20 years of Balloon Juice!
I wasn’t aware of the blog when it opened its doors. That was back in the day when blogs were something I didn’t think would stick (so much of what I think/write is worth what you pay for it).
Also, frankly, I didn’t have a lot of bandwidth to argue with Red State milbloggers for some time after this farrago got underway, caught up as I was in my unhealthy obsession with she whose gastritis wrecked her calculator. But I got to reading it somehow, especially after Tim F. started co-blogging.
Then I started my own blog, the much shorter lived Inverse Square Blog (still like that name). Tim was an early reader and was kind enough to link from the massive media operation that was this place to my tiny spot. By then, I’d become a several-times-a-day Balloon Juice reader; this, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ place at the Atlantic were my blog-homes.
And then Tim was kind enough to pitch my brand of logorrhea to John, (four thousand words in four posts on a McArdle buffoonery and such like) and the rest, as they say, is history. Maybe tragic, maybe farce, but some fraction of 20 yers nonetheless. My first post, of course, introduced Tikka. He’s still with us, to my infinite gratitude, and as you may recall, he now has company. So let’s get the essential part of this post out of the way:
My mood last year:
Now:
So, a couple of things: Tim is as fine a human in person as he is a sardonic wit and un-bullshit-able thinker in print. I thank him for making the connection here.
John, as has been amply demonstrated over the decades (sic!), has his picture in the dictionary next to the word “mensch.” In addition to all the qualities laid bare in his posts (sometimes literally, as we all know) he’s an awesome blogpost to his front page colleagues: he lets us hang ourselves, and then clean up our own messes. No opinion-slinger could ask for more.
And as for me? I’ve been more absent than present the last few years, for a bunch of reasons. No need to go into all of them. They’re the ones that we all feel, I think: sheer frustration at the political predicament; rage/despair at the endless return of the same on the right; pandemic distraction and loss of focus/productivity/etc. On the personal side, there’s been some health stuff (all either resolved scares or well managed, thankfully), but more decisively, my hopes and plans for my work seem to be ramping up as I reach a point in which my career is much closer to its end than its beginning. I’ve had trouble keeping up my daily schedule on the current book, and the proposal for the next one needs a push, and that’s where the spare writing minutes have tended to go.
That said, I am going to try–no promises–to be at least a little more of a contributor here than I have been. I don’t think I have a ton to offer on politics these days; the front pagers who are making the place hum get there faster and better than I could at the top of my game. So my hope is to add some shorter posts on events that offer an oblique way into politics/society/culture. And I want to do a bit more of what I first came here to do, get some science stories into our discussions, both the science-cool! variety and the stories in which the scientific elements give some insight into the time and place in which they take place.
And to start keeping that promise, here’s a gloss on one such tale that straddles both of those themes.
For more than a year, Victoria Gray’s life had been transformed. Gone were the sudden attacks of horrible pain that had tortured her all her life. Gone was the devastating fatigue that had left her helpless to care for herself or her kids. Gone were the nightmarish nights in the emergency room getting blood transfusions and powerful pain medication.
But one big question remained: Would the experimental treatment she got to genetically modify her blood cells keep working, and leave her free from the complications of sickle cell disease that had plagued her since she was a baby?
The backstory: Gray is one of the first group to be treated with a protocol in which her physicians harvest cells from the bone marrow, modify them using the CRISPR gene-editing technology to produce a form of hemoglobin that could compensate for the defective version that lies at the heart of the disorder, infuse them back into the patient’s body, all in the hope that this feat of genetic engineering will, in effect, reverse the pathology of sickle cell disorder. Two years ago she underwent the procedure, which is absolutely no walk in the park. (The link immediately above takes you to the first NPR story on Gray’s medical journey. Basically, the procedure takes one down much of the same road a bone marrow transplant requires, which is high on the No Fun scale.)
So how’s it going? Damn well:
“I’m doing great,” Gray, now 36, said during a recent interview from her home in Forest, Miss. with NPR, which has had exclusive access to chronicle her experience for more than two years.
“I haven’t any problems with sickle cell at all. I did get a cold about a week ago,” she says with a nervous chuckle.
