Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong in Science and Inquiry

Aug 07, 2017 Petra X rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-100-reviews, medicine-science, 10-star-books, 2017-read, reviewed

I've finished the book. It's really brilliant and very thought-provoking. I don't usually write summaries, but for this one I will because it is so interesting and so few people read in this genre. Eugenic is the most personally chilling to me.

1. Opium (view spoiler) ...more

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Oct 10, 2019 Jim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1audio, 2non-fiction, science

This is great overall, but the title & description are terrible. Science only went wrong in one case & that's psychiatry, a very soft science even today. Back then, it was pretty much a pseudoscience. Instead, society has cherry-picked & misused what science has discovered. I just don't see that as a failing of science & certainly not "sins of science" (quote from the book's description). Most of the chapter titles are mine, not his, to lend clarity.

I have some real issues with some of his poin ...more

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Nov 30, 2017 Charlene rated it liked it

Shelves: general-science

鈥媁ith the opioid crisis looming large in the Press, it is the perfect time to read Pandoras Lab because the first chapter highlights what the ancient Sumerians called "hugil," meaning, "plant of joy." Offit traced the discovery and use of the poppy seed back to 4000BCE and followed its trajectory until the present day. Who could believe that inside that tiny poppy seed, there are no less than 5 potent drugs, waiting to be harvested? So much offering from one tiny seed. Inside that seed is a gum- 鈥媁ith the opioid crisis looming large in the Press, it is the perfect time to read Pandoras Lab because the first chapter highlights what the ancient Sumerians called "hugil," meaning, "plant of joy." Offit traced the discovery and use of the poppy seed back to 4000BCE and followed its trajectory until the present day. Who could believe that inside that tiny poppy seed, there are no less than 5 potent drugs, waiting to be harvested? So much offering from one tiny seed. Inside that seed is a gum-like substance that holds the molecules that make up morphine, codeine, 2 muscle relaxants, and heroin. That tiny seed holds within it the power to heal and the power to kill. So powerful is the poppy, it can take away the pain created by cancer and other cruel diseases of life that ravage the body from the inside. I have nightmares about traveling back in time, knowing there was so little anyone could do to help people who had painful cancers, broken bones, gashes, and surgeries of various sorts. I am so happy to be alive today instead of back then, and back then wasn't even that long ago. 鈥婮ust a few decades ago, the founder of Hospice鈥� had to fight to make it legal to administer opioids to patients suffering unimaginable pain at the last and most cruel stages of their illnesses (it was neither legal to allow them to die, even as they begged) or to take away the pain they constantly had to endure. That is the most immoral thing I have ever heard, which always makes it so shocking to me when people make moral arguments for keeping a suffering person alive, while they have no problem allowing their beloved family pet, who is in terrible pain, to die in a peaceful and dignified way.

Offit certainly extols the virtues of this wonder drug. But, as powerful as it is at taking away pain, that little poppy seed has the power to kill as well. A significant number of people die from heroin overdoses each year. D鈥媔ag鈥媜鈥媟a鈥媠 of Melas has been trying to warn humanity about the addictive properties of opioids since the days of the ancient Greeks. Many still ignore him today. Opioids were already a problem for Americans who took in liquid form. It became a much larger problem during the gold rush, when Chinese people came over to join in the gold rush and brought with them their opium pipes. At that point opium became a health crisis and was made illegal. The fight has been going ever since. The opioid chapter was, by far, my favorite chapter. The other subjects were not as captivating, but I mostly enjoyed the point Offit was trying to get across to readers.

The goal of the book was to make the point that it is important to think critically. To create his argument, he examined the double edge sword of many advances, shining a light on the negative consequences of those advances. For example, Rachel Carson had a huge impact on making society aware of environmental concerns. Offit focused on how the reaction to her landmark book Silent Spring negatively affected the lives of people in Africa who likely died from malaria as a result of the banning of DDT. He warned against fear mongering of groups, citing some of what Trump has said about Mexicans and Muslims, and reminded us of what happened in the past when humans began singling out groups as unfit to be around the rest of society. They singled out "imbeciles" and forced sterilization upon them, starting what would become an every growing eugenics movement. Once you open the door to eugenics, with seemingly reasonable arguments, it is easier and easier to add requirements of these groups and more and more justifications of why it's ok to practice eugenics. He traced the concerns of imbeciles through to concerns of Jewish people in Nazi Germany. This chapter was difficult to read because it listed the horrific experiments done to 1000s of Jewish children, very few of whom survived. Related to the practices of the Nazi's, Offit wrote about Fritz Haber's scientific discovery of fixing nitrogen that allowed about 3 billion more people to be alive on this planet. However, Haber, a Jew himself, worked hard to help the Germans try to win world domination. He developed chemical weapons that were considered inhumane and seemed to have no moral qualms about using them.

It was interesting to think about how easy it was for people to force "imbeciles" (those with an IQ of less than 70 and those who increasingly were deemed unfit, for a a number of reasons, to have offspring, and then it was fashionable to turn perfectly intelligent people into imbeciles by way of giving them ever more efficient lobotomies. He gave a great summary of what happened to poor Rosemary Kennedy, who was cruelly tricked into getting a lobotomy. It was not simply kept from her; it was kept from her poor mother as well. Joe Kennedy took matters into his own hands, using very poor critical thinking skills, and ruined his daughter's life.

鈥婳ffit also tackled perceptions surrounding GMOs and BPA. Offits main point with all of these examples was to stress the message that, in order to accept any scientific study, you must, must, must make sure the results have been replicated. It's not enough to witness a phenomenon once, even if it has been published in a scientific journal. If it can't be replicated, it should never be accepted and spread through the general public as fact. He marveled, as do I, at how some people can focus on an extreme example and make that example the rule. For instance, the live polio vaccine did have a chance of giving a child polio but the chances of that were so much lower than getting polio if not for the vaccine. He, as always, had some truly great points to make about the anti-vaxx crowd. He debunked the BPA studies. I have to confess, I was very swayed by the animal studies I read about and have a hard time letting go of the BPA studies, even after reading this book. I will have to educate myself more about BPA studies in which rats were given food instead of injections, because those studies did not show negative effects of BPA. I am stunned. He suggested that BPA would have to be present at much higher levels (rats were injected with huge doses of BPA) in order to see demethylation of chromatin. I liked somethings in this book and didn't like others, but his last chapter or two was outstanding. He excels in pointing out where society fails in its critical thinking ability and always makes great points about the consequences of that lack of critical thinking. He seems particularly bothered, as am I now that I am aware, that parents of autistic kids are seeking "cures" from gurus instead of actual doctors and forcing their kids to swallow bleach as well as giving enemas of bleach. Apparently parents talk freely online about the suffering their children are going through, and other parents continue to support this harsh treatment, because they are sure it is worth it and sure it is working. These parents belong in jail, not surfing the net. Stupidity is fine as long as you are not ruining someone else's life because of it. If you have any say in policy or the raising of a child, you should work harder to become educated. ...more

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Jul 16, 2021 David Cerruti rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, science, medicine, audiobook, crime

The Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong is well researched and fascinating. Each story could be a complete book. For more information, see the review by Petra-X at /review/show... ...more

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Jul 31, 2017 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Be prepared to have some of your long-held beliefs to possibly be turned on their head (DDT, I'm looking at you). This book will both hold your interest and at times disgust you, but it clarifies the definition of being truly open-minded very well. ...more

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