January 28, 2012

• How not to communicate Scientific Findings

  Things at work seemed to have settled back into a routine for now. Few interesting patients here and there, but I am still am not quite up to sharing stories and experiences yet. That said, one of the reasons I continue to maintain this site at all is to communicate, to learn, to teach, and just to have fun. It’s strange how I go through waves of activites. Some months I will write everyday, others I wont look at the computer, instead doing yoga, or playing video games until I simply get bored and return to one of my other hobbies for a while. I think however that it is time I start trying to write more again, because I miss all you guys and gals. We communicate only through comments and messages, with the rare exception of some of you who I have been fortunate enough to meet in real life, but that makes you no less a friend, and in some ways, you all still know me better than your real world counterparts, because I have the illusion of anonymity here.

   

  Enough drama. On to something fun, (YAY! SCIENCE!) : the following is an excerpt from a BJU article about a lecture given in the 80′s on treatment for erectile dysfunction, long before the day and age of viagra and spam mail about penile enlargement.

  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05797.x/full

   

  “In 1983, at the Urodynamics Society meeting in Las Vegas, Professor G.S. Brindley first announced to the world his experiments on self-injection with papaverine to induce a penile erection. This was the first time that an effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) was described, and was a historic development in the management of ED. The way in which this information was first reported was completely unique and memorable, and provides an interesting context for the development of therapies for ED. 

  Professor Brindley, wearing a blue track suit, was introduced as a psychiatrist with broad research interests. He had, he indicated, hypothesized that injection with vasoactive agents into the corporal bodies of the penis might induce an erection. Lacking ready access to an appropriate animal model, and cognisant of the long medical tradition of using oneself as a research subject, he began a series of experiments on self-injection of his penis with various vasoactive agents, including papaverine, phentolamine, and several others. His slide-based talk consisted of a large series of photographs of his penis in various states of tumescence after injection with a variety of doses of phentolamine and papaverine. After viewing about 30 of these slides, there was no doubt in the [audience's] mind that, at least in Professor Brindley’s case, the therapy was effective. Of course, one could not exclude the possibility that erotic stimulation had played a role in acquiring these erections, and Professor Brindley acknowledged this.

  He indicated that, in his view, no normal person would find the experience of giving a lecture to a large audience to be erotically stimulating or erection-inducing. He had, he said, therefore injected himself with papaverine in his hotel room before coming to give the lecture, and deliberately wore loose clothes (hence the track-suit) to make it possible to exhibit the results. He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection.

  At this point everyone in the room, was agog. But Prof. Brindley was not satisfied. He looked down sceptically at his pants and shook his head with dismay. ‘Unfortunately, this doesn’t display the results clearly enough’. He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped breathing.

  But the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, ‘I’d like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence’. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.

  The screams seemed to shock Professor Brindley, who rapidly pulled up his trousers, returned to the podium, and terminated the lecture. The crowd dispersed in a state of flabbergasted disarray. I imagine that the urologists who attended with their partners had a lot of explaining to do.

  The rest is history. Prof Brindley’s single-author paper reporting these results was published about 6 months later [1].

   

  —

  Yes, people, I did in fact make my grand return to xanga by returning to my old staple of dick and fart posts. I may have lost my GI fellowship for now, but not my scatalogical and juvenile sense of humor.

   

  -Dr J

  • 4:06 pm
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