass with tin foil that had been exposed to liquid mercury. So not only were they corrosive and potentially poisonous but they also didn’t do a great job of providing a reflective image.
Fortunately, in 1856, German chemist Justus von Liebig came up with the new and improved mirror. Liebig mixed a silver/amine complex with a sugar solution and then applied this mixture to a glass surface. The sugar molecules would then be oxidized by the silver, which resulted in the sugar becoming a soluble acid that, in turn, allowed the mixture to be reduced to an extremely reflective layer of elemental silver.
There is, however, one dangerous catch. If the silver/amine solution isn’t used right away, it can undergo further reactions that will turn it into silver nitride. This substance is so unstable that it can explode for seemingly no reason at all!
Then there’s diazomethane. This is a chemical compound that has a long list of incentives to explode – including sunlight, heat, and sharp edges. As a result, it requires immense care and special, polished glassware when being used. Oh, and did we mention that it’s highly poisonous as well?
The thing is though, diazomethane can work wonders. It’s one of chemistry’s great reagents. This means that by adding diazomethane, chemists can get a whole range of reactions to take place with the greatest of ease. Yes, it’s temperamental and toxic, but it’s also one of the most helpful tools in a chemist’s toolbox.
But if we’re talking about toxic substances, we have to mention one that is practically synonymous with poison: cyanide. If you’re wearing a gold ring, necklace, or watch, there’s a good chance that cyanide was used to extract and purify that gold.
Back in 1887, a Scottish chemist and two doctors from Glasgow invented the MacArthur-Forrest process, which involves using a cyanide solution to dissolve gold from bits of ore. Some places have banned the process due to the inherent danger of using large amounts of cyanide-infused water. But given how cheap the process is, and how high the demand for gold remains, it’s still used today.
---
Some discoveries came at a heavy cost.
Among the biggest developments in the early twentieth century was our understanding of radioactive substances.
One of the first clues came in 1896 when the French physicist Antoine-Henri Becquerel found that uranium salts could cause photographic plates to become exposed. Becquerel knew that uranium compounds were emitting some sort of radiation.
Becquerel’s findings piqued the interest of Marie and Pierre Curie, who ran a laboratory specializing in the research of crystals and magnetism. Marie began a rigorous search for other substances that emitted similar radiation. This led her to the element thorium and the mineral pitchblende. Through pitchblende, she isolated two new radioactive substances, polonium, named after Marie’s home country of Poland, and radium.
This work took years of effort and a whole lot of pitchblende. It wasn’t until 1902 that their work culminated in a dissertation by Marie that ended up being awarded two Nobel Prizes. But what the Curies didn’t realize was that every day they were being poisoned by the radiation. In fact, the couple’s lab books remain dangerously radioactive to this day. They’re stored in lead-lined boxes and require protective clothing to handle.
Still, it would be some time before the danger was really understood. In 1913, a piece of the puzzle was discovered by two British physicists, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy. They found that radium was actually the result of decaying uranium atoms. This meant that one element could have multiple forms, which Soddy dubbed isotopes, after the Greek words iso and topos, meaning “equal” and “place.”
But rather than seeming a danger, radioactive elements first showed signs of healing benefits, especially when it came to stopping the spread of cancerous cells and skin diseases. When this came to the public’s attention, some entrepreneurs ran with the idea of selling radioactive toothpastes and skin creams. One such product was a tonic called ‘Radithor,’ which boasted that every bottle contained a dose of radium.
Sadly, this claim was true. One victim of Radithor was the Pittsburgh steel company owner, Eben Byers, who claimed to drink as many as three bottles of Radithor every day and served as a spokesman for the tonic. In 1932, he lost his life to bone cancer and had to be buried in a coffin lined with lead. As for the silver lining of the story, his death led to a federal crackdown on products like Radithor, and new laws requiring testing and approval before such products could enter the market.
---
It took decades before the effects of leaded gasoline were revealed.
As the story of Radithor shows, sometimes profits and chemistry lead to disaster. Another unflattering chapter in the history of chemistry belongs to tetraethyl lead.
Developed in 1921 by General Motors head Charles Kettering and chemist Thomas Midgley Jr., tetraethyl lead was added to automotive gasoline to allow the fuel to burn more evenly. And while it did just that, it also caused harmful amounts of lead to be released through exhaust fumes.
Despite many deaths occurring during the manufacturing of ethyl gasoline, as it was called on the market, Midgley swore at a press conference that tetraethyl lead was safe. He even held some under his nose for dramatic effect. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Midgley had already been trying to recover from lead poisoning.
