Re: Electromagnetism and the chemiosmotic hypothesis
Peter,
Thank you again for the quick response, and its posting to the
history of neuroscience list serve which otherwise is a backwater of
inactivity, stasis, and ossification around the course of that very
history. I have belonged to this list serve off and on for 4 or more
years and must admit that it is dreadfully lacking in any sort of
discussion and disputation of historical issues, as if there were none.
The history of neuroscience, as currently presented, is sadly lacking in
discussion of the backgrounds of certain key ideas ranging from the
underlying causes of cell membrane voltages to the idea that nerve
fibers are either sensory or motor, but not both. You have already
pointed out how the latter idea, at least 180 years old and having a
provenance that goes back still farther to Descartes and even, you
claim, to Galen, was considered verified by vivisection on animals
conducted by Bell and Magendie. And nothing done since then has been
construed to hint that the idea is wrong, including that, in the
laboratory, the fiber has been found to conduct in both directions.
This is akin to the idea of the fight/flight mechanism involved in
nervous functioning which held that the nervous system was responsible
for vasoconstriction. This idea was tested surgically in the 1920s with
the 'sympathectomy'. The test did not support the idea. The idea was
kept. The tests were forgotten. Historians of neuroscience never
discuss how archaic ideas have been rescued by changing definitions, by
deviating from standard procedure, by assumptions of simplifying factors
which eliminate difficulties. One of these deviations I discuss
extensively, and which you still have not commented upon - and that is
the extracellular location of the ground electrode, when measuring cell
membrane voltages, accompanied by the claim this is justified because
the cell is being treated as an electrolytic cell. If the cell were
being so treated, the ground electrode would have to, by law, be located
intracellularly. What sort of confabulated idea of electricity and
electrochemistry is being championed here, as if neuroscience were
excused from the rigor of the physical sciences?
We have discussed this issue before. I treasure your responses
because they at least tell me that someone on this list serve is awake.
The quote from Feynman you painstakingly retrieved hoping it would set
me straight about ionic currents is precious, and offers the final word
on the issue. I cannot thank you enough for it. Unfortunately for you
it devastates the position of Hille, all of neuroscience, and
biochemistry, and renders the chemiosmotic hypothesis a non-issue. The
resolution of this point explains why the measurements from patch
clamping are expressed in amperes and not ionperes
"The problem with your listening to Feynman is that you listened to the
wrong part. I have the paper version, and in Vol. I, Ch. 43, Diffusion,
Sect. 43-3: Ionic Activity, I read: "Suppose we have a gas in a vessel
in which there are also some ions - atoms or molecules wih a net
electric charge. . . . If two opposite walls of the container are
metallic plates, we can connect them to the terminals of a battery and
thereby produce an electric field in the gas."
I do not find anywhere in this statement the idea that this electric
field is the result of the mere presence of the ions, or of their uneven
distribution in the container. Yet this is what Nernst is claimed to
support. Feynman even states that the field is the result of the
battery being turned on and resulting in a force on the ions. Think of
the container as a cell, a biological, electrolytic cell.
"The electric field will result in a force on the ions, so they will
begin to drift toward one or the other of the plates. An electric
current will be induced, and the gas with its ions will behave like a
resistor. . ."
Consider Ohm's law, V=IR. What Feynman is saying is that the electrial
field introduced by the battery induces an electrical current I which
cannot possibly flow without an R, and that this R is the movement of
ions. That's right. I'll say it again. The movement of ions is R, and
not I. This is from Feynman. There are no ion currents that are
electrical in the sense that they can be expressed as I, and what you
patch clamp is measuring is amperes, the movement of electrons, and not
ohms or electrical ion currents. If you and Hille and Peter Mitchell
still insist that the movement of ions is I and not R, and that the
electric field is provided by a proton pump rather than a battery then
you might also believe that a stepladder is an anit-gravity device.
