Doping at work

Last Friday every employee of the Heidelberg University Clinics received a letter (a real paper letter, not an electronic one) from the hospital administration. It briefly said that due to the potential involvement of another state hospital into a scandal, our hospital administration wanted to make a firm statement that doping is illegal. This includes, but is not limited to, self-administration as well as administration to others, be it knowingly or unknowingly, etc. etc. Furthermore, we are not supposed to take bribes.
And what do I read in the last edition of the newspaper Der Spiegel? Two million Germans work under the influence, 800,000 of them even regularly (article in German). And we’re not talking about peanuts like coffee, vitamin pills and cigarettes here. No, no, the real stuff. Antidepressants, prescription medication, illegal drugs and other substances to increase concentration and efficiency. I am shocked.
For years the police has been bringing us blood and serum samples for analysis, many a time attorneys call to say it’s urgent. Every once in a while they bring plant material, powder or pills as well, which turn out to be marihuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or God knows what. Usually, those analyses are even more urgent, especially if the suspect has already been taken into custody. We have a whole safe full of material to increase our working efficiency – and what do we do? We dope ourselves with clinic food, caffeine, nicotine, chocolate and tons of other sweets and are happy once we get our analyses done just in time (or a tiny little bit later). How incredibly stupid! But, hey, we are capable and willing to learn and to read between the lines. After years and years of subtle hints, we finally got the message. Thanks to the polite and detailed instructions of the clinic administration and the newspaper, everything will change – what exactly took us so long?
Alright, you policemen out there, bring us some good stuff, some of those cute colored little pills or anything, we will share them evenly between all of us, and you’ll get your results before the word “urgent” even crossed your minds or lips. Oh, yeah!
And now will you please excuse me, I have to take a look at our safe.

Tatort

Thrillers or crime series are not really Germany’s forte. There have been some nice tries, but generally, the result is not something I would go to the movie’s for or spend an evening glued to my (non-existent) TV screen. For that I prefer “The silence of the lambs”. Or a Mankell-based movie with inspector Wallander. Or – in case of great despair and little alternatives – series like “Crossing Jordan” or “Cold Case”. Nonetheless, for the last almost 40 years, the Sunday night murder mystery “Tatort” ("Crime Scene") has persistently survived, as did the music and trailer at the beginning of each 90 minute (no ads!) episode.

Thrilling like any suspense movie, but with a lot of social criticism, as well as regional/ local characteristics, hot topics, controversial discussions on its internet forum, and then again an extreme popularity in general, and all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Maybe with the exception of some inhabitants of Northern Germany, who have problems understanding the Austrians (due to the language). Or some people in Swabia and Saxonia for whom the inspectors in Stuttgart and Leipzig do not speak enough of the regional dialect compared to the ones who recently retired. And, I fully admit, there have been some very bizarre, not to say crappy, episodes. But hey, just wait one week, and chances are high you won’t be disappointed again. Tatort is a classic, Tatort is cult. In lots of cities, so called Tatort pubs have been established, where Tatort lovers can enjoy the murder mystery in the company of spaghetti with tomato sauce, ice cold beer, and other fans. Unfortunately, there’s no public place to watch in Heidelberg (should I lose my job, I’ll open one :-).
Tatort is a survivor. It could not be eradicated by either the launch of competitive private television channels, the fall of the Berlin wall and the German reunification, the parallel broadcast of Rosamunde Pilcher movies, or, last but not least, the smoking ban for public television. While in the first Tatort in 1970 a chain-smoking inspector Trimmel took a taxi to Leipzig in a cloud of blue smoke, all current inspectors have kicked their habit (if necessary) to become role models for our children and teenagers. And, by the way, most of the suspects and murderers are impeccable, too – at least as far as their nicotine consumption is concerned.
Somehow the concept of Tatort works. Rumors spread that the Dutch are planning to copy it. As they have more than 700 German episodes to get ideas and inspiration from, it shouldn’t be that hard. Even the Americans, who are somewhat reluctant to show foreign movies and prefer American productions instead, could surprise their CSI-traumatized viewers by reshooting the first 700 episodes for a start. That should get the crisis shaken movie business up and running again. With a good marketing concept, a couple of familiar actors as inspectors, a bit of luck (and maybe some more action scenes for the older episodes), they surely would get some passionate admirers like in Germany.
And in case producers out there need some help, no problem, they can call me anytime. Except on Sundays between 8.15 and 9.45 p.m.

