Tag Archives: Chemistry

Science is Awesome: Humans Can Breathe Liquid

Depending upon one’s teachers at school when they were younger (or older), there can be an affinity for or a strong aversion from science. I remember fondly some of the teachers I had in science (and then in physics and chemistry, when I was able to pick different topics in science). Heck, I even remember the analogy my biology professor used to explain diffusion at university.

I recognize that not everyone feels this way about science and talks of “randomized controlled trials” (RCTs), experiments, studies, or anything with language like that can be intimidating. This is certainly frustrating. There is so much good that comes from science (of course, there are some not so nice externalities sometimes), but we’ll just say that science has certainly been a net positive for society through time. If you need a clear example, the life expectancy of a person born in the US at the turn of the last last century (1900), was mid-to-late-40’s. Nowadays, some people’s true career doesn’t start until they’ve turned 50!

Anyway, so yes, the subheadline of today’s post — humans can breathe liquid. Just as a brief aside, can you imagine how cool that would be if this were true? Can you imagine plumbing the depths of the Marianas trench (uh, a really deep part of the ocean) without needing to be in a vessel (OK, OK, easy before some of you write me to say that the human body couldn’t withstand that kind of pressure — let’s just imagine for a moment that that wouldn’t happen).

Right — breathing liquid. A few weeks ago, I came across an article that I thought was some sort of science fiction or at least theoretical (i.e. humans used to breathe liquid, but we don’t anymore). Turns out, it’s not. Turns out, doctors have newborns (!) breathe liquid to help stabilize their lungs (WTF!?). OK, so here’s an excerpt:

Seven years later [1995], another team using refined liquid breathing techniques tried PFC liquid ventilation on 13 premature babies suffering from severe respiratory distress who were not expected to survive. Liquid breathing resulted in an improvement for a majority of the infants, potentially by stabilizing alveoli and reducing surface tension within the nascent lungs. Put more simply, the premies’ lungs weren’t ready for a gas environment, and PFC provided a nurturing bridge been amniotic fluid in the womb and outside air. Incredibly, eight of the infants survived at four-month follow-up.

The human body is pretty cool, eh? Science is awesome.

Conflict of Interest: The Importance of Independent Inquiry

For the last couple of months on Sunday nights, Fox has been airing a documentary that will probably be watched in science classes across America (when there’s a substitute teacher or otherwise) — Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Among other things, the show has taken the viewer on a journey back to the beginning of time. In one of the more recent episodes, host Neil deGrasse Tyson explained to viewers how we’ve come to know the age of the Earth.

In short, this came as a result of the work of scientist Clair Patterson. As a result of Patterson’s journey to determine the age of the Earth, he discovered some alarming findings related to the presence of lead in the environment. Through testing, he determined that the amount of lead in the environment wasn’t naturally occurring and concluded that the increased presence of lead near the ocean surface had to be man-made. He then was able to determine that this increase in lead in the oceans was because of leaded gasoline.

You’d think that a discovery like this would be well-received by those with influence. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

At the time, there was a scientist “on the other side” of the debate who had published claims long ago that leaded gasoline was “safe.” In fact, one scientist in particular, Robert A. Kehoe. Why is this scientist significant? Because he was funded by the very people who were benefitting from the sale of leaded gasoline — oil companies.

My point isn’t to vilify Kehoe or extol Patterson. Instead, I want to highlight the fact that despite Kehoe was a scientist with credentials, at the time, it wasn’t always clear when he was speaking on matters related to leaded gasoline that he was being funded by oil companies. That is, he failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest.

This scenario perfectly illustrates the importance of disclosing conflicts of interest. If one’s funding is coming from the very industry that one is studying, then it’s important to disclose that. As an example: if you’re a chemist and you’re doing research on tobacco and you’re funded by Marlboro (or some cleverly named organization that represents a number of tobacco companies), there’s a better chance than not that your funders might not be pleased if your findings reflect “negatively” on their business.