Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs

Serendipitous stories about unexpected beneficial drug effects are now being systematically collected on the internet. It is strange that pharmaceutical companies are not collecting such information, not even in their clinical trials. Multiple serendipitous stories analyzed properly can lead to a new use patent for an existing drug, which is owned by whoever applied for the new use patent. Each new use patent can be licensed for millions, tens of millions of dollars each year. Project BE4Discovery attempts to centrally and systematically collect unexpected beneficial drug effects and share the proceeds from any new use patents with those who made the patent application possible. [...]

This is a collection of stories about many of the big breakthroughs in modern medicine which the author connects through the thread of serendipity. Before reading this book my conception of the scientific process was Problem>>>Theory>>>experiment>>>new problem <br /> <br />Reading the book gave me the impression that it is actually more like this <br />[process] -->unique observation>>>>What hypothesis can I solve with this?>>> Failure to get published as established peer reviewers don't like the way your maverick theory sounds>>>give lecture before obscure audience(<50 people almost mandatory!)>>>change world/make pharmaceutical company rich>>> NOBEL <br /> <br />For a general reader a few of the chapters discuss more technical aspects of medicine, but one could still gain the most important points from the book without grasping all of the technical details. Overall a well written and important book.

HAPPY ACCIDENTS: SERENDIPITY IN MODERN MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS tells of happy accidental discoveries in the world of science, documenting events and also providing insights into how these accidents came to be realized as beneficial. It's this perspective which makes HAPPY ACCIDENTS a highly recommended pick not just for general interest lending libraries, but for college-level collections strong in health science. Learning to recognize and assess unexpected and accidental results for their possible lessons and benefits is key to any researcher's success: the author draws on both personal experience and research and interviews with winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and other awards to document this process of discovery.

Let me preface my remarks by mentioning that I am a practicing radiologist and I also serve as Editor in Chief for the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), a scholarly, scientific journal that has been in existence for more than 100 years. In 1995, an article titled "Science, Creativity, and Serendipity" by Morton A. Meyers was published in the AJR [1]. This was the Glen W. Hartman Lecture of the Society of Gastrointestinal Radiologists of that year. The AJR's Editor at that time, Robert Berk, believed it to be one of the most outstanding papers published during his tenure and commented that "Residents will be fortunate to have this information at the beginning of their careers" (M. A. Meyers, personal communication). Fortunately for us, Dr. Meyers has maintained a continuing interest in the role of serendipity as it applies to major medical breakthroughs, and he published a book on this very topic in March 2007, titled "Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs--When Scientists Find What They're NOT Looking For" [2]. It was my good fortune recently to pick up Dr. Meyers' book and casually begin to leaf through it. To my astonishment, almost everything important in medicine that has developed over the past two centuries came about, to a large extent, through pure serendipity. The book is divided into four parts. Let me list them here in order so you can appreciate Dr. Meyers' approach to this topic: Part I: The Dawn of a New Era: Infectious Diseases and Antibiotics, the Miracle Drugs Part II: The Smell of Garlic Launches the War on Cancer Part III: A Quivering Quartz String Penetrates the Mystery of the Heart Part IV: The Flaw Lies in the Chemistry, Not the Character: Mood-Stabilizing Drugs, Antidepressants, and Other Psychotropics Dr. Meyers draws some conclusions at the end of the book that are extremely thought provoking and left me wondering about the current system that exists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for supporting research and funding specific programs. What is most enjoyable about this compelling book is that Dr. Meyers writes this story with exceptional literary skill and without bogging down into highly technical jargon. While this book will be absolutely fascinating to everyone in the medical field, it can be equally appreciated and enjoyed by the interested layperson as well. Over the years, I have heard a few of the stories to which Dr. Meyers alludes, but never in their entirety and never appreciating how purely serendipitous was the outcome of a particular diverted research project. The author reflects on his own personal experiences during his distinguished career as an abdominal radiologist. Let me quote directly from Dr. Meyers' Preface, page xii: "Most people have had at least one experience in which an unintentional action or inadvertent observation, or perhaps even simple neglect, led to a happy outcome--to something they could not, or would not, have been able to accomplish even

[...] The Birth Stochastic Science: Rewriting the History of Medicine Controlled experiment can easily show absence of design in medical research: you compare the results of top-down directed research to randomly generated discoveries. Well, the U.S. government provides us with the perfect experiment for that: the National Cancer Institute that came out of the Nixon "war on cancer" in the early 1970s. "Despite the Herculean effort and enormous expense, only a few drugs for the treatment of cancer were found through NCI's centrally directed, targeted program. Over a twenty-year period of screening more than 144,000 plant extracts, representing about 15,000 species, not a single plant-based anticancer drug reached approved status. This failure stands in stark contrast to the discovery in the late 1950s of a major group of plant-derived cancer drugs, the Vinca Alcaloids -a discovery that came about by chance, not through directed research." From Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, by Morton Meyers, a book that just came out. It is a MUST read. Please go buy it. Read it twice, not once. Although the author does not take my drastic "stochastic tinkering" approach, he provides all kind of empirical evidence for the role of design. He does not directly discuss the narrative fallacy(q.v.) and the retrospective distortion (q.v.) but he certainly allows us to rewrite the history of medicine. We did not realize that cures for cancer had been coming from other brands of research. You search for noncancer drugs and find something you were not looking for (and vice versa). But the interesting constant: a- The discoverer is almost always treated like an idiot by his colleagues. Meyers describes the vicious side effect of "peer reviewing". b- Often people see the result but cannot connect the dots (researchers are autistic in their own way). c- The members of the guild gives the researcher a hard time for not coming from their union. Pasteur was a chemist not a doctor/biologist. The establishment kept asking him "where is your M.D., monsieur". Luckily Pasteur had too much confidence to be deterred. d- Many of the results are initially discovered by an academic researchers who neglects the consequences because it is not his job --he has a script to follow. Or he cannot connect the dots because he is a nerd. Meyers uses Darwin as the ultimate model: the independent gentleman scholar who does not need anyone and can follow a lead when he sees it. e- It seems to me that discoverers are nonnerds. Now it is depressing to see the works of the late Roy Porter, a man with remarkable curiosity and a refined intellect, who wrote many charming books on the history of medicine. Does the narrative fallacy cancels everything he did? I hope not. We urgently need to rewrite the history of medicine without the ex post explanations. Meyers started the process: he provides data for modern medicine since, say, Pasteur. I am more interested in the