Outstrech, Upgrade, and Irritationality - Science and the Warps of Mass Psychology
Fussnoten
Melvin Konner. Why the Reckless Survive...and other Secrets of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 1990: 4.
n.a. "Ancient Egyptian Timeline." Guardian's Egypt.
Since the wind blew reliably against the river's current, the Egyptians learned they could sail upstream, then drift or row downstream again, turning the Nile into a people-mover par excellence. (Anne Millard. The Egyptians. Morristown, NJ, Silver Burdett, 1975: 12-13.)
Time-Life Books, the editors of. The Age of God-Kings. New York: Time-Life Books, 1987: 151-165; Anne Millard. The Egyptians: 34-35; Dora Jane Hamblin with C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky and the editors of Time-Life Books. The Emergence of Man: The First Cities. New York: Time-Life Books, 1979: 16-17.
Herodotus. The History of Herodotus. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1996. CD-Rom; Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford. Hannibal. New York: McGraw Hill, 1981; Will Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part I - Our Oriental Heritage. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935: 291-295; Philip D. Curtin. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984: 76.
Claudius Ptolemy's Sexta Asiae Tabula ascribes this discovery to the Greek Hippalus in 50 b.c. Ptolemy, in turn, derived his information from a sailing manual called "The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea." (Susan Ludmer-Gliebe. "Sinbads of the Sea.". William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Books, 1998 [original edition 1976]; Will Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part I - Our Oriental Heritage. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1991-1994. CD-Rom.)
Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search To Know His World And Himself. New York: Vintage Books, 1985: 179-181.
Albert A. Trever. History of Ancient Civilization - Volume II: The Roman World. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939: 546.
Albert A. Trever. History of Ancient Civilization - Volume II: The Roman World: 49, 549-550.
Honor Frost. "How Carthage Lost The Sea." Natural History, December, 1987: 58-67.
Suetonius. C. Suetonius Tranquillus. Divi Augusti Vita. Edited by Michael Adams. London: Macmillan, 1939; Henry G. Pflaum. Essai sur la Cursus Publicus sous le Haut-Empire Romaine [Study of the cursus-publicus in the high Roman empire]. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1950; PTA AG, Telekom Austria. Geschichte des Post- und Fernmeldewesens. "Kommunikation und Informationsaustausch im Wandel der Jahrhunderte - Vor 2000 Jahren: Der römische 'Cursus Publicus.
Albert A. Trever. History of Ancient Civilization - Volume II: The Roman World: 274. Though Trever emphasizes that the merchant ships plying the Mediterranean were slow and that their schedules were made chaotic by the hazards of wind and weather, their abundance seems to have made up for their irregularities. Rome's initial fleets of warships had been created by reverse engineering a Phoenician wreck. However those it used to dominate the Mediterranean and regularize sea trade in later years were copied from Greek models. For the details, see: J.G. Landels. Engineering in the Ancient World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978: 132-166. For the penetration of sea trade into everyday life, see: Paul Veyne, editor. A History of Private Life: I - From Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987: 143, 154.
Geoffrey Barraclough, editor. The Times Atlas of World History. London: Times Books, 1984: 92-93.
Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume I: 180 A.D. - 395 A.D.. New York: 345.
Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977: 172; Dennis & Ching Ping Bloodworth. The Chinese Machiavelli: 3,000 Years of Chinese Statecraft. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976: 201.
Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle. The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987: 262; Philip D. Curtin. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History: 88.
Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle. The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State: 265.
A common language, uniform weights and measures, and the regulation of axle widths were instituted under the Ch'in, from 250 to 200 b.c. in China. (Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China: 63.)
Philip D. Curtin. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History: 93-96.
Will Durant pegs the Roman trade deficit at well over 400 million sesterces per year, with 100 million each going to China, India, Arabia, and Spain. (Will Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part III - Caesar and Christ. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1991-1994. CD-Rom.)
Alexander's general Seleucus established an empire which reached as far as Afghanistan. His descendants would later establish Indo-Greek kingdoms in Northwest India. (For more, see: n.a. "Early Buddhist Art." Hiindia.)
