From so simple a beginning…

More critical and unbiased thinking please

Surendra Gadekar has an article in the latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in which he asserts that the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal won’t save India from energy problems. Even assuming that this fact holds, Dr. Gadekar seems to think that it logically implies that India should not pursue nuclear power or at the very least put it on the back burner.

The logic is a little messy and ignores some facts.

To be fair, the article has a lively history of India’s determined efforts to wisely go for CANDU heavy water rather than light water reactors (uranium enrichment is much more technologically demanding than heavy water production), and its continued commitment to nuclear research even in the face of worldwide sanctions imposed by the 1974 test. Dr. Gadekar then talks about the dismal state of India’s uranium resources with most regions containing extremely low-grade ore, making it expensive to mine. In many regions officials are unwilling to mine because of local pressure and the Maoist insurgency.

So far so good. One would think that it’s precisely these factors that would make the nuclear deal attractive. But then Dr. Gadekar goes in a different direction, claiming that France and the United States’s ‘moribund’ reactor industries would somehow force the Indian government to buy not just fuel but also reactors. I don’t think I have read a statement to the effect that the government wants to buy reactors by default along with fuel. In any case, if the government does it, Gadekar says that the price of nuclear power will go up.

The conclusion? The nuclear deal is bad for India and nuclear is not the way to go, according to Dr. Gadekar. If nuclear power is really going to become expensive, then wouldn’t we want to adopt the opposite position for now and lap up all the nuclear fuel that we can? Fear that uranium prices would go up in the future as more countries adopt nuclear power should just mean that India with its already well-developed nuclear capacity should embark on a crash program to generate more power with our existing reactors which are for years running at partial capacity.

But a more important development which Dr. Gadekar ignores is that in thorium processing. The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor is one of the most advanced nuclear reactors in the world and the result of years of doughty development by India’s nuclear scientists and engineers. We plan to start serial production of AHWRs by 2020. Here’s what Charles Barton, a veteran nuclear engineer who has retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (a vast industrial complex built for extracting the Manhattan Project’s uranium), has to say:

The Indians are engaged in a significant thorium fuel cycle. The Indians have already built and tested both thorium fuel cycle proof of concept and developmental thorium fuel cycle reactors and have built or are building prototype thorium fuel cycle reactors including the just completed AHWR, the soon to be completed Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam, and the more advanced , Fast Thorium Breeder Reactor (FTBR) underdevelopment at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai is the second thorium fuel cycle breeder. The Indians are in the last stage of a 3 stage developmental program for a complex Uranium/thorium reactor fuel system, that is many times more energy efficient than the Uranium/light water reactor fuel system.

The Indians plans to build thorium fuel cycle reactor capable of producing 20 GWy of electrical energy by 2020, and to produces 30% of their electricity from thorium cycle reactors by 2050. Indian scientists calculate that the assurred thorium reserve of India is large enough to provide it with electricity for 400 years.

More efficiency will mean dwindling cost of uranium as well as efficient exploitation of India’s vast thorium resources. But this can only happen if nuclear development is not impeded and more efficient ways of exploiting both uranium and thorium are investigated. Dr. Gadekar’s opinion seems to imply that the scenario for nuclear power based on uranium is so pessimistic that we should forgo the nuclear deal and nuclear development or at least not pursue them vigorously. Not so paradoxically, this very action will indeed hamper future development.

In the end, if Dr. Gadekar really thinks that nuclear is not the way to go, he should shed light on alternative efficient, plentiful and cheap sources of energy. The reader is unfortunately left groping in the dark when Dr. Gadekar sheds not light but darkness on any such analysis with a single concluding statement;

India’s true energy crisis lies in its inability to harness its sunlight and biomass, which would provide a truly useful resource for the majority of its people

This seems to contradict all of Gadekar’s beef with uranium prices. I would be very interested to know how exactly Dr. Gadekar thinks solar power or biomass will produce energy as cheaply as he thinks uranium won’t. Unlike Gadekar, I am not discounting the role that solar and biomass will play in India’s future energy needs. But the technology for their large-scale use is still expensive and far off; nuclear technology is already widely used and highly developed, and pound for pound, nuclear still provides the biggest bang for your buck. India with its power-hungry economy needs as much of this as possible. What it does not need are superficially plausible arguments based on incomplete data. Dr. Gadekar may be well-meaning, but I have a feeling that since he edits a magazine named Anumukti which as its name suggests is in favour of a non-nuclear India, he already is wedded to dogma. It’s sad when intelligent people like Dr. Gadekar try to pen reasonable arguments when they have long since already taken sides.

