I just had encountered my first panicky situation in New Zealand the other day. After my body found regeneration in the Hanmer Springs Hot Pools I made my way back to Christchurch with the evening bus. I stayed there for only one night, because the next early morning I had to catch my bus to Queenstown. So that morning I made sure I was at least 15 minutes prior to departure time at the bus stop. I must say, I am actually becoming a rather organised person. My teenager years filled with chaos are behind me now. I have all my important papers sorted in folders. I know exactly where and what to do for any given time. Nevertheless, I thought it was highly peculiar that no-one else was present at the bus stop to Queenstown. Maybe Tuesday morning was just not a popular time point to travel. In addition, I comforted myself with the reasoning that New Zealand is not really dense populated. It still felt weird, though. I looked in my organised papers; I was sure I was at the right spot. Then, at the time point that the bus should have departed it suddenly had hit me: I remembered vaguely that I received an e-mail a few months ago about a change in bus stop. I totally had forgotten to pay proper attention to that notification due to busy times in the lab. Strikingly, it all made sense to me. I had to run to the entire other side of Christchurch towards bus stop Canterbury museum. I like to think that I am a rather athletic person. But running with an 18 kg backpack on your back, and a 5 kg backpack on your front is still quite exhausting, especially if your breakfast only consisted of one banana. (I was going to make sandwiches on the bus).
I could not pay any attention to the pity that was expressed on the many faces of pedestrians when they saw me struggling to come forth. I dreaded every unnecessary clothe piece I had to bring to New Zealand. ’’Cause, I like to have options when I am getting dressed (!)’’ Admittedly, I am not the world’s most practical backpacker yet. Luckily, the bus was delayed. Thank you. I was sure that this very fortunate lucky moment was due to my new bought Maori necklace calling to the Kiwi gods. This necklace is namely supposed to bring luck particularly when traveling. What a great investment that was! Everyone in the bus was laughing at me when I came crawling into the bus with my last breath, sweaty all over, and limping like a retard. But I did not care! I made it. Even though sweaty with sore muscles and hurting feet. The bus ride was at least lovely and relaxing. I had nine hours to recover from my morning exercise. 
I saw so many green mountains, and blue-ish, green-ish, turqous-ish clear lakes everywhere. I witnessed a beautiful sunset at Lake Wanaka. It felt like the bus was driving through a painting. I arrived in Queenstown in the evening and its location is just beautiful. I feel like I am being repetitive, but yet again, the city was surrounded by large mountains. Half of the city body actually lays on a mountain, with at its foot a huge lake with clear water.
The hostel is a bit bigger and more commercial than to my liking, and I don’t like the fact that you have to walk outside to reach the bathrooms, but nevertheless I had a good night of rest. Also, the view of the hostel's garden is stunning. The next morning I found a bookstore that sold a book I was desperately looking for, and craving for to read for days: Clash of Kings, second novel of Game of Thrones series. I just had the biggest smile on my face, that it actually had hurt the corners of my lips as they are rather dehydrated due to the dry atmosphere. But who cares about the moist state of my lips, I finally have the seemingly rare book in my possession! I spent the entire morning reading at Queenstown Gardens with a beautiful view.
(I tried to get a panorama shot of this view while I was reading. I like to label the picture as artistic, which secretly functions as a hidden synonym for being failed) Next I wanted to do a nice hiking tour, I had three options with different grade of expertise required: very easy, the Gondola to Bob’s Peak; easy to moderate, short 900m climb to Queenstown Hill; difficult, 1748m climb to Ben Lomond. In order to make this decision, I was observing the state of my body while walking back to the city. I noticed shaky legs, lightheaded, sweaty back and a rather weird taste in my mouth. Therefore, I decided to take the very, very easy grade of expertise required option: sleeping in hostel. I was starting to get sick! After an intensive fruit infusion, and spending a rather quiet day in the hostel (at least I did laundry), I'm hoping to feel much better in the morrow. It might be a smart thing, once fully recovered, to then take the gondola to Bob’s Peak, amongst the elderly. Little baby steps.
