Monday, December 10, 2012

Barriers for scientists in the History - DNA Structure story

DNA pioneer James Watson reveals helix story was almost never told

The Double Helix's tale of DNA breakthrough became a big hit but had to overcome hostility from the Nobel winner's colleagues

Extracted from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/09/dna-james-watson-helix-nobel-50?CMP=twt_fd

Consistently rated as one of the greatest books written about science in the past century, it has been hailed as a work that combines the plot line of a racy novel with deep insights about the nature of modern research.

But James Watson, author of The Double Helix, has revealed that his masterpiece came close to being suppressed. In an exclusive interview with the Observer, he admitted last week that his account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, when shown to friends and colleagues in the late 60s, triggered such hostility and outrage it seemed fated never to appear in print.

"You have grossly invaded my privacy," complained his close colleague, Francis Crick. Another collaborator, Maurice Wilkins, objected that the book presents "a distorted and unfavourable image of scientists". Given that Crick and Wilkins were the men with whom Watson had shared the Nobel prize for physiology in 1962 for their work on uncovering DNA's structure, the opposition of the two British researchers to the words of the young American scientist were worrying.

Many publishers were frightened off by threats of legal action from the manuscript's critics.

Drugs from Nature - Research paper

This paper is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218439/

Natural products, such as plants extract, either as pure compounds or as standardized extracts, provide unlimited opportunities for new drug discoveries because of the unmatched availability of chemical diversity (Cos et al., 2006).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 80% of the world's population relies on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare needs. The use of herbal medicines in Asia represents a long history of human interactions with the environment. Plants used for traditional medicine contain a wide range of substances that can be used to treat chronic as well as infectious diseases (Duraipandiyan et al., 2006).

Due to the development of adverse effects and microbial resistance to the chemically synthesized drugs, men turned to ethnopharmacognosy. They found literally thousands of phytochemicals from plants as safe and broadly effective alternatives with less adverse effect. Many beneficial biological activity such as anticancer, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antidiarrheal, analgesic and wound healing activity were reported. In many cases the people claim the good benefit of certain natural or herbal products. However, clinical trials are necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of a bioactive compound to verify this traditional claim. Clinical trials directed towards understanding the pharmacokinetics, bioavailability, efficacy, safety and drug interactions of newly developed bioactive compounds and their formulations (extracts) require a careful evaluation. Clinical trials are carefully planned to safeguard the health of the participants as well as answer specific research questions by evaluating for both immediate and long-term side effects and their outcomes are measured before the drug is widely applied to patients.