Victoria’s so traumatized by a life of sickle cell that just getting a cold still terrifies her. A simple cold had been one of many things that could trigger a terrible attack of the painful symptoms of the disease.
“This is major for me and my family,” she says. “Two years without me being in the hospital? Wow. We just can’t believe it. But we’re so grateful.”
She’s doing so well for so long that she’s officially no longer in the landmark study she volunteered for.
I can’t emphasize enough how wonderful this is. This is still very much an experimental procedure, and it didn’t work for everyone in the trial. But this is what makes the idea of science so thrilling: it is simply the best way we have ever invented for making sense of the material world, to the point that it becomes possible to transform human experience–suffering–for untold numbers of our fellow creatures. Science is so cool!
And science is always political, social, an expression of a given moment’s sense of what matters. This story of an utterly practical application of molecular engineering is itself the outcome of decades of work that began as purely curiosity-driven basic research. Science is a cultural enterprise, and a social one. In the immediate aftermath World War II, the US made a national commitment to funding basic science by, inter alia, establishing the National Science Foundation and other federal research efforts. Individual states, led by my natal California vastly expanded public higher education, creating an extraordinary research infrastructure.
That commitment has been eroding for some time now, and at the federal level, not just under GOP administrations. But in the last decade, at least, and really much longer, anti-science stances have become part of the Republican catechism. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s invaluable Merchants of Doubt traces the roots of this assault on human ingenuity to the McCarthy era, in effect, when attempts to turn the link between smoking and cancer into meaningful public health measures could be framed as an attack on capitalism…a trope that is still playing out in the climate change crisis and, as part of the motivation, opposition to public health measures to help in the pandemic.
My point: as Republicans continue to hold any power, future accomplishments that could help so many remain at risk. Nature doesn’t just roll over and reveal its intricate workings. It takes sustained hard work and the acceptance of the possibility of failure to get to the point where it becomes possible to take some fundamental new understanding and turn it into something that we can use. If you look at GOP stewardship of universities in Florida, Louisiana and elsewhere, do you have any faith that American science will thrive if the party reclaims national power. I don’t.
So, to keep this post well on the under vs. War and Peace, I’ll stop here, with this TL:DR thought: I feel blessed and privileged to live in an age where the drive to understand the mechanisms of life down to the atom-by-atom construction of the stuff of which we’re made has led to the kind of relief of suffering that a functional reversal of sickle cell would offer. A big part of why I’m a science writer is for the thrill such stories still evoke for me.
And I want to hold this story up as an example of what’s at stake in political contests seemingly far removed from questions like how to manipulate the shape of a hemoglobin molecule.
Happy 20th, everyone. To many more jackal-infused decades.
Image: William Blake, Newton, 1804-5
Yutsano
I see Tikka is teaching Champ the finer points of how to voice displeasure. Although I don’t think the student will ever surpass the master.
EDIT: extremely bizarre. It looked as if my comment had been eviscerated. It’s here now but still very oddsfish.
Also: did everyone else evaporate?
Baud
@Yutsano:
Tikka would make me confess to crimes I never committed.
NotMax
Unsure why or when I got out of the habit; used to visit the Pharyngula blog with some regularity. Same goes for Nautilus.
WaterGirl
Photo 1: on my god, best photo of Tikka ever. He is regal.
Photo 2: awesome!
Photo 3: I love this photo, Tikka in front, Champs’s smaller, in the background behind and to the right. All I can think of was Batman and baby Robin.
Interesting story about sickle cell. Someone on a TV story this year (fictional) had sickle cell and was part of a clinical trial where they did the procedure you described. It was successful and the character got her life back. I wondered if /hoped that this was happening in real life, but I didn’t know.
I always enjoy your posts and i’m glad you are here.
*As long as we are (slightly) tripping down memory lane… Do you remember who called you the pretentious art douche? (Do I have that phrase right?)
Baud
I’m really glad we have a science person as a front pager here.
Nelle
Grief at the early loss of a beloved sibling can be a long thing. My BIL’s sister died of sickle cell in her twenties and decades later, he mourns her absence.
StringOnAStick
Tikka will hate me for asking this, but is it just the wide angle aspect of the cell phone camera or is his nose actually that, um, large? That’s a significant cat schnozz, or at least it has always seemed to me anyway. Maybe its the color pattern too.
