Dickens

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

"It was drug discovery" quipped S.

It really won't be funny if it isn't true.

Drug discovery, may as well have said military intelligence. Our understanding of human biology is pathetically poor. Ever little step we make while fumbling in the dark opens up a myriad of possible resolutions that ends up leaving one in a state of utter despair.

True, i might have been a tad pessimistic there, but only just so.

Biology, it is my second love. i enjoy every second that i spend studying it. i enjoy every bittersweet second of it. Because of that, i realize, all too bluntly, that we understand next to nothing about the human biology. The science of biology has been built on highly contrived and controlled models of limited interactions. Pathways and effects elucidated in such models becomes woefully inadequate when inserted into the background of a human being, a multi-cellular, multi-organ'd, multi-multi'ed model with no fine controls or contrivances. In the human, biological understanding elucidated in the ivory towers of academia and industry comes crumbling down. Yet we struggle on, and from the struggle we derive the joys of minute success and the bittersweet delight of failure.

It is hard to explain to someone who has never wetted their hands on a bench how much joy one derives from research. The hardest part to explain is the joy one finds in the pain of failure.