A short intro, perhaps an apology.

There is a lot of this story that would go a little better with the benefit of some careful research.

Since this month is supposed to be purely about volume, I've let these issues slide, because if I know myself, I could easily become swept away in such matters to the degree that the story would be put on the back burner while research into herbalism, cultural anthropology, language and dialects and post civil war history ate up all my free time for a year or so.

So if something seems a bit strange, and strains your suspension of disbelief, just let me know, and I will add that to any future revisions that evolve out of the tale.
Since the story is going to be serialized on this journal, I figure this will be a unique way to write, allowing a lot of input from the reader.

Having said that, let's get started.

FOREWARD.


Dr William Calhoun, Deptartment of Anthropology
UCLA Center for the Comparative Study of Folklore and Mythology

To the members of the Board of Finance, Adsorption Pharmaceuticals, LTD, Burlingame California.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the board, members of Research and Development, and Director Patel.

Dr. Wisen from Research and Development has suggested that this communique on progress into our joint efforts will hasten the Board's review of our request for a supplemental grant to continue our secondary source materials research.

I was initially assured earlier that Adsorption's recent success with the compound produced from the parasitic mermithid nematodes infecting the Floridian Fire Ant, (Solenopsis geminata) would have ensured the quick approval of our supplemental grant, but apparently newer members of the board needed a refresher in the general background and thesis of the program, especially given the poor performance of other compounds. So this short paper has been prepared in the hope that it will clear up any doubts and uncertainties that remain with the newer members of the board.

As you are all aware, the search for and development of new pharmaceutical compounds is a wide reaching and time consuming affair. Vast amounts of capital are dumped into a seeming black hole of research programs that rarely, if ever, yield a potential compound. Even when such compounds are found, the cost of further laboratory research, isolation, patenting, and clinical trial, are often prohibitive when considering the potential market value for the compound in question.

As you may also be aware, over the last eight years, cuts in Federal and State funding for Anthropological programs at UCLA and other universities, have caused a bit of a crisis in the field, as few in current administrations can perceive of the value inherent in Anthropological research.

So in the spirit of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," our department has began a public-private partnership with a number of carefully chosen public entities to prove to the "free market," and later, hopefully to the Federal and State agencies, the under appreciated value of Anthropology.

In my case, as a specialist in folklore, I knew that I could immediately begin to offer value as a research aid to the pharmaceutical industry. My research into spiritualism of early American communities had long made me curious as to the potential pharmacological application of the poultices and potions employed.

At first, to the non-superstitious mind, this may seem absurd. But it begins to have some glimmer of possibility if one considers the historical situation a little further. Often in Native American, African American, and other traditions where "scientifically trained" doctors and healers are not available, a local herbalist was a mental storehouse of the medical and often spiritual knowledge of the people. The depth of knowledge was often passed down for centuries, and over this time, many variations of traditional remedies could be attempted as oral recipes are altered or lost, or as certain supplied become available or unavailable due to diaspora or mass relocation. This could be seen as a large crucible of potential cures. The ones that had no effect were eliminated, and effective applications were tested and retested, time and time again, often for centuries. Compare this to our "modern" practice of review. Currently our clinical trials of a compound last only a few years, and it is rare that phase four clinical trials extend for a period of longer than ten years. When this is considered, spirituality and superstition aside, there is good reason to suspect that many of these traditional applications contain great potential for new and unknown compounds.

Here at the UCLA Center for the Comparative Study of Folklore and Mythology, we are blessed to house a large number of rather unique and unparalleled first and second hand accounts of traditional healing applications. Central, and perhaps the jewel in our crown is the encyclopedic five volume "Hoodoo, Conjuration and Rootwork," (HC&R) compiled by Reverend Henry Middleton Hyatt in the 1930's from the mouths of thousands of the actual practitioners.

Our work over the last eight years has indentified and cross-referenced cures in several different accounts in HC&R and other first and second hand accounts in the available folklore. When we passed this work to the Research and Development Department at Adsorption, one of the first compounds identified, (the aforementioned compound produced by the parasitic nematodes,) was found to have enormous potential as an antibiotic. The compound has fared well in trials and stands to make UCLA and Adsorption enough capitol to easily offset the cost of the initial grant, the compound development, the clinical trials, and still yield a healthy profit for Adsorption, who stands to enter the antiseptic market with the first new product in decades, just as the demand for new antibiotics reaches its peak.

Unfortunately, the other compounds identified in our extensive cross-referencing work have not yielded such rich results. While some show promise, Initial testing can not guarantee the costs will outstrip the potential value. Other compounds show strong potential, but not enough to warrant attempts to penetrate markets currently controlled by well established and effective extant compounds. Even patenting these compounds would be unwise, since the demand in the current markets may not surface until well after the 20 years of security that a patent offers. In these cases, protecting the "trade secret" status of these compounds may end up costing more than any actual pharmaceutical value.

