Why don’t you ever hear hip-hop in labs?

I’ve been thinking about the music that is played in labs lately. Most labs have some background noise going on. In my experience, the single most common background sound in a lab is NPR (us scientists love us some NPR). Lagging far behind NPR is weird shit. By weird shit I mean some kind of Brazilian samba, some off-kilter tango or the latest and greatest ultracool band that no one has heard of before. I have to admit, I have no problem with any of this stuff (after all, I loves me some NPR and samba) but do any of us actually listen to this stuff at home (aside from NPR of course).

For the last few weeks I’ve been paying attention to what I hear in other labs, to what I listen to in the office and to what I listen to when working around the house and in the gym.

Why are new classes of analgesics needed?

I’ve written a few posts here lately about cannabinoids as new classes of analgesics. At some point I think I also wrote a post about how I am a chronic pain sufferer. I am one of millions of Americans that suffer from chronic low back pain. Over the past week I’ve been having a flare-up of epic proportions. Although the present situation basically sucks-ass for me, it does provide a nice opportunity to explore why the development of new analgesics is so important. There is a great clinical need and this stems largely from intolerable side effects of available analgesics.

Let’s start with a simple fact. Opiates and NSAIDs are effective analgesics. If you have an acute injury, chances are that you can take these compounds and have your pain effectively relieved. The problem is that if you need to take these compounds over the long term you are going to experience some side effects and in most people those side effects are going to make you stop taking your analgesics. Let’s look at the case of Juniorprof to understand how this happens.