Most of us have taken, or at least interacted with, medicine at some point or another in our lives. This can range from more “simple” over-the-counter drugs to more complex medicines specifically designed for exact illnesses. Considering the Covid-19 era we are going through and as search for a vaccine is at the highest possible speed, it is important to have at least a general idea on how medicines are developed for our use. This article aims to explore how a complicated mix of chemical compounds in a laboratory end up as pills on a shelf in your local pharmacy. We will also explore a brief history of pharmacology, where drugs get their names, how drugs come into fruition, the various affects that drugs can have on our bodies, along with the discrepancies that exist between them in regard to when, how, and why they should be taken.

Pharmacology is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and the chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical functions. It includes the study of how a drugs can affect our biological systems, such as individual organs or an entire part of the body, and how the body overall responds to the drug. The discipline encompasses the sources, chemical properties, biological effects and, therapeutic uses of drugs. Substances with medicinal properties are considered pharmaceuticals, whereas drugs given for therapeutic purposes are usually called medications. Drug therapy, which is also called pharmacotherapy, is the use of drugs to prevent, diagnose, and treat signs, symptoms, and disease processes. When prevention or cure is not a reasonable goal, relief of symptoms can greatly improve quality of life and the ability to function properly on a day-to-day basis. Developing an understanding of this craft can allow us to better appreciate how molecules interact to form the drugs and medicines that can change our lives, and perhaps even allow us to contemplate their complex creation and existence.

In its most simplistic definition, a medication is a substance that is ingested or placed onto the body in order to cure a disease or condition (antibiotics are given to cure an infection), treat a medical condition (anti-depressants are given to treat depression), relieve symptoms of an illness (pain relievers are given to reduce pain), given to prevent diseases (flu vaccine helps to prevent the person from complications of having the flu).

Source of drugs

Historically, drugs were mainly derived from plants, animals, and minerals. Morphine, insulin, and iron are all commonly used examples of their respective sources. Belief in the curative powers of plants and certain substances rested exclusively upon traditional knowledge. But empirical information was not subjected to critical examination. Until the end of the 19th century, medicines were made by natural organic or inorganic products including mostly dried or fresh plants and their parts. These compounds might contain substances that possess healing properties or reactions that exert a toxic effect. It is important to remember that many fruits, vegetables, and plants still possess great power despite not having a “modern” origin.

Most drugs used nowadays are synthetic chemical compounds manufactured in laboratories which are synthesized by altering the chemical structure of an existing drug. The first drug of a particular group of drugs are called prototypes. For example, morphine is the prototype of opioid analgesics, and penicillin is the prototype of antibacterial drugs. Drug classifications and prototypes are defined and most new drugs can be assigned to a group. We must be hopeful and continue to search far and wide for cures for all  diseases, whether they be organic or synthetic, since our world is full of an infinite amount of possibilities and discoveries.

Drug names

The systematic naming of pharmaceutical drugs is called “drug nomenclature.” Drugs primarily have three types of names: chemical names, generic names, and trade names. The chemical names are the scientific names that often sound complex and are based upon the molecular structure of a drug. During development, the company will apply for regulatory approval of the drug by the relevant national regulatory agency, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and will be granted a generic name for it. Generic names usually indicate, via their stems, what drug class the drug belongs to. For example, oseltamivir is an antiviral drug because its name ends in the -vir suffix.

After development, testing, and regulatory acceptance of a drug, the pharmaceutical company gives the drug a trade name, which is a standard term in the pharmaceutical industry for a brand name or trademark name. Many drugs have multiple trade names which can reflect separate marketing strategies in different countries, manufactured by different companies, or both.

Drug investigation

A new drug investigation is the beginning of the journey of a chemical compound to a drug that will be used in clinics. The testing process of a chemical compound begins with animal studies to determine potential beneficial uses and also potential toxic side effects of the candidate compound.  The results from these animal studies are reviewed, and if the results are satisfactory, the compound then undergoes clinical trials in humans that people can voluntarily sign up for. Most clinical trials use a randomized, controlled experimental design that involves selection of subjects according to established criteria, random assignment of subjects to experimental groups, and administration of the test drug to one group and a control substance to another group.

