The Synthetic Zero Dilemna

(Installment 13 of the autobiographical series, "Liters to the Black Bone.")
I work in biotech for a biological information technology using a flow cytometer. Flow Cytometry is a new technology that allows researchers to take living snapshots of biology as that biology is reacting to experimental conditions. This is sometimes referred to as Kinetic study, and is a breakthrough compared to the previous technology, which allowed static biology. (In static biology, researchers conduct an experiment, then take snapshots of the remains and try to figure out what happened.)

In a path breaking genetics article published last year, researchers discovered that mutation is common in cell division. The likely cause of pathology is signaling between proteins during mutation. If living biology is a symphony of protein signaling among living cells, then pathology (like cancer) is a discordant note. This sort of systemic, dynamic, and property based analysis of biology is not possible with static technology. (Imagine trying to reconstruct a symphony with a few 1 second recordings of the piece, this is essentially what the slide and microscope model attempts to do.)

We use FC to study protein pathways using biomarkers in cells. We're developing what is called a classifier for patient response to drug treatment for acute myeoloid leukemia, a particularly nasty cancer that tends to afflict the aged. Before that I worked in public health for the government at the CDC, doing research on birth defects.

 

There is a drug on the market now that anyone can take, but doctors cannot prescribe it. The drug has been tested against every ailment and proven to be effective in virtually every case, but very little money has been spent on its research. It is a drug that is used as a baseline against which to judge all others. The drug has been validated in many clinical trials as effective with no known side effects, but it is not FDA approved. It usually comes in a little white pill, and you can find it anywhere, but you cannot buy it, if you use it, you don't know it.
 

What it is?

(Installment 10 of the autobiographical series, "Liters to the Black Bone.")

Apoptosis, oil on canvas

(Installment 13 of the autobiographical series, "Liters to the Black Bone.")
My pet theory about drugs is that they are all placebos. Some of the better ones do a few things at the chemical level, but every one of them would trend toward non-effectiveness with repeated studies. We do studies, find a few statistical outliers, and then chase them back to the regression. Placebex (Placebo effects) is a drug that always works no matter the ailment. Medical science and general science more generally are beginning to grapple with the problem of reproducibility, that is, the results of experiments are very often irreproducible. The problem with this is that the knowledge of science is built on experimental data.

In Mandelbrot's work on markets, The Misbehavior of Markets, he made a broad side attack on the bell curve as a model of reality. He pointed out that volatility occurs in greater amplitude than assumed by the bell curve and, just as importantly, stochastically. The same set of conditions made not reliably precipitate an event, but if it does, then the event is very visible. In medical research, the problem of reproducibility may be related. If so, then medical research is left chasing thunderstorms, when conditions are right, they get thunder and lightning or you might get a sunny day, but you'll probably get drizzle or clouds. Throw in the placebo effect in medical science, all bets are off.