© Ashutosh Jogalekar

In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower brought scientists into the White House with the creation of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). His aim was to dissolve barriers between the President and objective scientific advice so that responsible scientists could report directly to the President. In the succeeding years, these scientists provided invaluable advice to the president on the leading scientific issues of the time, mainly nuclear energy and defense.

PSAC admirably served scientists till the 1970s, when Richard Nixon predictably abolished it, in the face of overblown concerns that the scientists were being partisan. Since then, objective and honest science has been more and more unwelcome in the White House, especially with the rise of religious fundamentalism.

Little needs to be said about George W. Bush’s treatment of science, perhaps the worst of any president in the last century. Not only has his administration ignored important results and findings about climate change, the environment and stem cell research, but Bush also appointed favoured, conservative officials to administrative positions in key government agencies such as the FDA. These officials twisted, cherry-picked and even blocked scientific results to make them fall in line with conservative and religious views. Bush’s suport for religion is well known, and he encouraged schools to teach the “debate” between evolution and “intelligent” design. Fuelled by corporate lobbies, Bush also deceptively advocated unpromising scientific ventures like ethanol and the hydrogen economy, when research showed that at the very least, there is no reason to assume that they will contribute substantially to the future energy crisis. John Marburger, the current presidential scientific advisor became more or less only a formal figurehead, obeying the dictates of the administration’s standard blinkered policies. It only needs to be said that such kind of behaviour is business as usual for the Bush administration.

With change looming on the horizon and the dark political skies possibly clearing up for the first time in many years with what seems like a breath of fresh air, it is a good question to ask how the next administration will treat science. The January 4 issue of Science magazine ran an article about the favourite presidential candidates’ views about science. It is heartening to read that, apart from Huckabee and Romney, all three of the current frontrunners for both parties hold reasonably favourable and objective views about scientific research, to differing degrees of course. Especially Barack Obama seems to be very open to objective and transparent scientific advice, and that is one very good reason why he should be president.

With a hopefully science-friendly administration in the future, who should be chosen as the next presidential scientific advisor? This man or woman may likely have the most important public role of any scientist in the last twenty years or so. He or she needs to not only be a great scientist, but also a responsible, effective, and reasonable public official. He or she should be highly regarded by members of the scientific community and should be known as a fair individual. In addition, he or she would need to have a flair for communicating science to the public and reaching out to them, something that’s going to be crucial in the coming years. He or she should be absolutely clear about the concerned science, and should be able to give opinions based on the best and most comprehensive available evidence. Ability to clearly delineate scientific issues without ruffling the feathers of religious fundamentalists too much could be an unfortunately required but nonetheless required quality. As presidential science advisor, tact would as important as fair scientific judgement.

Here are my personal few picks for the next science advisor:

1. Freeman Dyson: I would have actually picked this distinguished physicist if it weren’t for two reasons- his age, and his curious skepticism about global warming. Dyson also has a peculiar set of opinions about reconciling science and religious or supernatural faith, although I have to say that if he had been offered the post, he would not have let these interfere with objective advice. He has already been on many advisory committees. But I doubt whether, given his austere disposition, he would have liked to be at the center of public affairs (I have written about him here)

2. Edward O. Wilson: Since Dyson may not be an apt candidate, here’s my top favourite. Edward Wilson of Harvard is the quintessential example of the scientist-humanitarian-man of letters. His writings are many times poetry exemplified, and his autobiography along with Dyson’s is the best socio-scientific memoir I have ever read. Not only has he made seminal contributions to ecology and evolutionary biology and won the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor, he has also won the Pulitzer Prize twice, an astounding and unique combination of achievements. He is a deeply sensitive man who has his pulse on the state of the environment. One of the earliest advocates of conservation, Wilson is a tireless and eloquent advocate of attaining ecological harmony. When it comes to religion, Wilson interestingly contends that it should not be rejected, but investigated with scientific methods. With the environment almost indisputably the essential issue of our time, Wilson would be the perfect person to give the president gentle, unbiased and prudent scientific advice.