The full picture of lead contamination wouldn’t become clear until 1965, after the work of American geological chemist Clair Cameron Patterson was published. Patterson didn’t set out to uncover lead contamination. He was actually studying the decay of uranium and lead isotopes as a way of establishing dating techniques. In 1956, he estimated the Earth’s age at around four and a half billion years old – a calculation that has withstood scientific scrutiny.
So, Patterson had taken samples from around the world and analyzed the lead levels. He published his findings in a book called Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man. It revealed that the introduction of tetraethyl gas to cars and planes around the world had quickly become the number one contributor to lead contamination on the planet. This wasn’t just affecting the atmosphere. The lead was poisoning water and the food chain as well.
The dramatic increase was too much for some scientists to believe, but Patterson’s data checked out, and many countries began to ban lead from gasoline, paint, water pipes, and other products.
But that’s not the end of the story for the chemist Thomas Midgley Jr. In 1974, only a year after the Environmental Protection Agency began phasing out ethyl gas, we became aware of another planet-harming invention tied to Midgley and Charles Kettering: Freon.
---
Modern research techniques have led to the development of life-saving drugs.
There’ve been experimental ancient Egyptians, ambitious alchemists in China, and studious European chemists during the Age of Enlightenment. Throughout history, one thing has remained true: we have an urge to derive healing and life-extending medicines from the remarkable variety of molecules on the planet.
In 1988, a Nobel prize was given to three scientists who reflect our modern efforts in the unending quest for new medicines. Two of those scientists were American colleagues Gertrude Belle Elion and George Herbert Hitchings. Their innovative research techniques helped develop effective drugs to fight malaria, cancer, bacterial infections, and HIV/AIDS.
What Elion and Hitchings pioneered was the making of purine derivatives. This is a class of compounds that help form biomolecules such as DNA. Having a purine framework gives researchers a great first step in making new drugs, and who knows where we’d be now without their work.
The third honoree of the 1988 Nobel prize was the Scottish physician and pharmacologist Sir James Whyte Black. He’s responsible for two of the world’s best-selling drugs, or at least the compounds that are used in those drugs: cimetidine, which treats ulcers, and propranolol, which treats heart disease.
Another significant step forward in drug development came in 2010 when the combined forces of the drug company Merck and the bio-engineering company Codexis cracked the long-standing goal of engineering enzymes.
Think back to that volatile but handy reagent diazomethane. Having the right enzyme during a synthesis process can make all the difference. It can make reactions run smoothly, cleanly, and quickly, which is what every chemist desires.
Merck’s primary goal was to improve the synthesis of one of its diabetes medications, sitagliptin. So they brought in Codexis, and soon they were running a series of computer model variations, searching for the right enzyme to do the job. After running over 36,000 variations, they finally found what they were looking for: an engineered enzyme that ended up having 27 of its amino acids altered.
This was a huge landmark for the creation of synthetic drugs, and it could dramatically change not only medical chemistry but also the field of chemistry altogether. While enzyme engineering is still slow and costly right now, it’s likely just a matter of time before improved techniques and processing power make it more effective and commonplace.
February 11, 2016
Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs – When Scientists Find What They’re NOT Looking For by Morton A. Meyers, M.D. is exactly what the title touts: many medical breakthroughs are a matter of being at the right place at the right time or as Louis Pasteur is quoted to have said, “In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.”
The book is chock full of stories of accidental discovery where scientists were looking for one thing and found another or were just poking around to see what shook out of the trees. The tales of discovery of the usual ones familiar to those of us Medical Historians: the discovery of penicillin, the discovery of Salvarsan 606 and others. I was amused to note that Dr Meyers didn’t mention that Viagara’s serendipitous discovery came about because during the test as a hypertension medication, male patients refused to hand over the unused samples. (It’s possible that this is an apocryphal story, still it’s a good one).
As long as Dr Meyer was relating the stories of discovery and serendipity, this was a decent book to read. In fact, despite my vast knowledge of medical history, even I was surprised by the events of Bari during World War II where an attack on the port caused mustard gas to be released. Subsequent treatment of the attack victims showed that mustard gas had depressed the body’s white cell, which led to the discovery of chemotherapy agents against leukemia and lymphoma.