Andrea Schulte-Peevers. "The Brothers Grimm and the Evolution of the Fairy Tale." German Life, March 31, 1996; Robert Darnton. The Great Cat Massacre And Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Random House, 1985: 21.
Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume II: 395 A.D. - 1185 A.D.. New York: The Modern Library, New York: 153-169.
Will Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part IV - The Age of Faith. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1991-1994. CD-Rom. Fernand Braudel says the recreation of another international coupler - the bill of exchange - hit with the force of the discovery of the Americas. (Fernand Braudel. The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1. Translated by Sian Reynolds. New York: Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1981: 472.)
In the Philippines, sweet potatoes are still known by their Aztec name, camotl. (E.N. Anderson. The Food of China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988: 79; D.B. Grigg. The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974: 28-29.)
D.B. Grigg. The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach: 21.
E.N. Anderson. The Food of China: 80.
This information comes from a historical project carried out by percussionist Ralph MacDonald in which I was a participant. See also: John Storm Roberts. Black music of two worlds: African, Caribbean, Latin, and African-American traditions. New York: Schirmer, 1998.
The posts disappeared in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, only to be resumed haltingly in the thirteenth century, when Italian merchants built up limited mail systems to communicate with their customers and representatives at the growing network of trade fairs, and when guilds created small-scale postal systems in the north. The invention of the printing press made letter carrying a major commercial opportunity, one seized on by two families from Bergamo in Italy - the Thurns and the Taxis. Between them, they built a highly profitable relay network of 20,000 letter carriers covering routes throughout the Hapsburg Empire.
Desiderius Erasmus. The correspondence of Erasmus. Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974. The collected version of Erasmus' surviving letters fills two hefty volumes.
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples: 120. Thucydides account of Athens' 430-429 b.c. plague ascribes its origin to "the parts of Ethiopia above Egypt" - territory connected to Greece by its trade routes. Greek commerce with Egypt was so heavy that the Greeks maintained substantial trade settlements in Egyptian ports. (Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1996. CD-Rom; Philip D. Curtin. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History: 79-80.)
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples: 134-5. Ancient references to apparent bacterial plagues were frequent, appearing in the works of Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes), Aeschines (Against Ctesiphon), Pseudo-Apollodorus (Library), Aristophanes (Birds), Cicero, Virgil, etc. The Perseus Project lists a total of 283 allusions to plague in its relatively small collection of classical volumes. (Gregory R. Crane, editor.)
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples: 141.
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples: 215.
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples: 212-214; Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997: 67-82.
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples: 188.
Ling recalls witnessing "the sufferings and anxiety" tuberculosis produced "from day to day." He says, "When I was attending college in Chungking, the University had 7 giant dormitories each housing more than one thousand students in closely packed double bunks. The Seventh dormitory was occupied all by TB-ill students. One of my best friends, a highly talented young man occupied a bed next to mine in one of the other six dormitories. One night he coughed on and off for a long time. The next morning half of his mosquito net was red with his blood. He died not long after." Gilbert Ling. Personal Communication. December 1, 1998.
H. Philip Spratt. "The Marine Steam-Engine." in Charles Singer, E.J. Holmyard, A.R. Hall and Trevor I Williams, eds. A History of Technology: Volume V, The Late Nineteenth Century, c. 1850 to c. 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Robert L. O'Connell. Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989: 191-192, 233.
Paul Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House, 1987: 150.
Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China: 298.
Warren wrote home to the family proclaiming that "as a merchant I insist that it [the drug trade] has been...fair, honorable, and legitimate." (n.a. "Hong Kong - From Opium War to 1997 and Beyond." interlog. See also: Geoffrey C. Ward. A first-class temperament: the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.)
By now 61 years had passed since the first Opium War, and the Boxers had widened their targets to include all things foreign, including locals who had been polluted by conversion to Christianity, missionaries, churches, mines, and railroads. Many of the boxers were canalmen whom the railroads had rendered jobless. See William J. Duiker. Cultures In Collision: The Boxer Rebellion. San Rafael CA: Presidio Press, 1978.
