theFRINGEreport

    2010-02-08

  1. Hofmann Parallels in Fringe, Pt. 2

    Welcome back to the history of science with a Fringe twist. Those brave few who made it through Part 1 of the blog truly deserve a salute from Mr. Papaya, and maybe even a root beer float. Truth can be at least as strange as fiction when you are talking about Dr. Albert Hofmann, the “father” LSD. He was interested in nature and spirituality from childhood. He never imagined how his discoveries would eventually be used, advanced, twisted and attacked. Eventually, it left him skeptical about the future of humanity.

    He called natural science and technology “creations of the Western mind that have changed the world.”Dr. Hofmann

    “… the sublime accomplishment of technological civilization, the comfort of Western industrial society, stands face-to-face with a catastrophic destruction of the environment,” Hofmann said. “Even to the heart of matter, to the nucleus of the atom and its splitting, this objective intellect has progressed and has unleashed energies that threaten all life on our planet.”

    Up until 1959, Hofmann’s employer (Sandoz Labs) and its various biotech competitors had a hand in such innovations as artificial sweetener, anti-psychotic drugs and DDT. The 1960s is where things really take a turn for the Fringe, however. Biotechnology gains prominence with large-scale antibiotic production, and Sandoz begins to expand internationally through all sorts of creative mergers and acquisitions. William Bell would be proud. Then again, real life can be a great inspiration for TV writers and their fictional creations.

    What happened next in the real world of Albert Hofmann?

    • 1967 – Sandoz buys businesses that make products such as Isostar (a “power drink” similar to Gatorade) and Ovaltine.  Remember the Ovaltine Café at the end of this season’s “Shattered” episode? It’s a real place in Vancouver, but still…that’s a brain-bending coincidence.
    • 1965 – Sandoz withdraws LSD from the market and it became illegal to possess by 1968.
    • 1970 – Geigy and Ciba merge to form Ciba-Geigy Ltd. and get into the seed business four years later.
    • 1971 – Alfred Hofmann retires from Sadoz Labs.
    • 1975 – Sandoz acquires Rogers Seed Co. and Northrup King in the U.S. The alternate universe is still waiting for its shipment.
    • 1978 – Ciba-Geigy works on systemic fungicide.
    • 1981 – Ciba-Geigy introduces the first transdermal patch for travel sickness. Does that work for time travel as well, doctor?
    • 1982 – First immunosuppressant (cyclosporine) debuts at Sandoz.
    • 1986 – A fire in a Sandoz production plant storage room led to a large amount of pesticide being released into the upper Rhine River, killing many fish and other aquatic life. WHAT!! Your insurance agent called. He says good luck getting that little gecko guy to cut you a deal.
    • 1994 – Sandoz acquires the Gerber baby food company. Only the Massive Dynamic brand comes fortified with cortexiphan!
    • 1996 - 2001 – The merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy forms mega-corporation Novartis. It strikes an agreement with the U.C. Berkeley Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, sparking fears about the commercialization of genetically modified plants. Novartis acquires Merck’s crop protection business and forms its own Institute of Functional Genomics.
    • 2003 – Novartis creates a generic drug division, acquires a medical nutrition business and gains interest in a company focused on antiviral and anti-infective therapies.
    • 2006 – Novartis partners with the World Health Organization to provide anti-malaria treatment to developing countries. The company opens a cell culture-based influenza vaccine production plant in the U.S. With all the biohazards in the Fringe division, this is handy!
    • 2007 – Fortune ranks the company #1 pharmaceutical firm on the “World’s Most Admired” list.
    • 2008 – The Novartis Vaccine Institute for Global Health opens in Sienna, Italy. Dr. Albert Hofmann, age 102, dies of an apparent heart attack.

    As wild and crazy as our favorite Fringe storylines have gotten, I find it quite meaningful that the background story of a massive corporation striving to make the world a better place through science has deep roots in recent history. Once you bring a new scientific creation into the world, as Dr. Hoffman did with LSD, the places that creation goes and what is done with it is out of your hands. He didn’t have the help of coded safe deposit boxes, Observers, brain surgery or Olivia “Headshot” Dunham. Or did he?

    2. Comments
    2010-02-07

  2. Hofmann Parallels Found in Fringe, Pt. 1

    Albert Hofmann, called the “father” of LSD experimentation, may actually play a pivotal role in the creative development of FOX’s Fringe TV series. A Google search on Dr. Hofmann sends you down a twisting rabbit hole that bumps into everything from LSD and Massive Dynamic to life-saving vaccines and potential blight. Walter Bishop and William Bell are only TV characters, but Hofmann’s life comes very close to being stranger than fiction.

