In your own words, what do these terms mean to you? Give an example of each term in your experience or that you have read about. Do not provide dictionary definitions.

     Serendipity is the accidental process of discovery that proves beneficial or pleasant. For example, you're at a café, and the server brings you the wrong ice cream you've never had before. However, upon trying it, you've discovered your new favorite dessert. This situation is how I discovered Gelato in Germany one day.

            The word error carries negative connotations. For example, an experienced chemist Dr. Karen Wetterhahn was exposed to tiny quantities of dimethylmercury during a lab experiment. At the time, this chemical found use as a calibration chemical for lab machines. However, shortly after exposure, Dr. Wetterhahn experience ataxia. Unfortunately, the progression of symptoms continued unabated and resulted in the passing of Dr. Wetterhahn. Up to this time, scientists thought they understood the behavior of organic mercurials, but this accident brought about a renaissance in the understanding of these dangerous chemicals (Holden, 1997).

            Exaptation is an interesting concept in healthcare because medications often find use in "off-label" solutions (Neal et al., 2009). Exaptation uses a known solution to address another problem that has no practical solution. Artists often repurpose materials as an expression of ideas. To me, this seems a perfectly normal thing to do. The downside from a medical perspective is the risk associated with using medications that lack scientific proof.

Provide an innovation example for discoveries that are achieved through the following:

Serendipity in healthcare involves the observation of cause and effect. One of the best examples is the discovery in England of clean techniques during obstetrical care. At that time, midwives commonly performed deliveries to poor women, often in a hospital setting. In London, they practice alongside Medical students, but patients noticed an interesting trend in which mortality was better with midwives. At that time, bacterial infections were unknown, and medical students were inadvertently causing illness in their patients. As a result, the medical students would perform autopsies and cadaveric education each day before arriving in the hospital ward to care for patients, often wearing the same clothing covered with material from the dissections (Chamberlain, 2006). As a result, the patients serendipitously observed better odds of survival with midwives. This observation forced a change in behavior in the physician's approach to clinical cleanliness.

Opium is a drug that is known to exist for over 8,000 years. There are references to the opium trade in early Egyptian text (Brook et al., 2017). Around 200 years ago, Freidrich Serturner experimented with ways to make opium more effective and improve the therapeutic properties of opium. He synthesized a sulfate compound of opium, creating Morphine Sulfate, but he didn't know what he had made. With several associates, they consumed small quantities of the chemical. The physical amount consumed was much smaller than the physical quantity of opium that may cause harm. Unfortunately, the potency of the new drug rendered them unconscious and resulted in their overdose. While they recovered, they calculated the dose at 30 mg or three times the effective therapeutic dose (Krishnamurti & Rao, 2016). This error resulted in a medication that prevented needless suffering in millions.

            Perhaps one of the most recent exaptations in medicine involves Viagra. Initially, the drug development focused on the treatment of portal hypertension, angina, and hypertension. However, during clinical studies, researchers observed curious side effects. As a result, the drug ultimately failed as an effective treatment of angina and hypertension but proved life-changing in treating portal hypertension. The financial windfall of the drug was through the exaptation of the drug in the treatment of erectile dysfunction (Loe, 2004).

References

Brook, K., Bennett, J., & Desai, S. P. (2017, 2017/04/01/). The Chemical History of Morphine: An 8000-year Journey, from Resin to de-novo Synthesis. Journal of Anesthesia History, 3(2), 50-55. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janh.2017.02.001

 

Chamberlain, G. (2006). British maternal mortality in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 99(11), 559-563. https://doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.99.11.559

 

Holden, C. (1997). Death from lab poisoning. Science, 276(5320), 1797. https://perdoceoed.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/death-lab-poisoning/docview/213568795/se-2?accountid=144789

 

Krishnamurti, C., & Rao, S. C. (2016). The isolation of morphine by Serturner. Indian journal of anaesthesia, 60(11), 861-862. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5049.193696

 

Loe, M. (2004). The rise of Viagra: How the little blue pill changed sex in America. NYU Press.

 

Neal, J. M. M. D., Rathmell, J. P. M. D., & Rowlingson, J. C. M. D. (2009). Publishing Studies That Involve "Off-label" Use of Drugs. Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, 34(5), 391-392. https://perdoceoed.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/publishing-studies-that-involve-off-label-use/docview/205181246/se-2?accountid=144789