Hairytales from the lab

I have started a new project at the Institute of Forensic Medicine. It’s about hair analyses, and it’s horrible. Not the project itself, which is pretty interesting and can even, with a bit of luck, be published quite well. I am comparing washing cycles and solvents for forensic hair samples to differentiate between compounds that have been integrated into the hair from the bloodstream and those adhering to the hair due to external contamination (e.g. passive smoking, sweat). And no, I am not spending the whole day smoking opium or crack or kneading hair with my cocaine powdered hands... :-)
Instead this past month I have been trying to bundle, contaminate, weigh, wash, dry, mill, weigh again and then somehow extract standard hair in the beautiful colors medium blonde, light brown, red, Japanese-black and Chinese-bleached. To the day it’s a mystery to me how my boss could give a nervous clumsy person with two left hands like me a project that is based on handling objects sized less than 0.1 mm in diameter (that is about 1/16 of 1/16 of an inch :-).

Ok, she felt sorry and wanted to help after my boss at the other lab I have been working sent me an email at the beginning of November that he wouldn’t be paying me in 2009 and I suddenly lost 1/3 of my full-time position. Ok, she still had a project and some funding in her drawer and was ready to upgrade me from 66% to 81.58% for 6 months. And ok, I was not really amused by the whole situation and just wanted to work full-time again, period. So I agreed. And I really don’t want to complain about the great opportunity of increasing my knowledge and experience with a new project.

5 months to go. The mill for shredding the hair makes an unbearable noise, as does the ultrasound bath during the extraction (fortunately one milling cycle takes only 8 minutes and manages 2 samples at a time, but then there’s still the 2-3 hour extraction). Everywhere – on my desk, on my clothes, at home on my laptop, in my shoes, in my tea mug at breakfast – I keep on finding hair that doesn’t belong to me. The times where one could whistle in the lab to a song on the radio are over, and it somehow reminds me of my PhD: “Oh, nice song – wait a minute, where are the 50 anesthetized drosophilas I was just sorting?! Shoot! … Oh, hi boss, nah, everything’s alright, I was just counting some drosophilas and somehow spread them all over the bench. No, no problem, I’ll just gather them quickly before they wake up.” Unfortunately, milled hair is much smaller in size than anesthetized drosophilas – the advantage is merely that hair doesn’t wake up and fly off after a while…

Furthermore, my judo colleague Lucie gave me a book for Christmas (Haruki Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) where one of the characters works for a wig factory and her job consists of sitting in public places and classifying the decreasing scalp hair of her fellow male citizens into three categories: A “those with a bald head”, B “those who have lost a lot of hair” and C “those whose hair has thinned out a bit”. Since reading this book I catch myself sometimes categorizing my fellow citizens into “those whose hair is too short”, “those whose hair structure and color are too irregular” and “those whose hair color already is in my collection”.

My colleagues in the lab usually start laughing when they see me fight this almost invisible opponent who cannot be thrown, arm-barred, choked, much less defeated. I admit that it often looks as if I was taming a bag full of fleas. To compensate the endless patience and fine motor skills one needs to work all day long with one inch long and 300 mg heavy bundles of hair I defrosted one of the lab freezers. Voluntarily. On my own (or mostly on my own). With the help of a thick monkey-wrench, making a whole lot of noise and with what must have been a very determined not to say slightly aggressive look on my face – “Regine, I really don’t want to know whom you’re thinking of right now…” – one lab sink full of ice was beaten out of the freezer. That really felt good!

As a second part of the project I am supposed to bleach or treat my standard hairs to a perm, again followed by weighing, washing, drying, milling, weighing, and extracting. Fortunately, we do have some more freezers left in the lab which urgently need to be defrosted.

In order to use a hair analysis in court (e.g. to prove drug abstinence during a certain period of time) the analyzed hair needs to be at least 3 inches long. After this month I swore to myself to spare my colleagues from a lot of miserable work by never letting my hair grow that long. Two inches is a really nice length for hair. And maybe I could throw in some bleach and a perm for a change. :-)

Take care and “give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair. Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen. Give me down to there hair, shoulder length or longer. Here, baby, there, mama, everywhere, daddy, daddy – haaaaaaaair!”

Heidelberg in winter time

Basically, winter does not exist in Heidelberg. At least, there’s no real winter with snow and ice and temperatures in the twenties or lower. Each winter it snows, sooner or later. Everyone is happy, just to discover the next morning that the snow has changed into a wet and muddy liquid or is already gone. Nonetheless, in the house where I live, the list of which party has to remove the snow on which day is hanging right next to the cleaning schedule – German planning and efficiency…. Each year hundreds of people visit the Christmas Market and have their mulled wines at sunny 50°F, or 40°F and light rain. More than once people have tried to order ice tea.