This quote alone should render biochemistry a laughingstock, and I thank
you for it. I just wish the other old men who subscribe to this list
serve had your intelligence, because I think you are capable of
understanding the complete bankruptcy of biological treatments of
electricity and the sickness of the joke of the chemiosmotic hypothesis
which has perpetuated the clinical irrelevance of neuroscience.
"An electric current I is the flow of charge in a unit time. The
electric current to one of the plates is
given by the total charge of the ions which arrive at the plate in a
unit of time. "
When Feynman says the electric current to one of the plates is 'given'
he means it is equal to. For the current to pass, for watts to be used,
the force of resistance of the ions must be overcome by the current
introduced by the battery. To the extent that the ions move, the
current flows. The movement of the ions is not itself electricity, but
is instead a response to the electrical field introduced by the
battery. The electrical field made available by the battery is the
result of catabolic action, chemical action, in the battery. The
movement of ions is not chemistry. Should the battery be turned off the
diffusion of the ions to equilibrium is not a source of a usable
electrical field like that which came from the battery. This is real
simple stuff, but impenetrable to neuroscientists apparently, judging
from John Koester's discussion of membrane voltages in Principles of
Neural Science.
"I think this jibes nicely with the notions of neuroscientists like
Hille who say that electric current is the flow of charges, including ions."
Neuroscientists believe this across the board. What I am saying is that
this twisted account and its glorification as the accepted model of the
nature of the nerve impulse is the reason why neuroscience has continued
its tradition of clinical irrelevance into the 21st century. The whole
field of electrochemistry with its potential for the treatment of
chronic and degenerative disorders is completely unfathomable to
biochemists, molecular biologists and neuroscientists. Yet they are
happy with the inconsquence of their researches because it allows them
to pay the bills and posture in lab coats as if they had something to
offer. The outrageous crime is that these clowns in their struggles for
funding of go-nowhere research are preventing the application of
electrochemistry to real problems of those in the trenches. I hope you
have been able to penetrate to the end of the paper on the uneven
development of science and its effects on clinical practice in order to
appreciate this claim.
"As for electric currents in the body and the chemiosmotic hypothesis,
they are probably beyond the scope of the LECTURES ON PHYSICS."
Beyond the scope? Indeed. Feynman makes the point that the
understanding of electromagnetism has changed the world we live in
revolutionarily. Would that neuroscience could make the claim that it
has altered clinical ministration even mildly with its ideas.
"In any event, citing The Molecular Biology of the Cell, by Alberts,
Bray,Lewis, Raff, Roberts and Watson, Ch. 9, Energy Conversion:
Mitochondria and Chloroplasts, Garland Publishing, N.Y., 1983, P. 492:
"When it was first proposed in 1961, (the chemiosmotic hypothesis)
solved a long-standing
problem in biology; however, the idea was so novel that it was some
years before enough evidence
accumulated to make it generally acceptable. "
Emeritus Professor Franklin Harold makes a similar statement in his 2001
The Way of the Cell to the effect that the proposal of the chemiosmotic
hypothesis set off almost two decades of dispute about whether there
could be such a thing, but that the dispute 'subsided' or became
'generally acceptable' [amongst biologists and neuroscientists]with the
'78 award of the Nobel to Peter Mitchell in chemistry, of all things,
for his treatment of 'energy' in the body and the cell which called for
the work of a proton pump rather than a battery, and for continued
respect of the 19th century idea that electricity could be molecular and
involve the movement of ions in a solution. Once again, from Feynman,
the movement of ions is R in the equation V=IR, and not I. I is
measured in amperes. Chemical energy is defined as electrons, beta
radiation, cathode rays, what comes from the cathode of the battery and
travels to the anode where it exits to create an electrical field that
causes ions to move. The 'long standing problem in biology' was in
defining chemical energy in terms of the movement of ions, because the
existence of free electrons in the body was ruled out by the already
accepted idea from 1906 that cell membrane voltages were due to ion
concentration gradients. Neurophysiology is bound and hobbled by
tradition, so much so that the award of the Karolinska Institute is
enough to cause disputation about key issues to 'subside' and become
'generally acceptable' amongst neurophysiologists and biochemists
despite the fact that these key issues are better left to the rigors of
scientists.
