I found the following, written by myself in the '90s while employed by a major pharmaceutical company as a scientific writer, of all things! The page, ripped from a spiral notebook, seems to be a scrap of an initial draft, much crossed out and scribbled over:
Buprenorphine: Covariate Model Study
I. Introduction
Buprenorphine is a semi-synthetic, lipophilic, mixed agonist/antagonist opiode of the oripavine series. In vivo, it ranges from 10- to 100-fold more potent than morphine. It is an FDA approved drug with a known safety profile in both animals and humans.
Three Phase-1 clinical studies were conducted to further identify and assess Buprenorphine safety and efficacy potentials. Based on data derived from these studies, mathematical covariate models were generated: the final model (Run 05XX) was selected both for the concision of its match to the three study results and for the degree to which it excluded the generation of findings in spurious and irrelevant domains.
The objectives of this covariate model study were:
- To isolate the compartmental pharmacokinetic model most accurately describing the plasma concentration and time profile of Buprenorphine after single and multiple dosing via intravenous and transdermal routes of administration;
- To apply data from the three Phase-! study screenings of covariant effects on the pharmacokinetic transdermal absorption parameters;
- And finally, to project plasma concentration time curves after a variety of dosing scenarios, using the established pharmacokinetic model as the predictive instrument.
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The energy, precision and zeal of this work--both the writing and the collaboration with all the chemists conducting the research--came back into mind like a thunderclap. (Adjunct recollections included my having known in depth what I wrote about!) I sipped my mint chocolate coffee and admired my mind. A bittersweet activity, to be sure, as my mind now hums along at a simian level. . . .
(In the snapshot, the dirt under my fingernails is from having just planted some sugar snap peas in the garden.)
I love the look of a written draft copiously revised; the workings of the mind made visible. . . .
In the files on my lap I also found a critical paper on T. S. Eliot's "East Coker" on which my beloved Barnard Professor Eleanor Tilton wrote: "Very interesting. Discuss in class." I seem to have argued that despite Eliot's principle of the objective correlative, he commits T. E. Hulme's error of trying to make poetry compete with religion and ends up conveying mystical states through personal conviction. Wow, I really got into it, too.
I speak not out of vanity, but with an amazement at a lost capacity to think. Ou sont les neiges d'antant?