Another great thing during Christmas time is the charming Christmas decoration in Neuenheim, the neighborhood I live in. While other neighborhoods and other cities embellish themselves with luminescent stars, Christmas trees, angels and other season’s motifs, year after year Neuenheim strikes back with undefinable objects. Those who dispose of a lot of good will and even more imagination or are under the influence of some psychotropic substance might see half stars, I always see underwear. And it’s all over Neuenheim. Every single year.

But this year everything changed. No, of course the decoration stayed the same, that would have been too much to ask for…. In December it was cold, and we had snow for almost two days. Mulled wine was high up on everyone’s list, as was the Friesian tea punch. Tea punch is a healthy mixture of black tea, fruits (with lots of tasty vitamins), sugar and traces of alcohol in the form of red wine and rum. As a matter of fact, the punch contains so many traces of alcohol that one feels comfortably drunk just after starting the second cup. Tea punch is my personal all-time favorite Christmas Market beverage and the second best invention after sour gummi bears.

In January, temperatures dropped constantly and it snowed for several days. My roommate was so happy she stored a snow ball in our freezer (it’s still there). On my way to work, I read -1°C (30°F) on a thermometer and wondered how -1°C could make by bike’s brakes and gear shift freeze. A second glance revealed that the temperature was instead -13°C (8°F), random pieces of ice were floating down the Neckar. A couple of days later temperatures reached -17°C (0°F), and the river froze completely. Very brave persons even dared to walk on the ice. Some of my elder colleagues reported, the last time they had crossed the Neckar on foot was in the severe winter of 1963, since then even they had rarely seen ice on it. This historic moment had, of course, to be captured with my camera. But as far as I am concerned, it does not have to repeat itself next winter. Tea punch tastes equally great at 35°F and with an ice-free river.

Heidelberg

Heidelberg is a highly recommendable city – as one million tourists a year who visit this 100,000 inhabitant city can confirm. Although such conclusions always remind me of a T-shirt I saw (and should have bought) on my India vacation. It said „India is a wonderful country – one billion Indians cannot be wrong“. But I can really say that living and working in Heidelberg feels really good, I am at home. It also feels a bit far off from reality, as if one just entered some isolated utopia: University graduates, students from all over the world, Japanese, Americans, other tourists, the castle, the old bridge, the banks of the Neckar river with barbecuing, reading, guitar or ball playing or just relaxing people, the Philosophers’ walk, the oldest university on German territory (AD 1386), lawyers, economy students, the German Cancer Research Centre, an ideal world.
Even occasional, mostly work-related doubts – why would such a peaceful and ideal city need an institute of forensic medicine? – cannot destroy the picture. Even the newspaper Spiegel realized this not long ago and published an article titled “Heidelberg – real existing romance” that starts with the words “Heidelberg is better than Disneyland” (article in German). While cities in the region every once in a while have to struggle with homicide and manslaughter (Weinheim [10 miles from here]: Helpless police is on the phone while woman is murdered), we keep on drinking Capri Sun (although that proceeds from Eppelheim, which is an independent city very close to Heidelberg), teach the subject “Happiness” at high school, sing along with our regional hymn, the Bad’ner Lied, rejoice when the soccer club TSG Hoffenheim wins, are angry that two stolen bikes a day make our crime statistic increase unnecessarily, and hit the news with a gay mayor who marries his boyfriend and sues the city for discrimination [for links to articles in German see German version of this blog].
And that’s it…
The last really upsetting events where I can still vividly remember the newspaper articles are the murder of the 12 year old student Vanja Elena by some random pervert (11/30/2000) and the Ziegelhausen triple murder (12/23/2002) committed by a cigarillo smoking guy on welfare from Mannheim – both tragic, both solved, both some time ago. Even WWII, which ended in the devastation of many German cities – such as nearby Mannheim – was survived by Heidelberg mostly unaffected. An elderly neighbor commented that one of the most impressive moments during that war was when a bush in his neighbors’ frontyard started burning due to an erratic bombing, which also destroyed some of the beautiful colored glass windows of St. Raphael Church on the same block. He was far more shocked when revolting students vandalized, threw out and burnt the altar of the very same church in the late 1960s. And even that was almost 40 years ago…
So, come to charming Heidelberg, it’s absolutely beautiful here. One million tourists a year cannot be wrong…