It is frequently claimed that the "ancients" utilized the lens, however this is a bit of an exaggeration. The Assyrians knew that by removing slices from a glass sphere, they could obtain a magnifying device. However the Greeks did not employ such bulging bits of glass to enlarge minute or distant objects. Aristotle merely discusses the ability of the "burning-glass" to start fires in his Posterior Analytics. In his play The Clouds, Aristophanes also toys with the mischief one can do by using "a crystal lens" to melt from a distance the wax letters some unsuspecting victim is reading.(Aristotle. Posterior Analytics (1:31). Gregory R. Crane, editor; Aristophanes. Clouds. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1996. CD-Rom.) By Cicero's time, the glass is an object through which one sees things, but not one with which one is able to magnify. (Cicero. For Aulus Caecina, 52. Gregory R. Crane, editor.) For Ovid and Plutarch, a glass is merely a mirror. (Ovid. Metamorphoses, 15.352. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project. Plutarch. Octavius, Para 2. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project.) The one genius in the Western bunch seems to have been, of all people, the foppish Roman emperor Nero. Says Pliny the Elder, writing in 23-79 A.D. - "Emeralds are usually concave so that they may concentrate the visual rays. The Emperor Nero used to watch in an Emerald the gladiatorial combats." Alas, no one in antiquity seems to have followed Nero's example. Even the Chinese, often credited for using spectacles, apparently wore flat panes of colored glass, not true lenses, and did it for show, not to improve their vision. (Thomas E. Jones. "History of the Light Microscope." 1997.)
Thomas E. Jones. "History of the Light Microscope." 1997. Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search To Know His World And Himself: 312. Though Boorstin generally knows his beans about discoveries, Jones has far outpaced him in researching the origins of lenses.
Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search To Know His World And Himself: 312-317.
Will Durant and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part VII - The Age of Reason Begins. Irvine, CA: World Library, Inc., 1991-1994. CD-Rom; Joseph W. Dauben. The Art of Renaissance Science: Galileo and Perspectiv.
Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann were comparing notes over dinner one night when they spotted a common thread which linked their research. Schleiden contributed the portion of cell theory which said all plants are composed of cells. Schwann added all animals. (Lewis Wolpert. "The evolution of 'the cell theory'." Current Biology, 1996:225-228. J.H. Scharf. "Turning points in cytology." Acta Histochemica. Supplementband, 39, 1990: 11-47.)
Thomas S. Hall. Ideas on Life and Matter, vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969: 194. A quote from the official course notes of a typical biology course reads: "The cytoplasm is the watery substance inside the cell...." (Dr. Charles Bomar. "Dr. Bomar's lecture chapters: Bio. 122 CELLS: Chap. 5".)
According to Gilbert Ling, for every ion of sodium inside the cell there are ten straining to get in. (Gilbert Ling. "Some High Lights of the Association-Induction Hypothesis.") A good standard biology textbook gives a similar ratio, 11 to one. (William K. Purves, Gordon H. Orians. Life: The Science of Biology. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer, 1987: 721.)
The cell's ability to imprison potassium is even more impressive than its power to shut out sodium. For every molecule of potassium on the cell's exterior, there are 40 trapped inside trying to escape. However escape they cannot. Such is the cell's ability to defy the forces of osmotic pressure and hydraulic randomness. (Gilbert Ling"Some High Lights of the Association-Induction Hypothesis." The figure given in Purves and Orians for the nerve cell of a squid is 20 potassium molecules inside for every one outside. William K. Purves, Gordon H. Orians. Life: The Science of Biology: 721.)
"Moritz Traube (1826-1894) - Life and work of an universal private scholar and a pioneer of the physiological chemistry." Dr. Michael Engel. "Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte der Chemie" Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte.
Gilbert Ling. "The so-called 'sodium-' and 'potassium channels'."