The next day I wasn’t still feeling very well. After attempting to tame the mountain Queenstown Hill I made a 180 degrees turn of shame back to town. My body just wasn’t fit enough yet to climb 900 meter. Argh! So I treated myself with a cup of coffee in the sun with my desired book. After a while, a goat-woolen-sock couple was sitting next to me. (I think this is not the correct term in English, but the Dutch will understand me). Upon asking me what I studied, I suddenly found myself defending Science. This couple obviously disliked Medical Research. I had to defend statements such as, ‘’60% of all FDA approved drugs work only through placebo effects’’ and, ‘’ When a drug gives side effects that already indicates that the drug is not really working.’’ So annoying when facts become fabricated! After explaining the intensive procedures, which take up ten years, involved for getting a drug on the market in which you have to demonstrate safety, toxicity, and treatment effects outweighing the importance of side effects. More importantly, that every scientific study performed compares the drug with a representative control group in order to exclude merely a placebo-based effect and thereby ensuring therapeutic potential of the drug. Also, by even defining the term significant difference in Science to ensure that the observation is caused by a therapeutic effect and not by placebo-based effects, they replied, ‘’Yes, that is how it should work. But that is not always the case.’’ Yes-It-Is always that case! I thought best not to mention the scientific articles arguing that actually most of the alternative treatments work through placebo effects. However, I agree, don’t underestimate the power of placebo effects. I love it how drinking coffee makes me ‘’more concentrated’’. Then they continued asking me why medical researchers are not observing the effects of 'energy' on cells, such as Yin and Yang energy. Upon which I replied, irritated, ‘’If you can give me a tube containing this so-called energy, I am more than happy to tell you its effects on cells. But until we can’t characterize, define, and quantify this energy, then there is not much we can do in Science.’’ The woman of the couple said, ‘’I think that’s the problem with Science. It’s all about measuring and proving. This perception is old-fashioned and needs to be changed.’’ My god, such ignorance! The man said, backing-up his wife, ‘’We’ve been investing an enormous amount of money in medical research past decade. But honestly, we don’t have benefited much from it in terms of applied medicine. There is still cancer.’’ I was shocked. There have been made huge advances in medicine past decade! This clearly demonstrates the huge knowledge gap between medical research and society that desperately needs to be abridged. I explained that there were huge medical advances made last decade:
- human genome discoveries reaching the bench side, leading to personalized treatments.
- stem cell therapies in which adult stem cells can become manipulated to acquire essential features of embryonic stem cells. This leads to sidestepping ethical concerns about usage of human embryo’s for research,
- massive decline in heart disease and cancer, of which the latter is caused by more specifically targeted cancer therapies,
- strong prolonged survival of HIV patients due to combination therapies,
- improvements in field of surgery by means of minor invasive or even robotic techniques,
- even in the field of pediatric leukemia has the survival rate increased from 30% towards 80% for the common leukemia form ALL in the past decade, etc.
I can go on all day. Don’t even get me started on the advances in the field of Immunology past decade. Yet, this couple did not seem impressed. What do they expect!? To become invincible after investing in medical research for ten years? They attacked me with the statement that, ‘’Doctors never tell you when side effects are actually worse than being left untreated.’’ Well, honey. I ain’t no doctor. Can’t help you there. I really just wanted to continue reading my book.
The couple left my table agitated. I find it so hard to stay friendly when my passion becomes attacked, merely based on lies, ignorance and incorrect facts. I have much to learn in bridging this gap, so that I can inform the next Ying Yang couple better about the real beauty of Science. Although, when I showed this couple my Yin Yang necklace, they looked at me smiling as if I was not yet lost in the cold and bitter world of Science. I have to admit, sometimes Science does give me shivers.
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