3. James Hansen: James Hansen is probably the leading and most knowledgable climate scientist in the United States and perhaps in the world. He was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, to sound alarm bells about global warming based on realistic computer modeling in the 1980s. To this end, he was also one of the first to testify before Congress on climate change. He has been a relentless spokesman for fighting climate change since before the IPCC began publishing comprehensive reports. Over the years, his predictions more than most others’ have been borne true. Hansen is also known for having faced censorship at NASA. He had a hard time getting his conclusions into print during the Bush regime, but he has persevered and prevailed. Again, with climate change being the central issue of our time, Hansen more than anyone else is poised to give advice about this crucial theme to the president.

4. David Baltimore: Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore has spearheaded biological science in America for thirty years. Baltimore along with Howard Temin discovered reverse transcriptase, the essential enzyme of retroviruses including HIV. His leadership of American science and of Caltech has been impressive. The catch? He was involved in an infamous case of plagiarism. Although Baltimore was exonerated, he argued against the plagiarism contentions. Naturally, this single thing should not disqualify him, but I would generally be more skeptical about Baltimore’s objectivity than of the others.

5. Richard Garwin: Richard Garwin worked on the hydrogen bomb as a protégé of Enrico Fermi, and then spent his life fighting to outlaw it. He has always been an unflagging participant in arms disarmament. In the last forty years, he has repeatedly written incisive articles arguing against missile defense and nuclear weapons. Like Dyson, he has also served on scores of important committees. A doyen of the nuclear era, Garwin also might be a little old to hold the post, but would not be a bad choice.

6. Roald Hoffmann and Carl Djerassi: Since I am a chemist, I thought I should put in a plug for two chemists whom I like. Both these gentlemen have very distinguished careers in science and science writing. Hoffmann won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Djerassi is the “father of the contraceptive pill” and unique for being awarded both the National Medals, for Science and for Technology. Both are also playwrights and better-than-amateur poets. Importantly, both of them are well aware of social issues and have insightful comments about them. I don’t know if they have a lot of government experience, but both of them seem to me like they would be good persons to take advice from.

So these are the few that come to my mind. Unfortunately there is no woman among them, but that’s only because I cannot really think of one. If there is one, I will be more than happy to include the name.

But since I have a list of people I like, it may be worth stating the name of someone I definitely would not be comfortable with as science advisor, but who curiously might get chosen.

That man is Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project. Collins has come under attack in the last few years for his belief in a Christian God. And this is not the kind of metaphysical God that Einstein believed in. Collins is a devout churchgoer who argues in strange ways for a scientific basis for believing in a personal God. Till date, I haven’t seen a single defense from him that would allow me to reconcile science and religion in my mind.

There is no doubt that Collins is a fine scientist who has made important contributions. I am not even saying that he would pander to religious fundamentalists. But with religious fundamentalists already having encroached in the White House, the last person we need is a man who would always see blurred boundaries between science and religion, who would not take a firm stand on science. Note that there is a difference between actually wanting to connect science and religion, and respecting people’s personal religion. The latter condition, whether we like it or not, seems to be a part of our time. But that is quite different from mingling science with religion. That is exactly the kind of approach that the advocates of intelligent design espouse, and Collins would only encourage them and scores of other religious people to bring religion even more into schools, universities and the halls of important public discourse, and cause confusion about what science is. Clearly I see Collins as the wrong person for the post.

© Ashutosh S. Jogalekar

Renowned scientist C. N. R Rao has come under fire for denouncing workers in the IT sectors as doing routine work, while they siphon off valuable intellectual talent from science and the arts and give back almost nothing in return. This deserves some further analysis…

Read the rest of the entry on Excursions…

In the 1950s, after much wrangling on issues related to national defense and other expedient matters, President Eisenhower set up the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), a group of distinguished scientists that was to provide non-partisan scientific advice to presidents. The president wanted a body of advisors in the White House who were answerable to no one, only to science itself. This body later included distinguished scientists such as Hans Bethe, Glenn Seaborg and George Kistiakowsky, all of whom were Manhattan Project veterans. They provided crucial and balanced advice to Eisenhower, JFK and Lyndon Johnson on important matters like missile defense and nuclear weapons. Hans Bethe for example was a key voice behind the very important Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 that banned atmospheric and underwater nuclear testing. 