However, when Dr Meyer became more contemplative, the book tended to go into the weeds. In fact, as I plodded through his introduction, I had to remind myself that this was a second read and if I hadn’t liked the book the first time, it would have been sitting on my shelf. In essence, I’d suggest skipping the introduction and the conclusion and just confine yourself to the meat. I normally don’t review the Notes section of a book, but in this case, there are some good background Notes. There are times I wish that the footnotes were placed at the bottom of the page so I didn’t have to hop back and forth between them.
I give this book a solid 3.5 though Goodreads doesn’t allow for half stars; there, I gave the book 4 stars there. It’s a good read, but stick to the tales of discovery, not the author’s pontifications.
Unlike previous books of late, this was a hardcover from my personal library as I am continuing my quest of re-reading books I’d read years ago so I can write reviews. Didn’t realize I was so close to finishing this book, otherwise, I would have picked out a book for the next read. So if you want to know what I’m currently reading, check out my Goodreads.
(Reviewed 09 March, 2014)
The book is chock full of stories of accidental discovery where scientists were looking for one thing and found another or were just poking around to see what shook out of the trees. The tales of discovery of the usual ones familiar to those of us Medical Historians: the discovery of penicillin, the discovery of Salvarsan 606 and others. I was amused to note that Dr Meyers didn’t mention that Viagara’s serendipitous discovery came about because during the test as a hypertension medication, male patients refused to hand over the unused samples. (It’s possible that this is an apocryphal story, still it’s a good one).
As long as Dr Meyer was relating the stories of discovery and serendipity, this was a decent book to read. In fact, despite my vast knowledge of medical history, even I was surprised by the events of Bari during World War II where an attack on the port caused mustard gas to be released. Subsequent treatment of the attack victims showed that mustard gas had depressed the body’s white cell, which led to the discovery of chemotherapy agents against leukemia and lymphoma.
However, when Dr Meyer became more contemplative, the book tended to go into the weeds. In fact, as I plodded through his introduction, I had to remind myself that this was a second read and if I hadn’t liked the book the first time, it would have been sitting on my shelf. In essence, I’d suggest skipping the introduction and the conclusion and just confine yourself to the meat. I normally don’t review the Notes section of a book, but in this case, there are some good background Notes. There are times I wish that the footnotes were placed at the bottom of the page so I didn’t have to hop back and forth between them.
I give this book a solid 3.5 though Goodreads doesn’t allow for half stars; there, I gave the book 4 stars there. It’s a good read, but stick to the tales of discovery, not the author’s pontifications.
Unlike previous books of late, this was a hardcover from my personal library as I am continuing my quest of re-reading books I’d read years ago so I can write reviews. Didn’t realize I was so close to finishing this book, otherwise, I would have picked out a book for the next read. So if you want to know what I’m currently reading, check out my Goodreads.
(Reviewed 09 March, 2014)
Want to read
September 22, 2018We invent by intention; we discover by surprise
- Intention per se is enough. Blueprint is not needed.
- Without intention there won't be blueprint
The ability to seize on serendipity was the mark of a major scientist
"Disovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought,"
Not scientists who merely plodded rationally from point A to point B, but rather those who came upon X in the course of looking for Y
too-close attention to detail may obscure the view of the whole
if one's perspective is too tightly focused, gross distortion may result. the human tendency to believe that one's partial view of an image-or, indeed, a view of the world captures its entirety
"We see only what we know."
his mother would ask not "Did you learn anything today?" but "Did you ask a good question today?"
- Did you do a good job today < Did you do something new today < Did you trouble/problem yourself today < Did you do a bad job today
truth is hard to discover and hard to attain, unless, you expect the unexpected
- Intention per se is enough. Blueprint is not needed.
- Without intention there won't be blueprint
The ability to seize on serendipity was the mark of a major scientist
"Disovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought,"
Not scientists who merely plodded rationally from point A to point B, but rather those who came upon X in the course of looking for Y
too-close attention to detail may obscure the view of the whole
if one's perspective is too tightly focused, gross distortion may result. the human tendency to believe that one's partial view of an image-or, indeed, a view of the world captures its entirety
"We see only what we know."
his mother would ask not "Did you learn anything today?" but "Did you ask a good question today?"
- Did you do a good job today < Did you do something new today < Did you trouble/problem yourself today < Did you do a bad job today
truth is hard to discover and hard to attain, unless, you expect the unexpected
January 23, 2021
Someone mentioned this book after a dosing miscalculation in testing the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was said to have actually increased its effectiveness. While it's not clear that those results have since held up, this book was an eye-opening look at many cases where accidental discoveries in medicine certainly have had a lasting impact. I knew about the famous cases of penicillin and Viagra, but had no idea just how many more examples there were, including such important things as chemotherapy and antidepressants.