Patent protection

New drugs that are developed by pharmaceutical companies will be covered under patent protection. This means that only the pharmaceutical company that holds the patent is allowed to manufacture, market, and eventually profit from the drug. This is seen as a return on the company’s investment that it took to develop the drug, which may require years of work and millions of dollars, along with an incentive for developing other drugs. Other pharmaceutical companies cannot manufacture and market the drug during the patent period.

Usually, the drug patent is awarded for around twenty years in the United States, however the number of years varies across countries and drugs. Pharmaceutical companies apply for a patent long before the clinical trial period even begins. The effective patent period after the drug has finally received approval is often around seven to twelve years. After the patented period expires the drug can be manufactured and sold by other companies. The drug is referred to as a generic drug at this point, and they are required to be therapeutically equivalent and much less expensive than trade name drugs.

Pharmacoeconomics

Pharmacoeconomics involves all of the costs that are accrued due to drug therapy and experimentation including those related to purchasing supplies, dispensing the drug, storing it, administrative fees, laboratory and other tests that are used to monitor patient responses, and losses from expiration. The length of a patient’s illness or hospitalization is also considered. While the most important factor is the health of the patient the costs for treatment are increasingly being considered as a major factor when choosing medications, and research projects that compare costs have greatly increased in recent years. The goal is to make it easier for patients to choose the most cost-effective drugs that combine high quality treatment at an affordable price. For drugs or regimens of similar efficacy and toxicity, there is considerable pressure upon doctors and pharmacies to prescribe less costly drugs for shorter duration.

Prescription and non-prescription drugs

In many countries, consumers have two legal routes of access to therapeutic drugs. One route involves a prescription or order from a licensed health care provider, such as a physician, dentist, or nurse practitioner. The other route is by over-the-counter (OTC) purchase of drugs that do not require a prescription. Both of these routes are regulated by various drug laws that change from country to country. Acquiring and using prescription drugs for non-therapeutic purposes, by persons who are not authorized to have the drugs or for whom they are not prescribed, is illegal.

The rejection of drugs in modern society

Nowadays, there are some people who deny various kinds of treatments because of their religious beliefs. This category of people is only a minority, as the majority of religions advocate for people to be healthy and to take care of their health as much as they can. In almost all belief traditions, the human body is believed to be a trust, and in case of any disease, the most appropriate and fastest treatment methods should be used. Even substances that are not normally permitted are allowed by scholars to be used if the person’s safety is concerned. For believers, the most important goal in life is to worship God, and for this to be possible the body must be healthy.

One day, people asked Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him:

“Should we make use of medical treatment?”

He replied: “Make use of medical treatment, for God has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease, namely old age.”

People are encouraged to seek out those remedies and to use them with skill and kindness. Let us also remember that Jesus, peace be upon him, too, was very active in his ministry of healing. He showed by God’s permission miracles like curing the blind and the deaf, and bringing the dead back to life. Thus, religions do not refuse treatment with any available methods, and they even strongly encourage treatment and prevention of diseases.

Religions are also well known to treat stress, which wreaks havoc on the mind and body. It is still not known exactly how stress harms our health, but researchers have found that chronic psychological stress is associated with body’s losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response. It has been shown that the effects of psychological stress on the body’s ability to regulate inflammation can promote the development and progression of disease. We know that religions and beliefs give people hope and significantly decrease the stress.

Human beings are the most precious creation, and health is necessary for us to achieve the purpose of our existence. Using scientific medicine together with faith and religion can help people to protect their health. Being the science of drugs and by investigating new drug therapies, pharmacology helps us exactly with that.

History of Pharmacology

Claudius Galen (129–200 A.D.) was the first person who attempted to consider the theoretical background of pharmacology.

Ali al-Tabari (838 A.D.) Medieval Islamic physicians used natural substances such as Papaver somniferum Linnaeus, poppy, and Cannabis sativa Linnaeus, hemp as a source of medicinal drugs. Although poppy had medicinal benefits, Ali al-Tabari explained that the extract of poppy leaves was lethal, and the extracts and opium should be considered poisons (4).

Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541), also known as “Paracelsus”, began to question doctrines from antiquity. He prescribed chemically defined substances with such success that professional enemies had him prosecuted as a poisoner. Against such accusations, he defended himself with the thesis that has become an axiom of pharmacology:

“If you want to explain any poison properly, what then isn‘t a poison? All things are poison, nothing is without poison; the dose alone causes a thing not to be poison.”

Johann Jakob Wepfer (1620–1695) was the first to use animal experimentation for pharmacological or toxicological actions.

Rudolf Buchheim (1820–1879) founded the first institute of pharmacology at the University of Dorpat (Tartu, Estonia) in 1847, which firstly made pharmacology as an independent scientific discipline. In addition to a description of effects, he strove to explain the chemical properties of drugs.

Oswald Schmiedeberg (1838–1921), together with his many disciples, helped to establish the high  reputation of pharmacology. He partnered with pathologist Bernhard Naunyn (1839–1925) to found the first journal of pharmacology, which has since been published without interruption.

After 1920, the pharmacological industry had their own pharmacology laboratories outside established university institutes. After 1960, departments of clinical pharmacology were set up at many universities and in industry.

References

1. Clinical Drug Therapy: Rationales for Nursing Practice – Seventh 7th Edition, Lippincott Williams &Wilkins.
2. Basic&Clinical Pharmacology, 12^th Edition, McGrawHill Lange.
3. Modern Pharmacology with Clinical Applications, Sixth Edition, Charles R. Craig and Robert E. Stitzel, Lippincott Williams &Wilkins.

The human eye can identify colors within a 360-760 mm distance. The limits of a curved sight cover the yellow-green field. Every leaf and blade of grass reflects light in this field (540-560 mm), and the human eye can detect thus detect green more clearly than any other color. In other words, God, the All-Knowing, made our eyes see the peaceful and lively color green more easily than other colors, and He granted us the ability to distinct over fifty hues of green – more hues than any other color.

In addition to green, the human eye also perceives the color red, the color of of begonia and barberries, which are colored with antocyan. But there is a chlorophyll layer with its distinctive green under the red layer on top of the leaves. Only a human can see a begonia like this – for example, a bee sees it in black.

Biologists found out that greenblue seaweed, which is really spread all over the world, used to provide our planet with oxygen billions of years ago, contains not only “A”- type chlorophyll, but also other pigments. The human eye, however, is “determined” to see only the green seaweed component created in order to saturate the environment with vital oxygen.

Claiming that “mother nature” has executed such a complicated selection, for the sake of Charles Darwin’s principles, is impossible – it would be more realistic to expect a typewriter to write the encyclopedia Britannica by chance.

We must, however, concede a very important detail. Energy absorption of phototrophic organisms, which is dependant the Sun, is adaptively connected with continuously changing levels of solar radiation. As it is known, the latter comes into soil, which then nourishes plants by facilitating the absorption of energy in a selectively narrow diapason (400-900 to 400- 700 nm). It is impossible to modulate an optimal situation for a plant to be nourished through evolution. A blind evolution would not achieve that in a time span much more time than the multibillion age of our Universe. This leads to the conclusion that the Creator made the specific system of energy absorption in plants via rays projected to the Earth by the Sun.

Aside from the fact that green is created and chosen by God, one more detail deserves listing. Objectively a plant’s leaf and its pigment are connected with selective spectral energy absorption. Emanation with different quanta outside of this precise and narrow “adjustment” could have any influence – negative or positive. Pigment of another kind would not function to fulfill its purpose to be vivifying. Is not turning the ruthless solar radiation into a life-giving flow a manifestation of His wisdom and of the love He has for His creations?

In our everyday life, we engage in amateur garden work or we just admire trees and bushes in bloom. This wonderful event, this miracle, appears to us as something routine. Pigments are highly organized; they are “adjusted” to radiation, which means that their spectrums permit them to absorb radiation in the diapasons at their limit intensity. Moreover, a plant’s organism is always able to increase/decrease this intensity.

