McGill CHEM 183: Intro and Drug History 1

September 1 2021
Part 1

the year in new drugs - 2021

● from june 30th, 2021, there have been 27 new drugs approved by the FDA (and
probably will soon be approved by health Canada)
● why are the names weird? so they don't get confused with different ones
● the numbers of new drugs are rising because of the pressure from the medical
establishment to get drugs in use
○ in 2010 for example, there were only 21 drugs approved in the whole year
○ averages about 36 per year now

issues

● shkreli raised the price of antiparasitic drug daraprim from 13.50 per pill to 750 per pill
(that's a 5,555% increase)
● he went to jail for 7 years apparently and was fined
● sackler family is a privately owned company and is responsible largely for the opioid
crisis in north America, they created oxycontin
○ fined up to 5-6 billion
○ historic settlement case and they were dissolved very recently I believe
● opioids cause about 80k deaths per year in the USA, traffic causes about 40k, guns (not
suicides) cause about 20k
● in Canada, its about 6k per year (but proportionally is a lot)
● johnson and johnson was sued quite a bit for having asbestos in their baby powder (29
million)
○ they were also sued for 572 million for fuelling the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and
later for 26 billion to end all lawsuits involving opioids (so they know they're
wrong asf)
● all in all, more than 500 thousand people have died from overdosing prescription and
illegal street opioids since 1999 (according to federal data)

ancient greek medicine?

● a fabled shrub on the aegean island of chios, "can it cure humanity?"

● comes from a tree on certain islands and drips from the tree on to the ground, into
powder (calcium carbonate) and forms beads
● reputed to cure or assist inflammation, wounds, ulcers, asthma, thought to be anti-
cancerous and antimicrobial
○ also used for chewing gum (breath), flavouring in foods, and found in the bible
too lmfao (allegedly)
● looking into the essential oil of mastic gum (and its activity against drug-resistant
Helicobacter pylori that causes stomach ulcers
● evidence of it helping against oral pathogens

the media gives misconceptions - "good old days"

 ● "way back when there weren't that many problems with health" said on the radio in 1989
(WHAT)

● in the 1800s, ether and chloroform were used as anaesthetic, they used dirty ass knives,
didn't know about bacteria, people just fuckin cut off limbs and tumours and shit

● with the development of watches, they could look at pulse, bloodletting was common

● king Charles ii, feb 2nd 1685 was treated by sir Charles scarburgh

○ along with 14 other physicians he led in bloodletting and other medical practices
of the time to rid the king of "disrupted humours" (convulsions)
○ some of the bizarre treatments he also received were: head shaving, mustard
plates applied with irritants containing Spanish fly, given a substance form the
crushed skull of an "innocent man", bled (bloodletting), given extracts of all the
herbs and animals of the kingdom, given a stone from the stomach of a goat"
○ he also went into a coma and died
● there are paintings about the physicians looking at his pee LMFAO

○ they used uroscopy flasks - became the symbol of a doctor

○ there were also uroscopy wheels that helped interpret what the pee meant

today

● can be done now through gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

● finds each property making up the pee lmfao
● provides the exact molecular formula

back to it

● at the end of the 1800s, life expectancy for a man (north America) was about 47 years
● now it is overall over 80 for men and women with an edge to women (north America)
● infant mortality was super super high
● around ww2 penicillin was widely available so this accounts for the downturn
● life expectancy now (2015 data) is about 84.1 for japan and Switzerland* about 83.7, 82
for sweden** about +/- 2 years for women/men
● in russia, women are expected to live about 77 years, men 66 because of "excessive
drinking"
● different agencies differ but the world average is about 72 years (world-o-metre)
● has dropped a year or so due to covid-19
● oldest person in the world is kane tanaka, 118, in japan
● in Canada, was 117, marie-louise meilleur in qc (died in 1998)
● jeanne calment is 122 (France) but her age is contested
○ met van Gogh as a girl but called him ugly and badly dressed.. wtf
● if you are 20 years old, odds are 91% that you have a living grandmother
○ a century ago, only 83% of 20 year olds had a living mother, much less a
grandmother

graph on how well a country cares for their elderly

 ● japan faces issue though because so much of their population is so old
● in 1918, the pandemic was proportionally about 40 factors worse? like in deaths
● called it the grip back then
● spanish flu has no relevance to spain
● camp funston, fort riley in Kansas was the first place they realized people were sick
● people wore masks, reminiscent of h1n1 in 2003-ish
● Canadian troops came back in 1918 and were already sick, many in alberta spread it
into the countryside (4000 people died in alberta)
● in labrador they had to have open graves, just putting as many people as they could
● they cancelled the stanley cup that year too

bacterial pneumonia

● caused most of the deaths in the 1918 pandemic

● the pneumonia was caused when a normal nose and throat bacteria invaded the lungs
by a path created when the virus destroyed the bronchial cells
● from survivors - blood samples from 32 survivors (91-101 in age) all reacted to the 1918
virus, suggesting they still had antibodies to the virus
○ the antibodies could be used for future outbreaks of flu strains similar to the 1918
virus
● 2017-18 virus a(h3n2), vaccine was only about 36% effective and the flu caused 600k
deaths worldwide