The number of cases and Meyers' writing makes each chapter fairly short and snappy. I don't have a medical or biochemical background, but he explains the discoveries and their importance in an easily understandable way.
The book ends with a rallying call from the author to shake up the structures of modern medical research, which often seem to be preventing serendipity rather than encouraging it.
The number of cases and Meyers' writing makes each chapter fairly short and snappy. I don't have a medical or biochemical background, but he explains the discoveries and their importance in an easily understandable way.
The book ends with a rallying call from the author to shake up the structures of modern medical research, which often seem to be preventing serendipity rather than encouraging it.
October 15, 2018
I read the book happy accidents and personally I loved it. I am very interested in medicine so I am very interested in this. This book is about many doctors that experiments with medicine and i love finding cures by doing experiments. This book is based on different experiments that were real and how doctors found some cures that did end up saving peoples lives. I really liked this book, I want to be a doctor when I grow up and this gave me a better understanding of how doctors work and the challenges they face.
October 24, 2019
I'm going to go ahead and call this one a DNF. It's been sitting on my pile, half-read, for a while now and I just can't make myself go back to it. The stories are fine. They've just been told a lot, so there's nothing really new or interesting or revelatory. In fact the premise itself seems like a re-tread. Sorta boring. Not worth finishing when there are eleventy billion fantastic, compelling books waiting to be read.
August 11, 2018
A series of entertaining reconstructions of key scientific discoveries that were largely happenstance. The book is informative, fun and leaves you with a view of science that is much less mysterious and a lot more luck and politics.
The book emphasises the medical sciences which are a bit particular in comparison fo others in their ethical aspects and complexity.
The book emphasises the medical sciences which are a bit particular in comparison fo others in their ethical aspects and complexity.
January 17, 2020
I enjoyed the stories in this book, but the organization and overall structure left a lot to be desired. With each story as its own chapter, the transitions feel really abrupt (some stories are just a page or two) and it’s hard I really get into the book.
December 27, 2020
Many of the historic medical discovery came from serendipity rather than a rigid scientific process. It's important to realize the limit of human perception and be open to challenge, and make connection of unintended result.
October 20, 2018
Great book that emphasizes the importance of classic trial and error, multidisciplinary thinking, serendipity, creativity etc. in medical research.
April 17, 2020
Interesting
December 8, 2020
While the author spends a lot of effort on listing examples of serendipity, it is the conclusion that is thought provoking and makes the book a worthwhile read.
March 3, 2021
Great book, especially if you are a microbiology geek. :)
June 7, 2021
Anticlimactic
June 8, 2023
A little too technical for me.
January 8, 2024
2.5 sterren, poeh wat taai geschreven… Maar op zich een interessante boodschap
April 10, 2023
The first portion of this book is very reminiscent of The Microbe Hunters if you have by chance read that. Past that, this is a very engaging look at medical and pharmacological breakthroughs that have happened accidentally. I enjoyed it!
January 2, 2019
I had a little bit of a slow start and this book was easy read a chapter or two and then set aside and return to. I found it interesting enough that I plan to re-read parts. The final chapter was especially informative as the author laments about the lack of serendipitous opportunities in today's big pharma for profit environment. This book was written in 2007.
December 14, 2015
Amazingly well researched, a general introduction into the history of medical research from its earliest beginnings to modern day. He traces how each discovery came about and adds interesting background information that you might otherwise have never known, that make each case an entertaining tale rather than a dry textbook pronouncement you usually find in a medical text.
In the final section of the book, Meyers points to several factors which he believes create an environment unsuitable for fostering medical advancement. The current structure of grant allocation discourages innovative ideas by refusing to give out grant proposals to novel ideas; inability of the medical profession at large to adapt to new theories (see length of time for bacterial theory of ulcers to be accepted despite prove); pharmaceutical companies focusing on marketing rather on research; centralization of resources to dictate direction of medical research (such as National Institution of Cancer), etc. Any of these factors would have prevented many of the most important medical discoveries from existing today if they had existed back in the 1900s. And perhaps because of it is because of that reason, there have been very little revolutionary breakthroughs in the field of medicine in the last couple decades.
