{"id":12435,"date":"2014-10-01T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=12435"},"modified":"2017-06-04T12:04:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T19:04:51","slug":"one-doctors-quest-to-save-people-by-injecting-them-with-scorpion-venom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/one-doctors-quest-to-save-people-by-injecting-them-with-scorpion-venom","title":{"rendered":"One Doctor\u2019s Quest to Save People by Injecting Them With Scorpion Venom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/author\/brendan-i-koerner\/\" rel=\"author\">Brendan I. Koerner<\/a> - Wired<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"padding-top\"><strong>Because it\u2019s so<\/strong> late on a Monday afternoon, there is a listless vibe inside the University of Washington lecture hall where Jim Olson is about to speak. The audience consists of a few dozen grad students struggling with end-of-day fatigue. They scarf down free chocolate-chunk cookies as they prepare to take notes, but sugar can sharpen mental alertness only so much. The talk they\u2019ve come to hear, part of a biweekly series on current topics in neuroscience, doesn\u2019t exactly seem like edge-of-your-seat material.<\/p>\n<p>Olson\u2019s first slide wakes them up. It is a pixelated photograph of an adorable 6-year-old boy named Hayden Strum, who sports a white Quiksilver T-shirt and a pirate-style eye patch. Hayden, who suffered from a pernicious brain tumor, came to Olson in 1995, back when Olson was just starting his career as a pediatric oncologist and cancer researcher. For four years, the doctor treated Hayden with successive rounds of chemotherapy and major surgeries, but nothing could save the boy\u2019s life. Olson tells the audience that while sitting in the back row at Hayden\u2019s memorial service, listening to the speakers express their pain, he had an epiphany about his scientific priorities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2014\/06\/scorpion-venom\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Brendan I. Koerner \u2014 Wired Because it\u2019s so late on a Monday afternoon, there is a listless vibe inside the University of Washington lecture hall where Jim Olson is about to speak. The audience consists of a few dozen grad students struggling with end-of-day fatigue. They scarf down free chocolate-chunk cookies as they prepare [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64899,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12435\/revisions\/64899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}