I am closely watching this genetic mod work on blood disorders; in addition, the impetus behind a lot of the mRNA research is also to treat blood disorders. I’m hoping for something that can solve CLL before my husband ends up needing to start treatment for it someday. My understanding is that a lot of the research that went into developing mRNA technology was originally aimed more at blood disorders and that the tech transfer to create vaccines for Covid-19 was a happy “hey look, we can do this too!”
Yutsano
@Baud: Heh. You know what you didn’t do.
StringOnAStick
@Baud: I second that.
scav
Yea science! Here are some seriously cool fossils I read about yesterday — I mean, the detail and the ecosystem scale. 15m year-old rainforest
The Dangerman
Photo 3: “Dude, what happened to all the Holiday gift boxes?”
satby
@Baud: I am too. Especially in an age where so many of our fellow citizens have started to replace respect for science with belief in magic.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Me too.
Brachiator
I absolutely agree with this sentiment. I greatly enjoy your posts and hope to read many more in the days and months ahead.
It is so strange that Republicans, who often pretend to be hard-headed realists and pragmatists, turn out to be anti-science.
It is also ironic that the Blake’s powerful image of Newton is the work of a mystic who saw Newton as an enemy. Blake once wrote:
But I think that Blake would also condemn Republicans and other conservatives who hold the mechanical workings of the economy to be more important than human life.
jeffreyw
Tom, if you did no more than publish kitty pictures and fine art you would be a good front pager. Your thoughtful posts make you a damn good one. I’ve read your books, you magnificent bastard! LOL
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: You know what you did.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Magic is cheaper.
Redshift
I’m glad you’re here when you can be, Tom. I’m currently in the middle of Money for Nothing (as part of my effort to spend more time reading books again and less scrolling through Twitter), and I’m enjoying it greatly.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Magic is more … flexible … than science.
Redshift
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not necessarily. New Agers spend vast amounts on it, for example. Some years ago, a friend who was exploring taking talks she did and tailoring them slightly to that market was advised that she needed to charge a lot more if she wanted them to take her seriously.
It’s cheaper for the people in charge, but not enough for the people on the ground for that to be a plausible explanation for why they buy into it.
debbie
The reports of success for Victoria Gray have been a joy to follow on NPR (and one of the highlights of listening). You can just hear the relief in her voice.
Ken
“Reality has a liberal bias.” — Stephen Colbert
Geminid
@Brachiator: William Blake was a brilliant artist and poet. But brilliance doesn’t neccesarily pay the bills, and the story is that from time to time Mrs. Blake would set an empty plate in front of William to remind him they were running out of food.
NeenerNeener
@WaterGirl: I think that was an episode of The Resident. I love that show.
The Dangerman
@Ken: It’s Cleeks Law in action (or inaction, as the case may be).
Cameron
I’m not sure I agree with the attribution of the painting shown. I think it is Blake, but from his Ergot Portfolio, the painting in question being titled Qanon. It’s a hallucinatory depiction of a naked RWNJ spewing glittering COVID-19 all over his map of The Flat Earth. Of course, I could be wrong. Probably time for another rum and pomegranate.
WaterGirl
@NeenerNeener: I think it was!
JPL
@debbie: What a remarkable story, and I wish her a lifetime without pain.
Tom, Thank you for linking to the story about Victoria.
New Style in Parsons
Thx for the words and the many excellent posts.
I share your enthusiasm for the successes of our ongoing biomedical sciences revolution over the past half-century or more (date it from DNA structure solution or isolation of restriction enzymes leading to first in vitro cloning, as you like). I am proud that my work life has comprised helping to advance the science and the application, and I also am saddened to see so much of America give up on that revolution and the commitment to science that propelled it.
I agree as well that most people don’t appreciate the suffering that our sickle cell patients go through. I remember as a medical student I was shocked to observe that my hospitalized sickle cell patient could glance at the phlebotomy cart and he immediately could tell me the IV needle gauges by the color codes on their plastic hubs. He was extremely familiar with having IV needle sticks to draw blood, access veins for infusions, etc.
