Obit: Jack H. Mendelson, 1929-2007

The research fields we follow here at DrugMonkey have lost another tremendous contributor. Dr. Mendelson authored some 339+ articles with a focus on the human and nonhuman primate psychopharmacology of alcohol abuse. The notice from the Research Society on Alcoholism reads:

Jack H. Mendelson, MD (8/30/29 - 8/15/07)

Jack H. Mendelson MD, Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical
School and Co-Director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center  at
the McLean Hospital, died Wednesday, August 15th, 2007, after a  brief
illness. Dr. Mendelson received the Jellinek Memorial Award for  research
on alcoholism in 1978 and the Distinguished Research Award  from the
Research Society on Alcoholism in 1989. He was Editor of the  Journal of
Studies on Alcohol from 1984 to 1991. He leaves his wife  of 33 years,
Nancy K. Mello, Ph.D., two sons, John E. Mendelson, M.D.  and Adam
Mendelson, a daughter, Ellen Mendelson Maher, and four  grandchildren.

Condolences may be sent to his wife:
Dr. Nancy K. Mello
1010 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA   02138

A Memorial Service is being planned for late autumn.  Those wishing  to
contribute to the establishment of an award for innovative  research on
substance abuse in honor of his memory, may send  donations to the Jack
H. Mendelson Memorial Fund, McLean Hospital,  115 Mill Street, Belmont,
MA 02478.

Doping with the Amphetamines

We’ll start off our discussions on sports doping with the classic psychomotor stimulants, the amphetamines. You know, good old “speed”. A class of drugs primarily considered indirect dopamine agonists because they bind to the dopamine transporter with good affinity (dopamine reuptake inhibitor) and also act to facilitate dopamine release from the terminal. As with similar compounds they also tend to have some affinity for other monoaminergic transporters and will thus modulate norepinephrine and serotonin. Nevertheless, the major action usually under discussion is to increase dopamine levels in the synapse.

“careful about how you present yourself”

As I mentioned, some Uncertain Principles guestblogging on the fine old days of Usenet News inspired Drugmonkey’s big mistake.  Janet over at AdvEthSci made a relevant comment as follows:

Online, we don’t know who may be reading. There’s a way in which one’s blog persona is a very public thing (and, thanks to the Google cache, a very public thing that may be available for close inspection for a long time). This can make you pretty careful about how you present yourself. At the same time, especially for those blogging while pseudonymous, communication online can feel safer — you can put your ideas and arguments out there and let them sink or swim on their own merits, rather than having them tied up with preexisting impressions about what kind of person the author of those ideas and arguments is.

As it happens, one thing I had to do was to spend a little time Googling BikeMonkey (no dumbass, my real name, duh) and cycling and some other keywords. Just to see what sort of limb I was going to put DM out on and that sort of thing. It’s bad, but not too bad, so we went with the current scheme. But if Janet only knew. Imagine when your dirty laundry stretches ‘way back into youthful indiscretion territory (no, not of the Henry Hyde midlife crisis variety of “youthful”). It is going to be pretty funny in a decade or two when DM and his frequent commentors have gone to the dark side of “old established professordom” and have to defend these comments to new asst profs!  Oh, and also in the blog geekery file, look who I found here; note the page title and general area of endeavor and then page down for cycling interests!