For sure, there is one more obvious thing – the issue of the maximum solar radiation is relative. The problem is that according to every scale of wave length, maximum radiation is registered at 578 nm., and at 1015 nm. It would be even more, 1804 nm, if read according to the quantum quantity scale.

From the point of view of basic quantum physics, the most prominent authority on understanding of the role of God in the act of creation, the green color of a leaf is understood to be connected with the features of the pigment itself, the most suitable for the function of absorption and transformation of ray energy.

Another issue is also very important – what determines the diapason of a ray’s energy is its FAR and its photosynthesis diapason accordingly. If we do not accept God as Creator, it is hard to imagine how nature, through all its stages of development led the only source of inner energy, the ATF molecule – through anaerobic, then aerobic breathing and ultimately to all the forms of photosynthesis. This molecule with the energy of its chemical compound in the living system of some 10 Kcal/mole remained in the green plant, but it was not only the breath that was the source of its creation.

I would like to share my observations of over fifty years. As the solar ray energy has become the most important source of energy for plants, simplifying a number of arguments, I can say that the plants are granted a mechanism able to form universal inner quanta divisible to ATF in energy as well as to a photosynthetically important compound named NADP.H (50 kcal/mole each). This is based on the features and spectrum of chlorophyll. The quanta are one of the strongest donors of “his majesty the electron!” Please tell me who will speak of blind evolution after considering these “coincidences”…

I would like to share my observations of over fifty years. As the solar ray energy has become the most important source of energy for plants, simplifying a number of arguments, I can say that the plants are granted a mechanism able to form universal inner quanta divisible to ATF in energy as well as to a photosynthetically important compound named NADP.H (50 kcal/mole each). This is based on the features and spectrum of chlorophyll. The quanta are one of the strongest donors of “his majesty the electron!” Please tell me who will speak of blind evolution after considering these “coincidences”…

“Let all the breathing praise the Lord!”

There is a simple conclusion that could be made from all the above. If such “portions,” or quanta, are formed from solar energy absorbed by plants, then means the primary products of the same type can be also formed. “The quality of light” is of no metabolic importance for the process of synthesis in the limits of ray energy. The Word of God, once spoken out, is realized in a determined way, far distant from Darwinian theory.

Long years of experiments, research, and consultations with colleagues from around the world persuaded this author to change his opinion from vulgar materialism to a deeper understanding. Properties in plants are not the result of “calculabilitive” photosynthesis “touched” by science; like all things, these properties are of a manifestation of His, just as are the lives of humans.

This is the irrational choice of my soul. Nonetheless, as it was admitted in the works on the general problems of science and historic knowledge by the Chief of Department of Civilization Problems at the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences by Prof. V.I. Sheremet -the real breakthrough can be reached with faith in God and exploring the undiscovered. So I offer a second conclusion devoid of materialist explanation. The pigment apparatus of a plant is a complicated chlorophyll-protein complex that functions jointly with its intended object. Who determined this program of compatibility? The plant – the main hero of this article – is given the ability to form a physiological quantum of 50 kcal by itself. Moreover, a high intensity green quantum from outside cannot be used by a separate chlorophyll- protein compound.

The conclusion is obvious and simple: a plant’s life cycle is realized only according to His will and in the regime determined by Him. “Monochromatic” sources of ray energy are not suitable, nor welcomed, by God for the full-fledged artificial raising of plants, but it can be of use for the photosynthesis regulation. So, hotbeds are useful and necessary. The generalized summary is as follows. The green color of leaves and, the blue of the cloudless sky, are not random, they are the work of intelligent design.

So let the green color – the color of plants, of nephrite, malachite, and beryl – beloved and honored both in the East and in the West. Let the mysterious “green ray” of a seaside sunset, let the green stripe of the rainbow, the bridge to Heaven for the righteous, remain the symbol of His Will, His Life, His Awakening of spring in the peace of the heart.

May peace be with all of you, dear readers!