Keep up the good work, and please let that include working against the anti-science political movements we have had to put up with so much in recent months and years.
Betty
Always a pleasure to see you here, Tom!
Cermet
Along these lines, Webb successfully completed its last deployment and has achieved its desired full power. The new super observatory for near and mid IR that will both answer many questions we are asking (like are those Earth sized exoplanets orbiting in the goldilocks zone, really Earth like in the aspect we want?) and more to the point, answer many questions we didn’t think to ask!
MazeDancer
Art, cats, smarts, cooking reports, and now bringing reports of miracles, who could ask for more? You are always thoughtful, Tom.
@StringOnAStick: Tikka has a noble nose. My cat Tess has the cute pink version of it. No doubt, they both feel blessed, as do their lucky owners.
Baud
@Cermet:
If they don’t have Republicans, I’ll take it.
Benw
YAY TIKKA AND CHAMP! And Tim!
Bodacious
About 3 years ago, my daughter sent me a fuzzy, distant, back shot of a woman walking down the hall. “That’s HER!! She’s going to get a Nobel prize”. The text was a digital swoon, and I could feel her exhilaration and awe in those letters. It was Dr Doudna, co-discoverer of CRISPR technology, leaving a department talk. That proximity to greatness still remains a highlight of her life.
Starfish
I recently ordered your book “Money for Nothing” so you can explain cryptocurrency to me.
MagdaInBlack
I always enjoy your posts, Tom, and your books. Thank you for being here.
Albatrossity
I, for one, would welcome more frequent contributions from you here; I have always found your posts to be well-written, thought-provoking, and science-savvy. Moar, please!
And frankly I think that Merchants of Doubt should be required reading for every American. Certainly for every incoming college freshman!
delk
Case in point: HIV. Imagine how much further our understanding of viruses would be today if Reagan and the so-called moral majority weren’t in charge at the time.
Spanky
@Starfish:
His sequel “Chicks For Free” is destined to be a megahit.
Don
Tom,
in those moments you can donate to this crowd, I hope you can devote some to the towering achievement that the Webb ‘Scope is/will become. I am sure most readers do not fully appreciate how it fits into the overall ‘scope” of astronomy and cosmology.
I for one would appreciate it.
Cephalus Max
Tom, you are a wonderful addition to the BJ crew.
Kudos to Tim F. for bringing you into the fold.
BIG bonus for all of us: discovering all your non-BJ science writing.
Ksmiami
I love your scientific and cultural contributions. And really hoping that the anti science GOP is done in by their own ignorance and stupidity. Evolution is a funny thing and we have to push back the ignorant forces back under the rocks they came from
Cermet
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Ahh, Grasshopper, once one travels down that path – the dark side (i.e. belief in magic) – forever will it dominate you!
Omnes Omnibus
Where would this place be without a pretentious art douche? Thanks for what you do.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: That stuff has no power over Leos.
James E Powell
Tom Levenson.
Loved Money for Nothing, love your posts, including the art works. Here’s hoping any and all health issues remain resolved & managed.
Can you share what your next book is about?
mrmoshpotato
How surprising!
RandomMonster
My favorite part of a TL post is the selected artwork.
Redshift
@Cermet: One of the many things that blows me away about Webb is that the reason it will take six months before it starts making science observations (it will arrive at L2 long before that) is for it to cool down to near absolute zero, which its infrared detectors require to operate (and not have the infrared from space overwhelmed by infrared photons radiating off the spacecraft.)
way2blue
I started reading Balloon Juice when John G. was still a Republican. So saw his transition in realtime. I’d been ‘piped’ here via Markos of Dailykos who would give a respectful shout-out to John from time to time. My first taste of online conservatism. A bit shocking, but good for my soul… But. As I recall—some event triggered John to reexamine his framework and he quickly morphed into who we see today. Acerbic takes on our flailing political class. And rescue animals. Health concerns. College buddies. Army buddies. Family & their frogs…
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
Amazing how quickly three books on the history of science made it to my bookshelves/reader.
cbear
Tom! Tikka! Champ!
It’s wonderful to see and hear from all three of you. Thanks so much for all your posts through the years–hopefully with many more to come.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: And one of the reasons it’s an infrared telescope is your nym. They want to look at stuff so close to the beginning of time that it’s shifted way out of the visible.