Ling claims that over 200 journal articles have been published presenting his Association-Induction Hypothesis, disproving the sodium-potassium pump hypothesis, dealing with the criticisms of his detractors, and attempting to demonstrate the broader ramifications of his theories. In addition, he has laid out his work in three books spanning three decades: Gilbert N. Ling. A physical theory of the living state: the association-induction hypothesis; with considerations of the mechanics involved in ionic specificity. New York: Blaisdell Pub. Co. 1962; Gilbert N. Ling. In search of the physical basis of life. New York: Plenum Press, 1984; Gilbert N. Ling: A revolution in the physiology of the living cell. Malabar, FL: Krieger Pub. Co., 1992. See also: G.N. Ling. "Maintenance of low sodium and high potassium levels in resting muscle cells." Journal of Physiology (Cambridge), July 1978: 105-23; G.N. Ling. "Oxidative phosphorylation and mitochondrial physiology: a critical review of chemiosmotic theory, and reinterpretation by the association-induction hypothesis." Physiological Chemistry and Physics, 13:1, 1981: 29-96; G.N. Ling. "Debunking the alleged resurrection of the sodium pump hypothesis." Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR, 29:2, 1997: 123-98.
Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
G.N. Ling. "The new cell physiology: an outline, presented against its full historical background, beginning from the beginning." Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR, 26:2, 1994: 121-203; Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
Ling's Pennsylvania research facility was funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation - whose wealth had come from the establishment of the Great American and Pacific Tea Company - a participant in the 19th century China trade which resulted in the Boxer Rebellion and, incidentally, in Ling's association with western science. A&P was founded in 1859 as a company which purchased Chinese tea fresh from the New York docks and sold it in "Oriental palace stores" at a discount. The strong-arm tactics used by America and other gunboat powers back in Canton kept the tea the A&P sold flowing. (The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. The A&P Homepage. "Company History: The Early Years"
Gilbert Ling"Education, jobs held and vignette of close relatives." For information on Pennsylvania Hospital, see: "Welcome to Pennsylvania Hospital.
Gilbert Ling "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
Gilbert Ling "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?". For more on Troshin, see: A.D. Braun, A.A. Vereninov, A.B. Kaulin. "Afanasii Semenovich Troshin (on his 70th birthday)." Tsitologiia, June 1983: 726-32.
Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging owes its birth in part to American researcher Raymond Damadian's fusion of Ling's work with Isidor Rabi's discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon in molecular beams. Rabi won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944. (James Mattson and Merrill Simon. The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: The Story of MRI. Ramat Gan, Israel : Bar-Ilan University Press, 1996; The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine . . . THE STORY OF MRI. Gilbert Ling. "Raymond V. Damadian."
The number of researchers besides Ling who have applied the concept of thermodynamic cooperative states to biology is small, but their results are intriguing. For examples see: T. Jobe, R. Vimal, A. Kovilparambil, J. Port, M. Gaviria. "A theory of cooperativity modulation in neural networks as an important parameter of CNS catecholamine function and induction of psychopathology." Neurological Research, October 1994: 330-41; Y. Omura. "Inhibitory effect of NaCl on hog kidney mitochondrial membrane-bound monoamine oxidase: Ph and temperature dependences." Japanese Journal of Pharmacology, December 1995: 293-302.
G.N. Ling. "A physical theory of the living state: application to water and solute distribution." Scanning Microscopy, June 1988: 899-913. Explains Ling, "The self diffusion coefficient of water in living cells is one half that of that in normal liquid water. The self diffusion coefficient of water molecules in ice is one one millionth (0.000001) of that in liquid water." (Gilbert Ling. Personal Communication. December 9, 1998.)
G.N. Ling, M.M. Ochsenfeld, C. Walton, T.J. Bersinger. "Experimental confirmation, from model studies, of a key prediction of the polarized multilayer theory of cell water." Physiological Chemistry and Physics, 10:1, 1978: 87-8; G.N. Ling. "The functions of polarized water and membrane lipids: a rebuttal." Physiological Chemistry and Physics, 9:4-5, 1977: 301-11; G.N. Ling, W. Hu. "Studies on the physical state of water in living cells and model systems. X. The dependence of the equilibrium distribution coefficient of a solute in polarized water on the molecular weights of the solute: experimental confirmation of the 'size rule' in model studies." Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR, 20:4, 1988: 293-307.
G.N. Ling. "Solute exclusion by polymer and protein-dominated water: correlation with results of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and calorimetric studies and their significance for the understanding of the physical state of water in living cells." Scanning Microscopy, June 1988: 871-84.