In the final section of the book, Meyers points to several factors which he believes create an environment unsuitable for fostering medical advancement. The current structure of grant allocation discourages innovative ideas by refusing to give out grant proposals to novel ideas; inability of the medical profession at large to adapt to new theories (see length of time for bacterial theory of ulcers to be accepted despite prove); pharmaceutical companies focusing on marketing rather on research; centralization of resources to dictate direction of medical research (such as National Institution of Cancer), etc. Any of these factors would have prevented many of the most important medical discoveries from existing today if they had existed back in the 1900s. And perhaps because of it is because of that reason, there have been very little revolutionary breakthroughs in the field of medicine in the last couple decades.
September 5, 2015
Many of today's best-known drugs were actually discovered accidentally or were originally targeted for a completely different disease. And a surprising number of medical procedures came about through unrelated research, often found by scientists in other fields. This book is full of surprising examples of serendipity, the accidental discovery of something unexpected. However, it's much more than just a compendium of such examples; Meyers makes some very good points about today's "medical-industrial complex" that treats research like an assembly line. With much of the grant money controlled by the National Institute of Health (NIH), where senior scientists decide who and which projects are funded, there's little room for general "fishing expedition" research, and almost no chance to follow up when unexpected results appear. Meanwhile, Big Medicine spends enormous amounts of money on advertising (how many "ask your doctor" ads do Americans see each day?) and research dedicated to tweaking existing drugs to preserve patent protection. These two facts, along with the regimented, rote-based medical education system, have made serendipitous discoveries much rarer.
October 22, 2014
This was informative and entertaining. The stories go by very quickly, and are easy to read. The conclusions get a little preachy, and over-simplify the complexities of modern medical research, but there are at least a couple of sentences that back off from the 'serendipity is the only hope' viewpoint. It tends to ignore the fact that while it is disparaging combinatorial and methodical chemistry approaches, several of the stories praise the researchers for synthesizing hundreds of compounds, of which one happens to be the answer (which is exactly what methodical chemistry tries to achieve). One story even stretches 'serendipity' to include 'forgetting to test one compound and realizing it months later just before it was thrown out.' If it hadn't been forgotten in the original series of tests, it would have been discovered that much sooner. Still, there are plenty of interesting details and good points about cross-disciplinary investigations. I recommend reading it once.
February 5, 2013
Happy Accidents is a fascinating, entertaining, and highly accessible look at the surprising role serendipity has played in some of the most important medical discoveries in the twentieth century. What do penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra have in common? They were each discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in the search for something else.
In the 1990s, Pfizer had high hopes for a new drug that would boost blood flow to the heart. As they conducted trials on angina sufferers, researchers noted a startling effect: while the drug did not affect blood flow to the heart, it did affect blood flow elsewhere! Now over six million American men have taken Viagra in their lifetime.
In the 1990s, Pfizer had high hopes for a new drug that would boost blood flow to the heart. As they conducted trials on angina sufferers, researchers noted a startling effect: while the drug did not affect blood flow to the heart, it did affect blood flow elsewhere! Now over six million American men have taken Viagra in their lifetime.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 29, 2015
Got this because Taleb mentioned it in one of his posts and it sounded interesting. The main message is that many medical breakthroughs owe their existence to serendipity and bottom-up tinkering. Fine, I buy that, but the actual meat of the book - various stories of scientists and professionals making their (accidental) discoveries is incredibly dry and shockingly lackluster. I don't expect a non-fiction book to be an epitome of good compelling writing, but c'mon - give your words and sentences some love. In full disclosure I didn't make it past first 100 pages but I have full confidence that things don't change farther in.
For a much better book on a similar subject check out LeFanu
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
For a much better book on a similar subject check out LeFanu
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
December 6, 2013
A book about how serendipity has led to innovation... in medicine. Being the tech entrepreneur I am I see soooo many parallels in how serendipity has led to innovation in technology as well.
3.5 stars because even though the average reader may be overwhelmed by all the technical jargon, the book also included insights into producing serendipity which can be used across many disciplines.
3.5 stars because even though the average reader may be overwhelmed by all the technical jargon, the book also included insights into producing serendipity which can be used across many disciplines.
September 23, 2015
I have a hard time finishing many nonfiction books. This reads like a series of articles, some chapters more interesting than others. But I didn't make it to the end- There doesn't seem to be a point.
October 29, 2016
More than luck
Far more than just a compilation of serendipitous science discovery, the stories herein can act as a reflection to how come we seem to be stuck at a lack of medical progress. The answer goes much deeper than pure luck.
Far more than just a compilation of serendipitous science discovery, the stories herein can act as a reflection to how come we seem to be stuck at a lack of medical progress. The answer goes much deeper than pure luck.
November 7, 2008
An interesting book about medical research and discovery.
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