"Since Feynman gave his famous lectures in 1961 and 1962, it is very
unlikely that he had heard of the
chemiosmotic hypothesis."
The Feynman lectures drag out to late 1964, long after the appearance of
the hypothesis and its first approval by the Karolinska Institute with
the award of the '63 Nobel to Eccles et al. for a paper published in '53
which explicated the nature of the nerve impulse in terms of the work of
a 'sodium pump' and which also invoked the 1906 idea of Julius Bernstein
that the movement of ions can be measured as I and not R.
"The Cell is a biology text and treats neuroscience only peripherally,
yet it expounds on the chemiosomotic hypothesis with great enthusiasm
and at length."
Enthusiasm and great length are not enough to transform lead into gold.
The same year as the Alberts, Bray, Lewis, et al. book appeared the
essay by Sir Peter Medawar, "Osler's Razor" in which the great man says
that neurology can do no more clinically then than it could a century
earlier. What you're asking me to believe then is that the chemiosmotic
hypothesis, which contaminates molecular biology and neuroscience with a
sick and twisted version of electricity, is correct, and that the
clinical ineffectiveness of the very disciplines which hold up this idea
is due to something else. You want me to accept the notion that
paralysis following spinal injury in which the nerves continue to
conduct impulses but the muscles, severely atrophic from disuse, fail to
respond, is due to 'learned non-use', a lower motor neuron problem that
does not involved the muscle cell at all. I'm sorry, but I just can't
buy this load of crap. Yet this is the current wisdom of those trying
to rehabilitate the spinal injured and the hemiplegic. I keep getting
back to the clinic because, as I said to you in an earlier email, the
axe I have to grind is a clinical one. The pissing on Peter Mitchell
and Bertil Hille follows from my rancor at their complicity in the
perpetuation of this clinical irrelevance.
"Your problem might be better solved by consulting textbooks on
physical chemistry and biochemistry rather than physics texts. Here the
issues you address are discussed very completely. "
The formulation of my position came from the study of the very texts you
recommend, along with the study of physics texts. The issues are
discussed, for example, by John Koester in a beautifully complete
manner. I take pains to point out, using extensive quotations from his
work, the complete incorrectness of his treatment of the subject,
including the emptiness of the simplifying assumptions of the values for
R such that the notion of ionic fluxes as I can be made and Nernst
voltages can be brought into Ohms law via the Goldman equation.
"The fact that you did not find what you are looking for doesn't prove
anything. Absence of evidence is not evidence of its absence."
Thank you for that bit of sage advice. It has been used to justify
belief in UFOs, conspiracy theories of all stripes, psychic phenomena,
and the intelligence of George W. Bush. That you cite it now makes me
believe that when it gets down to brass tacks, to basic physics, the
chemiosmotic hypothesis depends upon a level of credulity that is beyond
science. I'm tired of arguing these issues about electricity; I'm
tired of the bullshit of biochemical and neuroscientific schemes of
electricity as molecular or atomic. When can we move beyond this issue
and address that of myopathy and its role in the perpetuation of
paralysis and muscle weakness, and what to do about it using
electrochemistry? I hope I have exhausted your increasingly feeble
attempts to resuscitate the joke of the chemiosmotic hypothesis and the
reputations of those who have founded their academic sinecures on its
continuing respectability. Now let's get on to the clinical world and
to issues of the electrochemical nature of nervous system trophism and
the use of electrochemistry to treat trophoneurotic disorders, and
chronic and degenerative disorders which currently western medical
science can do little or nothing about what with its stinking
chemiosmotic hypothesis and proton pumps that are so analogous to
batteries that idiots like Bertil Hille insist they can be thought of as
batteries. Give me a break now. Hille and Mitchell and all the
students who answer the test questions correctly can be dismissed.
Sincerely,
Gregory C. O'Kelly