G.N. Ling. "Can we see living structure in a cell?" Scanning Microscopy, June 1992: 405-39.
G.N. Ling. "Can we see living structure in a cell?"; Gilbert Ling. "Some High Lights of the Association-Induction Hypothesis."
The most significant cardinal absorbent is ATP, adenosine triphosphate, a central molecule in cell metabolism.
G.N. Ling, A. Fisher. "Cooperative interaction among cell surface sites: evidence in support of the surface adsorption theory of cellular electrical potentials." Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR, 15:5, 1983: 369-78.
L. Yamasaki L, P. Kanda P, R.E. Lanford. "Identification of four nuclear transport signal-binding proteins that interact with diverse transport signals." Molecular and Cellular Biology, July 1989: 3028-36; D.R. Finlay, D.D. Newmeyer, P.M. Hartl, J. Horecka, D.J. Forbes. "Nuclear transport in vitro." Journal of Cell Science Supplement, 11, 1989: 225-42; J.M. Gerrard, S.P. Saxena, A. McNicol. "Histamine as an intracellular messenger in human platelets." Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 344, 1993: 209-19; H. Rasmussen, P. Barrett, J. Smallwood, W. Bollag, C. Isales. "Calcium ion as intracellular messenger and cellular toxin." Environmental Health Perspectives, March 1990: 17-25; R.H. Kramer. "Patch cramming: monitoring intracellular messengers in intact cells with membrane patches containing detector ion channels." Neuron, March 1990: 335-41; John Travis. "Outbound Traffic," Science News, November 15, 1997: 316-317.
R. Lahoz-Beltra, S.R. Hameroff, J.E. Dayhoff. "Cytoskeletal logic: a model for molecular computation via Boolean operations in microtubules and microtubule-associated proteins." Biosystems, 29:1, 1993: 1-23; M. Jibu, S. Hagan, S.R. Hameroff, K.H. Pribram, K. Yasue. "Quantum optical coherence in cytoskeletal microtubules: implications for brain function." Biosystems, 32:3, 1994: 195-209.
Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. "Evolvability." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, July 1998: 8420-8427.
Elizabeth Gould. "The Effects of Adrenal Steroids and Excitatory Input on Neuronal Birth and Survival." In Hormonal Restructuring of the Adult Brain: Basic and Clinical Perspective, edited by Victoria N. Luine, Cheryl F. Harding. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 743: 73. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1994; K.S. Vogel. "Development of trophic interactions in the vertebrate peripheral nervous system." Molecular Neurobiology, Fall-Winter 1993: 363-82; C. Haanen, I. Vermes. "Apoptosis: programmed cell death in fetal development." European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology, January 1996: 129-33; Wise Young and June Kume-Kick, Shlomo Constantini. "Glucorticoid Therapy of Spinal Chord Injury." In Hormonal Restructuring of the Adult Brain: Basic and Clinical Perspective: 247. Steve Nadis. "Kid's Brainpower: Use It or Lose It." Technology Review, November/December, 1993: 19-20. Daniel S. Levine. "Survival of the Synapses." The Sciences, November/December 1988: 51. Thomas Elbert, Christo Pantev, Christian Wienbruch, Brigitte Rockstroh, Edward Taub. "Increased Cortical Representation of the Fingers of the Left Hand in Stringed Players." Science, 13 October 1995: 305-307. Marsha Barinaga. "Watching the Brain Remake Itself." Science, 2 December 1994: 1475. A. Pascual-Leone, F. Torres. "Plasticity of the sensorimotor cortex representation of the reading finger in Braille readers." Brain, 116, 1993: 39-52. Constance Holden. "Sensing Music." Science, 13 October 1995: 237. Julius Korein, M.D. "Reality and the Brain: the Beginnings and Endings of the Human Being." In The Reality Club, edited by John Brockman. New York: Lynx Books, 1988: 94. J.P. Changeux. The Biology of Mind. Translated by Laurence Garey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985: 217-218. C. Aoki and P. Siekevitz. "Plasticity in Brain Development." Scientific American, June 1988: 56-64. P.G. Bagnoli, G. Casini, F. Fontanesi, and L. Sebastiani. "Reorganization of visual pathways following posthatching removal of one retina on pigeons." The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 288, 1989: 512-527. Koen DePryck. Knowledge, Evolution, and Paradox: The Ontology of Language. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993: 122-125; P.G. Clarke, S. Clarke. "Nineteenth century research on naturally occurring cell death and related phenomena." Anatomy and Embryology, February 1996: 81-99.