When Richard Nixon came to power, he dissolved PSAC under pressure from Congress that it was clouding judgment and imposing its opinions upon the president. This was one of the most regressive actions that a US president has taken in my opinion. With this action, Nixon essentially stonewalled any unbiased scientific advice that he could get from the nation’s top scientists. In their place came special-interest groups scientists and lobbyists. Now the scientists could never directly deliver their collective opinion on issues to the president without getting those opinions through White House personnel. Many of these personnel not only had scant background in science, but also were wedded to partisan pandering. They had the power to censor and manipulate scientific reports, and they did.

Since Nixon, unbiased scientific advice has become more and more unwelcome at the White House. In 1995, Congress dissolved the Office of Technology Assessment, the one remaining organization that could provide them with bipartisan advice on important scientific matters. This is especially ironic and ignominious considering the fact that only a handful of Congressmen have any significant background in science and are still routinely called upon to make prudent decisions on science policy. The administration of George Bush of course has carried this deliberate suppression and ignorance of scientific advice to great new levels. Bush’s appointee in the White House manipulated reports on climate change before presenting them to the public. When his shenanigans were discovered, he left the administration to become a lobbyist for an oil corporation. Directors of such crucial organizations as NASA, FDA and CDC (Centers for Disease Control) are also essentially Bush appointees. Scientists in these organizations have regularly complained about the suppression of sound scientific results by the administration. An employee of the FDA left because she thought that the FDA was pandering to religious groups and delaying the release of Plan B, a “morning after” contraceptive pill. Similarly employees in NASA were prohibited from talking to the press about climate change research. Bush’s appeasement of religious groups and his subsequent actions to ban stem-cell research is another bitter example of science suppression. As far as the deliberate stamping out of important scientific advice is concerned, this administration has set new records that may not be ever surpassed. 

But what is the price of all this suppression? Is it that the nation won’t see key rapid advances in stem-cell therapy leading to the potential saving of lives? Is is that the nation will have to bear the heavy costs of not curbing carbon emissions? Is it that the nation  will see whole-scale destruction of the environment perhaps beyond repair? It is of course all these things but it is something even more serious; the suppression of freedom itself.

Ever since the origins of science, scientific thinking and progress has gone hand in hand with skepticism, that quality which is the bedrock of all of science. But this quality is even more important in assessing politics, where politicians and the media are deliberately going to spin issues and build facades around key matters. Concomitant with this suppression of science by the government, we are seeing an even more pernicious phenomenon; an increasing lack of scientific knowledge and temper among the general public. And this will have devastating consequences that will become apparent all too late. Firstly, a citizenry ignorant of science will not be able to critically think about which issues need attention, and will fall for anything that the administration tells them is important. Secondly, it is the public’s dollars that fund science, and how will the public know which areas to let the government fund, if it does not know which areas should be funded in the first place? This attitude will, and it does, allow the administration to fund only those areas of science which are to their benefit, while a complicit public ignorant of science not only nods along but also lets its valuable tax dollars be diverted to these government-favored endeavors. A single example will suffice. Ever since 9/11, the administration has made bioterrorism a key research priority. Funding for bioterrorism research increased exponentially after 9/11. More importantly, the government did a very effective job in convincing the public through the media that the next great danger to their life is going to be from biological weapons. But the facts just don’t stand up to the rhetoric. Infectious and chronic diseases even after 9/11 pose a much greater harm to the health of the public than Ebola and anthrax. Antibiotic-resistant infections killed thousands last year. In spite of these simple facts, funding for basic microbiology research on infectious diseases has been choked and reduced, diverting all those funds toward preventing the next anthrax attack which has a much lesser possibility of happening than the next wave of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Again, a public ignorant of science has been a sucker for the fear-mongering tactics of the administration, and has allowed it to spend their dollars on its whims. It’s quite clear that similar strategies can be adopted by the administration to fund any other selective research, while a fearful public looks on and agrees.