Ruckus
Tom, thank you for your work here, which includes the story of Victoria Gray. This one hits very close to home, a decades long very close friend of mine had sickle cell, she passed away 6 yrs ago, and I miss her amazing presence in this world. Over those decades I’ve visited her in intensive care many times because of sickle cell attacks. For me one of the worst concepts was the effort she had to go through to get medical care. If she went to a hospital that didn’t know her, they would accuse her of being a drug addict looking for drugs. If they knew her, she could get admitted and helped. We should not forget the past, and you bring some of that here with your art and discussions of things like this study that Ms Gray went through and these two opposite views of the past world and the concepts of what the modern world can bring are one of the things that make being alive at this time, amazing. Medicine is often an issue in this country because of money, but when it’s good, it can be very good. Three people in my family of 5 have had cancer, and I’m one of them. One of us died from cancer, but 2 of us were able to move on because of medicine. I did 45 days of radiation treatment a few years ago, without surgery, the same treatment is now done in 10 days.
Ruckus
@satby:
Is it a belief in magic?
Or a belief in stupidity?
I think it may be too close to call…
zhena gogolia
@RandomMonster: yeah!
Felanius Kootea
@RandomMonster: Agree – I really appreciate the artwork.
HinTN
@Redshift: That heat shield is a wondrous thing of beauty to this silly engineer, as is the packaging that enabled all that stuff to fold up like origami and fit into the Arienne V that took it aloft and then unfold flawlessly to become what will be the triumph that is Webb.
HinTN
@HinTN: Not to mention that Webb is fully deployed on Stephen Hawking’s birthday.
West of the Rockies
I love your presence here, Tom, and look forward to seeing you here more!
Mary G
It’s a rare talent to be able to explain complicated science to the rest of us,and you have a TON of it.
A clinical trial saved both my mental and financial health back in the 90s. My company had hired McKinsey a few years back and we were all put on a terrible HMO. Enbrel, the first biologic medicine for RA, had just been released and the HMO had made it clear it would never pay for it. I had a couple of unusual blood factors, including being seronegative for RA (as were 30% of all RA patients at the time), so they claimed I had an orphan disease that had never been studied and thus couldn’t have any drugs.
My house was worth less than I’d paid for it and my savings and 401(k) balances were tiny. I was at a loss for what to do except commit suicide when somebody told me about this big shot rheumatologist in Beverly Hills who’d helped her sister both live with fibromyalgia and force her insurance to pay for the treatments.
So I gambled with the then extraordinary consultation fee of $250 and made an appointment to see if he could help prove I had RA and get the Enbrel for me.
He was a life-saver who started reading the papers I had brought and when he got to my HMO’s letters stopped to say “Christ, what asshoes. They’re going to ruin health-care in America.”
He couldn’t get me Enbrel, but was just starting a clinical trial of “something much better” and there was an opening because someone had just had to drop out. Within two weeks I was enrolled and shooting myself up every morning. (It was 6 months blind study, not knowing if you had the drug or the placebo, then 2 1/2 years guaranteed to be on the drug.) I was great for the whole three years, but a majority of the test subjects were not. Just amazing blessings and luck. I will never not be grateful.
BigJimSlade
Yes! More science posts! I’ve just been re-reading Ever Since Darwin (Stephen Jay Gould) and really enjoying it.
Tom Levenson
Belatedly (posted this and immediately shifted to family stuff—the celebration of my brother’s 60th)…
Thanks to everyone for such kind words. See you all very soon.
mvr
Yes, I’ve enjoyed your postings. And I still want the answer to WaterGirl’s question of you at #4.
CAM-WA
Methinks Mr. Levinson should learn to use the fold…
oldster
Cole is an awesome blogpost???
I suspect that was autocorrected from “bloghost”.
chopper
stefan: the best club in town is called “balloon juice”. this place has everything – naked mopping, lost mustard, skull-fucking kittens – and if you drive there they’ll give you “the campito”
colin: uh…what’s “the campito”
stefan (cracking up): it’s…when a latino midget valet drives your car into a farmer’s field and leaves it there