When Librarians Burn the Books
G.N. Ling. "Oxidative Phosphorylation and Mitochondrial Physiology: A Critical Review of Chemiosmotic Theory and Reinterpretation by the association-induction Hypothesis."
For information on the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which today consists of seventeen organizations in the life sciences, see: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Gilbert Ling. "Invitation to public debate consistently declined by my opponents."
As an organizer of scientific groups to combat dogmatism, I've tracked several inquisitions of the kind to which Ling was subjected from up close, and have worked to undo their effects. Ling's report of his experience is consistent with the episodes which have cropped up in the pursuit of this goal.
Edelmann had read Ling's 1962 A Physical Theory of the Living State: the Association-Induction Hypothesis.
Gilbert Ling: "Corralled in an overarching net."
Edelmann has demonstrated his underlying ability in his new area. Between 1966 and 1997, he published 43 articles in such peer reviewed journals as Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Microscopy, and American Journal of Clinical Pathology.
Gilbert Ling. "Affidavit."
Ling is not the only one to have noticed how the peer review process suppresses originality. E.I. Cantekin, T.W. McGuire, and R.L. Potter, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that, "The current peer review system...is unable to embrace dissent within the peer review process and to use dissent to serve scientific truth and the public interest." (E.I. Cantekin, T.W. McGuire, R.L. Potter. "Biomedical information, peer review, and conflict of interest as they influence public health." Journal of the American Medical Association, March 9, 1990: 1427-30. See also: D.F. Horrobin. "The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation." Journal of the American Medical Association, Mar 9, 1990: 1438-41; G.N. Ling. "Peer review and the progress of scientific research." Physiological Chemistry and Physics, 10:1, 1978: 95-6; G.N. Ling. "The new cell physiology: an outline, presented against its full historical background, beginning from the beginning"; Gilbert Ling. "Peer review system suppresses innovation and progress."
Dr. George N. Eaves. "The Project-grant Application of the National Institute of Health." Bethesda, Maryland: National Institute of Health, 1972. Quoted in Gilbert Ling. n.t.
Ling's testimony was given before the Congressional Investigation of the Peer Review System of the National Science Foundation in 1975. (Gilbert Ling: "Peer review system suppresses innovation and progress.")
Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
According the Medline, the leading medical database, there were 1,567 articles published in peer-reviewed journals on just one of these pumps - the sodium pump - between 1966 and 1998. Each of the studies on which these articles was based had been the beneficiary of one or more funding grants.
I.M. Glynn, S.J. Karlish. "The sodium pump." Annual Review of Physiology, 37, 1975: 13-55.
Gilbert Ling. "Corruption."
As an example, Ling cites the symposium volume "Structure, Mechanism and Function of the Na/K Pump (Academic Press, 1983) altogether 122 papers were presented citing a total of 1598 references (some are repetitions) in which not one single paper presenting evidence against the concept of Na/K pump was included." (Gilbert Ling. "Corruption." Joseph F. Hoffman, Bliss Forbush III, editors. Structure, mechanism, and function of the Na/K pump. New York: Academic Press, 1983.)
Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
Ling published 58 articles setting forth new ramifications of his approach between 1980 and 1998. He also cites independent studies which provided evidence in support of his theories long after his virtual banishment. These include: D.J. Woodbury. "Pure lipid vesicles can induce channel-like conductances in planar bilayers." Journal of Membrane Biology, July 1989: 145-50; A.A. Lev, Y.E. Korchev, T.K Rostovtseva, C.L. Bashford, D.T. Edmonds, C.A. Pasternak. "Rapid switching of ion current in narrow pores: implications for biological ion channels." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, June 22, 1993: 187-92; F. Sachs, F. Qin. "Gated, ion-selective channels observed with patch pipettes in the absence of membranes: novel properties of a gigaseal." Biophysical Journal, September 1993: 1101-7. However standard textbooks are now replete with descriptions of the sodium pump, and make no mention of Ling's alternative. For an example, see William K. Purves, Gordon H. Orians. Life: The Science of Biology: 140.
Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
When the two National Institute of Health officials who had saved Ling from the funding guillotine retired, the blade finally fell and his last trickles of NIH and ONR (Office of Naval Research) financing disappeared. (Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?"
Damadian began the quest which led him to develop whole-body NMR scanning with a search for Ling's nemesis, the sodium pump. His work, performed at Washington University's School of Medicine in St. Louis, led him to Ling's conclusion - that the sodium pump model is erroneous. Damadian credits Ling's contribution to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging in the following words: "On the morning of July 3, 1977, at 4:45 A.M....we achieved with great jubilation the world's first MRI image of the live human body. The achievement originated in the modern concepts of salt water biophysics which you are the grand pioneer with your classic treatise, the association-induction hypothesis". (Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?") Ling also "played a central role in the development of the Ling-Gerard microelectrode. The microelectrode has subsequently proven to be one of the most important devices applied to the study of cellular physiology.."........ (NIH Summary Statement 1 R) 11 HL 39249-01, April 30 1987. Quoted in Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?"). For further information on Damadian, see: James Mattson and Merrill Simon. "Raymond V. Damadian (1936 - )." The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine . . . THE STORY OF MRI.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame. "Raymond V. Damadian." Inventure Place, The National Inventors Hall of Fame! "Welcome to the FONAR Home Page - A Leading Manufacturer of MRI Scanners."; Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
For some of Ling's work on cancer and drug activity, see: G.N. Ling, R.C. Murphy. "Apparent similarity in protein compositions of maximally deviated cancer cells." Physiological Chemistry and Physics, 14:3, 1982: 213; G.N. Ling, Y.Z. Fu. "An electronic mechanism in the action of drugs, ATP, transmitters and other cardinal adsorbents. II. Effect of ouabain on the relative affinities for Li+, Na+, K+, and Rb+ of surface anionic sites that mediate the entry of Cs+ into frog ovarian eggs." Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR. 20:1, 1988: 61-77; G.N. Ling, M.M. Ochsenfeld. "Control of cooperative adsorption of solutes and water in living cells by hormones, drugs, and metabolic products." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, March 30, 1973, #204: 325-36. Ling's lab is now known officially as the Damadian Foundation for Basic and Cancer Research.
Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".
Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?"
F. Baquero. "Gram-positive resistance: challenge for the development of new antibiotics." Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, May 1997, Supplement A: 1-6; O. Cars. "Colonisation and infection with resistant gram-positive cocci. Epidemiology and risk factors." Drugs, 54, Supplement 6, 1997: 4-10; G.G. Rao. "Risk factors for the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria." Drugs, March 1998: 323-30; R.N. Jones. "Impact of changing pathogens and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in the treatment of serious infections in hospitalized patients." American Journal of Medicine, June 24, 1996: 3S-12S; Valentina Stosor, Gary A. Noskin, Lance R. Peterson. "The Management and Prevention of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci." Infections in Medicine, 13(6), 1996: 487-488, 493-498.
The 1990s saw a spate of books predicting microbial catastrophe. Some were fiction, but the majority were very much books of fact. See: Laurie Garrett. The coming plague: newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994; John S. Marr and John Baldwin. The eleventh plague: a novel of medical terror. New York, NY: Cliff Street Books, 1998; Richard Rhodes. Deadly feasts: tracking the secrets of a terrifying new plague. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997; Frank Ryan. Virus-X: tracking the new killer plagues: out of the present and into the future. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997; C.J. Peters and Mark Olshaker. Virus hunter: thirty years of battling hot viruses around the world. New York: Anchor Books, 1997; Rodney Barker. And the waters turned to blood: the ultimate biological threat. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997; Richard Preston, The hot zone. New York: Random House, 1994; Edward Regis. Virus ground zero: stalking the killer viruses with the Centers for Disease Control. New York: Pocket Books, 1996; Peter Radetsky. The invisible invaders : the story of the emerging age of viruses. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.