Religious groups too now have more power than ever in influencing politics and certain kinds of research. A public ignorant of science and skepticism will fall for the rhetoric that it is immoral to kill a month old embryo for its cells. Skepticism entails the balancing of facts and then taking decisions based on the evidence. In this particular case, the facts indicate that stem-cell research will possibly lead to the saving of millions of lives of those stricken with diseases like diabetes, stroke and Parkinson’s disease. Clearly we can understand that it may be a moral travesty not to fund stem-cell research in the light of these promising advances. But again, a manipulative administration that panders to religious groups has the power to stop funding for such crucial research, and a public not well-versed in the true promise of stem-cell research believes them, or at the very least is indifferent to their actions. There are countless other examples of how the public, ignorant of true scientific facts, lets the administration spend its hard-earned money in areas of research which are not key to the progress of the nation but rather to the government’s partisan goals, and I can state only a few. What about missile defense, where billions of taxpayers dollars are being spent on the pretext that it will lead to a defense against some potential future threat from Iranian or North Korean missiles? What about politicians pushing for funding into new nuclear weapons under the pretext that they are needed for selectively destroying targets while “minimizing” casualties? All the research connected with these activities serves nothing else except the administration’s political motives. It does nothing to advance research that is truly important to the public’s welfare and future; stem-cells, infectious and chronic diseases, alternative energy, vaccines. And it is not opposed by the public because they cannot think skeptically enough to separate the scientific wheat from the chaff of rhetoric.

As I have noted, in the end skepticism is key not just for scientific progress but for electing those in power. Those in power on the other hand are in varying extents always going to be against the spirit of science, because it enables people to think for themselves and make informed decisions through the inherent skepticism and open-mindedness of science. The essence of political power is to keep people fearful, subdued and unable to think for themselves. Much is rightly made these days about the suppression of individual freedoms, including airport profiling and wiretaps. Although not all of this is connected with scientific research, it is doubtless connected to a lack of skepticism in the public. Trust the administration’s rhetoric about Saddam Hussein having WMDs. Trust their rhetoric about putting numbers on the high probability of a terrorist attack on US soil in the next two years. Trust their rhetoric about how dangerous Iran has become. In each one of these cases, a balanced examination of the evidence and skeptical thought would have led many to be more distrustful of the government’s motives, and scientific thinking can surely inspire such analysis. Therefore political power is also going to be against inculcating skepticism and true scientific thinking among the general populace. Religion and its intimate alliance with politics will further and more absolutely discourage such skepticism because of its inherent insistence on faith. Science is not just about discoveries and betterment of life. It is first and foremost about trusting the evidence and not taking anything at face value. It is about accepting that the world is not what it seems to be, a lesson that has been constant throughout scientific history. Scientific education, through skepticism and honest debate, promises the kind of bottom-up revolutions that have marked the origins of the most free societies in world history. Skepticism can give great power to the common people. And the lack of honest debate and questioning has also led to untold enslavement and suffering in history.

The other day I was watching a Carl Sagan interview from the year when he died (1996). There was one statement the great scientist and science popularizer made which sent a shiver down my spine. He said, “The real value of science is in teaching skepticism. If people are not skeptical, then they will fall for any charlatan or religious leader who becomes president”. It was a remarkably accurate assessment of the future. If Sagan were alive today, he would be profoundly disturbed at the tactics of an administration who wants to suppress free thought and unbiased scientific facts. But he would be even more disturbed and in fact horrified at the lack of scientific understanding and skepticism among a public who lets the administration tell them what’s important and lets their money be used any way the administration wants because they cannot make honest assessments of what the real issues are. Concomitant with scientific ignorance, lack of skepticism and the confusion caused by them, will be servility and obedience to a manipulative government. In the end, the price we may pay for scientific ignorance would not just be a poor standard of living and stunted technological growth, but liberty and freedom themselves, and we are already seeing the beginnings of that.© Ashutosh Jogalekar

In the 1930s, the United States Food and Drug Administration was a mere shadow of its current incarnation, skimpy and ineffectual, with a few dozen agents scuttling around mainly trying to curb excessive profit-making within their limited jurisdiction. There were no laws that needed drug manufacturers to list all ingredients, no laws that called for extensive and separate testing for all ingredients of a drug for toxicity and side effects, and no laws that required separate testing everytime somebody made what he thought was a “small” modification to an existing drug formulation.

