The miracle of science – but why can’t you cure my cold!

In this section we invite our reader to tell us about their work, lives and scientific passions. Here, Steve Trim ponders the widening gap between what science can do and what the public expects Is the mainstream media hype over new scientific discoveries and inventions widening the gap between what medicine can do and what the public expect? The public do have the access to a vast amount of knowledge thanks to the internet, but the majority seem to prefer their information pre-digested. As a pharmaceutical scientist come biotech entrepreneur I’m always intrigued about the public’s perception of what science and medicine can and importantly can’t do. How many of you have spoken to friends and family that have been frustrated about apparently not getting a complete diagnosis and/or cure from the medical staff they have consulted with. So many people visit the doctor with cough/ rash etc and come back with what they feel is a dismissive answer; it’s probably a virus. What many people don’t realise, is behind this diagnosis is years of experience and decades of research consisting of attempts to find ways of killing pathogens, such as viruses, that are technically not alive anyway. Those of us scientists familiar with the wonders of virology will either be fascinated, frustrated or possibly both, by the ability of many viruses to continue to evade medicinal control. But I think people who are not familiar with what goes on behind the scenes, feel disappointed, that their ills are not curable in a world where we have the bulk of human knowledge on tap on our pocket smart phones. The free speech nature of the internet brings many problems along with the solutions available from knowledge sharing, such as distinguishing fact from opinion! This is a problem many of my lecturer friends frequently rant about when marking students work. This has also lead to the arm chair experts who soak up the wealth of information available to them, often with little thought to the source or authenticity. This fuels the greying of the boundaries between what is and is not achievable along with truly demonstrating how a little knowledge can be dangerous. As the only primate species to have populated the entire globe we have achieved much through science to get us this far. The discovery of penicillin, which must have seemed miraculous to patients at the end of the Second World War, transformed infections like gangrene from a potential death sentence to being just a course of tablets away. Although Flemming discovered the antibacterial properties of Penicillium sp. in 1928 it wasn’t until 1945 that large scale fermentation allowed for bulk production of this pivotal antibiotic. I believe this could have started the myth of the miracles of modern medicine to cure every ill. The pace of modern medicine has revolutionised what conditions can be treated. This is exemplified by a paper in the Journal Brain in April (Angeli, et al in press) that described how spinal injury patients with neuromuscular lower limb paralysis were able to make voluntary movements of the ankle and knee joints with epidural spinal cord stimulation. The four patients were at least 2.2 years post paralysis and one was four years post injury. This has been seen, and rightly so, as a significant breakthrough in the treatment of spinal injury. But it’s the medical challenges that science is still trying to answer that are the real areas of fascination. [caption id="attachment_39575" align="alignright" width="200"] Flu virus[/caption] I suppose what I’m truly doing through this piece is venting years of built up frustration at people who just don’t understand the true limitations of this technological world we live in. I vividly remember my A-level chemistry lecturer back in south Devon quoting many an ancient myth philosophy, whilst we were in class. Many a theory lesson contained periods of amending the nucelophilic substitution diagrams in the text book interspersed with what appeared to be random rants. Occasionally there were prophetic moments of brilliance that have stuck with me through my scientific career such as, we are only intelligent when we know just how much we don’t know! I feel this particular offering is a measure of society as well as the individual, for it is understanding of our limitations which allows us to focus efforts into questioning what we don’t know. Such questions are a core part of my life and are the driving force behind biotechnological entrepreneurship, such as; can we cure pain without debilitating side effects? How do we fight infection without promoting resistance? Can cancer be tamed? And why can’t we cure the common cold? Nature has provided many answers to many, apparently unique, questions asked by the Homo sapien primates on curing disease. Our current pharmacopeia is rich with natural compounds that have been repurposed to treat diseases along side novel compounds. But looking deeper into the behaviour of other species reveals many examples of animals medicating their diseases. However I’m not aware of any animals, Hominids or otherwise, that have tamed the misery and self pity generated by a rhinovirus or influenza infection. Call it a little sniffle, man-flu or the common cold, why can’t we make it go away? The pharmacists offer a plethora of colourfully branded attractive symptomatic relief for our desperation but it’s that last question that brings me back to my idea for this blog. Why can’t we cure the common cold? I can marvel at the relative simplicity of the cold viruses’ small genome and error prone replication, which make them the slipperiest of fishes to catch. However I would equally welcome the pill from the pharmacist that turns off the tap in my nose to stop the mucus and let me get on with life.