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Updates from DVC President Dr. Robert V. House on topics related to biopharmaceutical product development. Click each title to view the entire post.

Behold a Pale Horse November 11, 2009 - I've spent more time lately watching television than I care to admit. In particular, The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel have in the past been refuges from the mindlessness that fills most of the airwaves, and have given me small solace that I was learning something. I note recently, however, that both channels are replete with programs speculating on the end of human civilization. Shows such as "The Colony", "The Nostradamus Effect", "Life After Humans" and so on and so on seem to make up the majority of programming on these channels and several others, and a number of movies are getting in on the action. The big deal lately is apparently the impending end of the world 2012, predicted by the Mayans. ...
What's worse than H1N1? Willful stupidity. October 14, 2009 - I have no problem with ignorance...we're all ignorant from time to time and to different degrees. Ignorance is not knowing something, and omniscience is in short supply in the world. The word "ignorant" is not a pejorative unless the ignorance is deliberate. No, my problem lies with stupidity. Not the kind like looking for your glasses when they're on your head, or voting for certain political candidates. But I absolutely despise stupid actions and stupid statements by people who should know better, particularly people who appear to understand vaccines enough to twist facts into lies meant to deceive non-experts for reasons known only to themselves. ...
Less Human Than You Think October 7, 2009 - In the movie Blade Runner, the Tyrell Corporation that makes synthetic humans has as its motto "More human than human". (Just in time for Halloween, this is also the title of an entertaining, albeit disturbing, song by Rob Zombie.) As humans, we have the ultimate conceit that we are each individual; like snowflakes, no two of us as alike with even identical twins carrying this mantle of uniqueness. As Shakespeare put it, "the paragon of animals". [How often do you see Rob Zombie and Shakespeare referenced in the same paragraph? Works for me.] ...
Not Quite Good Enough September 23, 2009 - I came across an interesting article the other day that posted that the Obama administration's response to the threat of bioterrorism relies heavily on prevention. This, of course, is consistent with the "World at Risk" report earlier this year from the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, whose thesis is that we are at significant risk of a biological attack in the next 4 to 5 years. According to the report, it's a near certainty ...
The Ememy Within September 16, 2009 - Such scientific expertise that I can lay claim to is the subject of cytokines. Cytokines are small proteins or peptides that act as regulatory molecules within the body, usually thought of in terms of the immune system but in fact operating throughout the body. Get sick and feel sleepy and not want to eat? Blame a cytokine, not the bug. Feel feverish? Cytokines at work again. They regulate nearly every aspect of our body. Layer on top of this countless neuroregulators and hormones. In fact, the concept of psychoneuroimmunology (no, I didn't make that up) studies how the immune system, nervous system and endocrine system are in fact inextricably tied together ...
Who's Going to Pay for All This? September 9, 2009 - It seems to me that one important concept has been absent from the recent endless debate over health care reform. Namely, what about the frontier technologies yet to become part of the medical armamentarium? In all the talk about how Americans expect and deserve the best of care in everything (on one side) and how we spend too much money for not enough care compared to the rest of the world (the other side), one constant remains: medicine is an expensive part of life. There's probably some fundamental truth to the line espoused by many of the talking heads that doctors today practice "defensive" medicine, taking an extraordinarily conservative approach in an effort to keep from getting sued into extinction ...
Is It Safe? September 2, 2009 - Anyone who develops vaccines for a living has been faced with the question: are vaccines really safe? (Short answer: almost always.) Less often, and more ominously, one has to face not questions, but accusations of profiteering at the expense of children's safety and foisting on people deadly concoctions. I refuse to participate in such one-sided debates. As a scientist, I was trained to deal in facts, and in the absence of facts a true debate cannot exist ...
Guests and Hosts August 26, 2009 - I was gratified, in an odd sort of way, to see a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal describing how John D. Rockefeller helped eliminate hookworm in America. The reason for my gratification (maybe that's too strong a word, but let's go with it) was that many years ago, my first publication was a little piece entitled "A Brief History of Hookworm Disease in North Carolina", published in the North Carolina Medical Journal. In that paper, I traced the history of Necator americanus (the American killer) ...
Dominion August 20, 2009 - I note with some dismay the recent activities of animal rights extremists (yes, I used that word) in Europe but I fail to follow their logic. Let’s give them their due and acknowledge that they have issues with the use of animals in research. Let’s further acknowledge that in free societies the right of public debate should be inalienable. How does burning down a vacation home and (far, far worse) stealing the ashes of an executive’s mother ...
Still a Dangerous Place August 13, 2009 - I read recently about the passing of Wallace L. Pannier, who is described in nearly all accounts as a “germ warfare scientist”. And so he was. Mr. Pannier worked for many years in the U.S.’ offensive biological warfare program, and is probably best remembered for the various simulated biological attacks performed as experiments in the New York subway systems ...