A single incident changed all that. During this period of political turmoil in the world, sulfa drugs had become the rage, the first true antibiotics that served as frontline defenses against a variety of bacterial infections, infections spread through simple cuts and bruises against which people could do nothing before, simply waiting and praying for the patient to get well…or to die. In the mid 1930s, a bright red formulation of a sulfa drug made its appearance in the US market. Touted as an excellent remedy against throat strep infections and other similar maladies, it was rapidly taken up by the population and administered generously to children and adults. But within a few days, disturbing reports began to come in, and people started dying. The chief pharmacist in the company responsible for the formulation committed suicide, and the FDA was given complete charge of stopping the spread of the poison as it made its way through ten states and into the shops and the bodies of unsuspecting pharmacists and customers. Within a couple of weeks, a horrible wave of death spread across the country, claiming more than a hundred lives before all shipments of the drug were located and confiscated. It was a sobering lesson for the entire nation, congress reacted with unusual efficiency and speed, and thus was born the modern FDA; an all-encompassing agency that has spread its jurisdiction meticulously over almost every medicinal substance manufactured in the US. Drug laws were revamped and made stricter than ever before, necessitating the extensive testing for side-effects of every component that is a mainstay of the drug industry today.

But what was the cuplrit that had wrought this social disaster and reform? A single simple substance that was used only as a solvent to dissolve the beneficient sulfa drug- ethylene glycol; a colourless, syrupy sweet liquid used for decades as an industrial solvent, air-conditioner fluid and deicer for window panes. The ethylene glycol used for the sulfa drug formulation coursed through its victims’ bodies, rapidly generating toxic substances that attacked cells, proteins and DNA. Death usually came slowly and painfully. Since then, ethylene glycol has been listed as a highly toxic substance that needs to be kept away from all consumables.

But more patients’ lives could perhaps have been saved by a curious treatment; sweeping their system by an IV drip of ethanol, or as many human beings call it, “saturday night fun”. More simply, one could have saved their lives by getting them drunk. Even a drip of wine would technically have helped. Ethanol prevents the body from accumulating ethylene glycol and interacts more favourably with the enzyme that is responsible for metabolising ethylene glycol into toxic substances. Ethanol, the vice that has tempted humanity for centuries and that has been proscribed (mostly hypocritically) in almost all religious texts, can be a life saviour in such situations.

As ethanol can save the life of the stricken, so can it save those of the stupid. About only 10 ml of methanol, a close cousin of ethanol that is used extensively in academic and industrial laboratories of all kinds, can cause blindness. As less as 30 ml can and will kill you. It does so by two means. First, by again reacting with the enzyme that usually metabolises ethanol, it produces substances far more toxic than those produced by metabolising ethanol. One of the metabolities, formaldehyde, is a reactive substance par excellence, attacking almost every biomolecule it sets sight on. Secondly, methanol depresses the central nervous system, again similar to what ethanol does, finally depressing it enough to gag the respiratory center in the brain. If not anything else, this should indicate the dangers of ethanol, whose effects are so similar if not as exacerbated as those of methanol. But the cretinous persist. In their desperate throes to search out ethanol, a fine taste for which they have acquired through many evenings of gaiety, they can sometimes imbibe methanol in the hope that it will satisfy their ethanolic urges. Alas, what for a chemist is a difference of only one carbon translates to a difference of life versus death for these intrepid seekers of satiation.

As much as we may frown upon these trouble makers who shoot themselves in the foot, we have responsibilities to save them. The same drip of ethanol that can save ethylene glycol-ridden victims can do that same for the methanol-afflicted. The next time you suspect somone of having consumed methanol, thrust a bottle of your finest wine down his or her throat. Fortunately for us, the enzyme that metabolises both methanol and ethanol has a much greater affinity for ethanol. Fortunately too methanol is more volatile and water-soluble than ethanol, so while ethanol keeps the enzyme busy, methanol is gotten rid of through the kidneys. In fact, many people have a close call unknowingly when they consume liquors and other spirits; all these liquids have methanol from their natural distillation process, and it is only the more abundant ethanol that keeps the methanol from doing its damage.

In the case of these foolish yet unfortunate members of society, ironically the thing which almost killed them now can save their lives and flows through their arteries as life-giving elixir. Such are the tragic and sometimes happy circumstances that nature and chemistry thrusts upon us.

© Ashutosh Jogalekar