{"id":1920,"date":"2008-02-26T10:15:07","date_gmt":"2008-02-26T15:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/feel-the-burn-2\/"},"modified":"2008-02-26T10:15:07","modified_gmt":"2008-02-26T15:15:07","slug":"feel-the-burn-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/feel-the-burn-2","title":{"rendered":"Feel the burn"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a fan of Derek Lowe’s pharma-blog for years. So much so that I offered him a spot as a regular contributor in my magazine. His writings on the economics of pharma companies and the vagaries of R&D are gems.<\/p>\n

That said, I sometimes glaze over when he writes about esoteric aspects of medicinal chemistry. It’s not that I find them boring; I just don’t have any background that would help me with what he’s talking about. But then there are times he manages to cross over beautifully from the lab to the general audience.<\/p>\n

Today, for example, in his series on lab accidents, he explains that there’s actually a substance that will cause sand to catch fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s a report from the early 1950s . . . of a one-ton spill of [chlorine trifluoride]. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Give it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a fan of Derek Lowe’s pharma-blog for years. So much so that I offered him a spot as a regular contributor in my magazine. His writings on the economics of pharma companies and the vagaries of R&D are gems. That said, I sometimes glaze over when he writes about esoteric aspects of medicinal … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Feel the burn”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-pharmaceuticals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-uY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1560,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/pharma-phunnies","url_meta":{"origin":1920,"position":0},"title":"Pharma Phunnies","author":"Gil","date":"June 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From another of my pharma profiles: In the past year, Takeda made a splash in the U.S. with its surreal commercials for sleep treatment Rozerem. Featuring such elements as Abraham Lincoln and a talking beaver, the spots are supposed to evoke the incredibly embarrassing dream-symbols that insomniacs miss out on.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1206,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/why-i-love-the-pharma-industry","url_meta":{"origin":1920,"position":1},"title":"Why I love the Pharma industry","author":"Gil","date":"November 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Orencia: it's better than nothing!","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1333,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/say-hello-to-hollywood","url_meta":{"origin":1920,"position":2},"title":"Say hello to Hollywood","author":"Gil","date":"February 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Derek Lowe writes about a great article in the February issue of The Scientist. The anonymous author discusses the flaws in the R&D model among major pharma companies and develops an interesting method of fixing them: Go Hollywood! Big Pharma continues to follow the old studio model, though there are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2127,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/pharma-phunnies-2","url_meta":{"origin":1920,"position":3},"title":"Pharma Phunnies","author":"Gil","date":"July 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The majority of the Top Companies issue is just about done, dear readers! Still need to finish up some layouts and write the short intros to the two major sections (Top 20 Pharma & Top 10 Biopharma), but the finish line is actually within sight! So I thought I'd take\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/drug-deal","url_meta":{"origin":1920,"position":4},"title":"Drug Deal","author":"Gil","date":"April 28, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm on a press trip in Puerto Rico this week, as mentioned earlier, and it's been sorta tough to get any blogging done. The perfect sunlight tends to, um, make too much glare on the laptop's screen. Yeah, that's it.Anyway, this morning, before heading out to the beach from my\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":861,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-7","url_meta":{"origin":1920,"position":5},"title":"Update","author":"Gil","date":"March 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry I've been out of touch, dear reader. We're closing in on the wedding date (March 12!), and this has necessitated a ton of work at the day job, preparing the April issue of the magazine so that my associate editor can handle what I'm leaving behind. This will necessitate\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}