Drugs, Wars, and Women in STEM
“How parts of science align with real life is the real art of science; not so much pretty pictures of neurons.”
A lady boss, comedian’s son, and independent scientist walk into a lab. They inadvertently design a new meaning to “the war on drugs”. Opioids, dope, molly, and the DEA are all terms that has hit news and art commentary (think Jay-Z’s Tom Ford) cycles like a never-ending wash cycle. Drugs and war are not going anywhere. Neither are major discoveries by women in STEM.
Check out why Candace Pert, PhD is featured as our June 2020 $TEMmer cover model and influencer… and had two dude scientists troll her on “social media”.
Candace Pert, PhD is our June 2020 $TEMmer because she discovered the opiate receptor in the brain while in graduate school. Opioid has become a huge concern and burden in the last decade. If we look back at the century, we cannot ignore that opiates also played a role during wars as a way to help soldiers cope. We have moved on from illicit morphine to doctor prescribed fentanyl. But, we have not surpassed addiction to substances that turn on opioid receptors and take away pain.
Paul Greengard, PhD and Alexander Shulgin, PhD were chosen as commenters to make the connection to war and drug enforcement. Nuclear physics (hello World War II A-bomb) thwarted Greengard away from a physics career. As a titan in the neuroscience community, he got a Nobel Prize for dopamine-related discoveries.
Shulgin definitely saw what the DEA could do to people who had controlled substances of potential abuse. He was an independent scientist who tested the party drug now called Molly, or MDMA. He was just looking for a way that people could release their minds. The drug enforcers were like ‘no way nerd’.
Dopa wha wha what?!
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that turns on the reward system. Basically, it keeps an addict wanting more drugs to keep that good feeling going.
How parts of science align with real life is the real art of science; not so much pretty pictures of neurons. Staining cells with magnificent fluorescent dyes is stunning, but nothing compares to how the findings can be used to move humanity forward in a positive direction. Pert discovering a teeny tiny brain receptor in the 1970’s connects to the prescription opioid addiction crises in the 2010’s. She did this before hashtag “women in stem” existed. Now that we know that we need to get over gender, how can we innovate pharma to minimize drug abuse? The dopamine discovery Greengard got the prize-of-a-lifetime for underlies that the original war on (street) drugs is actually about physiological imbalances and not economic or educational status. Now that we know that we shouldn’t equate socioeconomic status to user status, how can we formulate better preventatives for addiction? Shulgin’s backyard chemistry on psychedelics traverses the need to evolve policy in drug enforcement. Now that we know that we need to minimize long prison sentences for certain drugs, how can we create more intelligent controlled-substance laws? The wars that continue between genders, countries, and societal classes can be resolved by looking throughout time what science has really given us. If we want and can get over the noise.
Fashionable $cience
Nerdicus but make it stylish
$cientific Tidbits
Dropping gems since 2012