    As a young scientist with a degree in chemistry, he was hired by chemical dye company, Kern & Sandoz, in Basel, Switzerland. The artificial sweetener, saccharine, was invented there in 1899. The company opened a research department in 1917, headed by Prof. Arthur Stoll. He originally isolated the chemical ergotamine from ergot, a fungus. His discovery led to an effective treatment for migraine headaches. Sam Weiss: “Have the headaches started yet?” Read on, devoted Fringe fanatic — they will!

    As the company expanded their work into medicinal chemistry, Dr. Stoll assigned Hofmann to identify the active substances in ergot, a grain fungus that typically grows on rye.  Rye is a grass grown extensively as a cereal grain and as a forage crop. It is closely related to barley and wheat. Sounds to me like a crop that could lead to major problems if a fungus grew out of control.

    Hofmann explains the origins of this potential blight in his book LSD: My Problem Child, “Ergot first appeared on the stage of history in the early Middle Ages, as the cause of outbreaks of mass poisonings affecting thousands of persons at a time. The illness, whose connection with ergot was for a long time obscure, appeared in two characteristic forms, one gangrenous and the other convulsive.” One popular name for the gangrenous form was St. Anthony’s Fire.

    The last great ergot epidemic happened in southern Russia in the 1920s. The fungus also had medicinal uses by midwives to help bring on childbirth. In the 1800s, doctors found it stopped excessive bleeding after childbirth. No one had been able to identify the drug’s active substances until Hofmann’s work in 1938.

    Sandoz was not alone in its drive to develop helpful and financially rewarding products. Its two main competitors were Ceiba and Geigy. Each company worked on separate projects from diverse points along the way and each had its own unique group of scientists behind the scenes. Sounds very much like our fictional Massive Dynamic and their competitors like INtREPUS in Season 1’s “The Cure.”  In the midst of competition, the real-life companies agreed to pool information between then in a deal that lasted from 1918 to 1950. In that time, and since, developments expanded from pharmaceuticals to food, crop control, pesticides, vaccines and more.

    Here’s a glimpse of how modern chemical development changed our world since the days of dear Dr. Hofmann:

    • 1929 – Sandoz opens a chemicals department.

    • 1935 – Geigy begins manufacturing insecticides.

    • 1937 – Geigy forms a pharmaceuticals department.

    • 1938 – Albert Hofmann studies medicinal plants, such as the Mediterranean squill and ergot fungus. He synthesizes the natural lysergic acid in ergot into LSD, but little is discovered.

    • 1939 – Sandoz ventures into agribusiness with pesticides.

    • 1943 – Hofmann retests LSD, accidentally absorbing the sample through his fingertips. He goes home, experiencing bizarre visions for two hours. Days later, he purposely ingests LSD in water and asked a co-worker to give him a ride home on his bicycle. The first LSD “trip” is known as Bicycle Day. Walter celebrates every April 19 by wearing a little tin foil hat – and probably nothing else. Ewww.

    • 1947 – Sandoz develops LSD and markets it as psychiatric drug.

    • 1948 – Geigy researcher wins Nobel Prize for his effective use of DDT as an insecticide.

    • 1954 – Ciba begins working with insecticides.

    • 1956 – Geigy introduces the first triazine-based herbicides. Look out, alternate universe trees!

    • 1958 – Geigy works with psychotropic drugs. Sandoz makes a breakthrough with the anti-psychotic Mellaril.

    • 1959 – Geigy produces the first long-lasting diuretic for high blood pressure. Walter was worried about Peter’s susceptibility to high blood pressure.

    Control your blood pressure as you digest those chilling tidbits from Dr. Albert Hofmann’s lifetime. Part 2 will follow tomorrow, revealing even more Fringey parallels between his world and Dr. Bishop’s. For example, what happened after the disastrous lab fire of 1986?

    3. Comments
    2010-02-07
  3. "Perception is largely an emotional response. How we feel… affects the way we see the world. And so Belly and I reasoned that extreme emotions would stimulate this perception, that acute feelings of fear and love or anger would heighten the awareness. Open the mind, as it were."
    - Walter Bishop
    4. 2010-02-04

  4. Here’s our initial thoughts of FRINGE episode 214 “Jacksonville”

    5. Comments

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