So here we are, asking for further funding to continue what must seem like a fruitless chase. Adsorption has benefitted from the project, but in the light of the poor results for the other identified compounds, this must seem like one of those fortunate flukes. Honestly ladies and gentlemen, were I sitting on your board, I would tell you that the statistical numbers would not bear out the costs inherent in further research.

I would say that to you, unless UCLA could produce some manner of "hole card," and had you spoken to me even a month ago, I would have had to confess that we had no such thing.

However, recent developments have placed us in a much better position. In our desperation, we turned over the bins in the archives and have found a treasure trove of wax cylinders. The archivist's notes state that these cylinders are field recordings from Ms Sally Winstone, a nurse and contemporary of Rev. Hyatt, who journeyed deep within the southern states to gather first hand stories and folklore of the African American community before these were lost to the ravages of history. Unlike HC&R, these accounts have never been transcribed. Shortly after the collection was completed, Ms Winstone fell ill and died of pneumonia. The collection was transferred to academia some ten years later when one of her colleagues asked about the collection and her father located it in the basement. It was transferred to UCLA some time later. According to our archivist, due to an unusual flaw in the wax, the cylinders are extremely brittle and have never been stable enough to play. Initial attempts in 1966 resulted in the near obliteration of one of the cylinders, and since that time no other attempt has been made.

In an attempt to see if technology had somehow bridged the gap, we took the cylinders to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering here at UCLA. Dr. Martha Miller in our Electrical Engineering department determined that a low intensity laser could interpret the depth of the inscribed grooves in the cylinders as a digital stream. Comparing this to the stream of other, stable cylinders that we can play on contemporary equipment, we were able to create a transliteration software to convert this stream into an audio signal, which could then be transferred to compact disc and played as one one play a normal CD.

In the case of the whole cylinders, this worked extremely well. But due to the deterioration of the Winstone collection, very few of the cylinders are whole. Most are fragmented. Some beyond repair, or so we thought.

Dr Miller used this same low intensity laser to transcribe the segments of the cylinders that she had, and then scanned and assembled the segments into large, highly compressed digital pictures. With the aid of three assistants, these were painstakingly assembled like puzzle pieces into digital representations of the original wax cylinders using a computer aided machining software that Dr Miller had customized to suit the task.

Once complete models of the cylinders were assembled, the models were printed in the Machining Lab's 3D polymer printer, which can reproduce any computer created 3D model in plastic by firing lasers into a vat of a liquid polymer, enabling us to produce physical representation of these 3D models. These re-assembled plastic cylinders could then be transcribed using the same laser based "record player."

We then found that the reassembled cylinders had small nano-second gaps in the areas where the puzzle pieces met. Because of the digital nature of the datastream, this would cause portions of a word, or several words in a sentence to simply disappear from the recording. Here is where Dr Robert Reich from UCLA's Speech pathology Clinic enters the picture. Dr Reich carefully listens to each speaker and gathers syllabic "exemplars" of the subject's speech. He then examines the portions of speech just prior and after each gap. His experience with children and adults with severe speech disorders has taught him how to determine the position of the mouth, teeth, tongue and palette from recorded speech, and from this, he can often determine a syllable from a partial recording. He used this knowledge to backfill each gap with the appropriate syllabic exemplar. The result is often indistinguishable from complete segments of the subject's speech. Unfortunately, Dr Reich's unique experience can't be translated easily into a software package that could be used to analyze and recreate all the missing segments quickly. Since each speaker's speech patterns are unique and very complex, only a highly trained observer like Dr Reich can complete the transcriptions. Needless to say that this is a slow and tedious process.

However, this process also enables archival copies of the whole cylinders and ensures that as long as the digital models survive, then duplicates can be easily created. We found that this process worked well enough to make backups of the fragile cylinders in the Winstone collection, and have started archiving many of the other wax cylinders in our collection.

In the transcriptions of the Winstone collection, we are finding a number of unique and previously unexplored recipes for traditional cures. The Hyatt collection has been receiving attention from various folklorists, and dare I say other pharmaceutical concerns for many years now, and the amount of new material buried within was probably minimal. But with the Winstone collection, we have a new, untapped source of first and second hand accounts that now eclipses the Hyatt collection in size, and with the aid of Dr's Miller, Reich and etc, are of exceptional quality. Since the transcriptions are done via the aid of various computer technologies, there is no chance of misinterpretation or error, and we can for the first time, hear unknown and untold accounts that can be of immense potential value for Adsorption, and for Anthropology in general.

So it is my opinion, ladies and gentlemen of the board, that further funding of the partnership between UCLA and Adsorption is now easily justifiable. Especially given that since our earlier agreement was solely for the review and analysis of HC&R, and the location and transcription of this new collection was made based solely on University time and research, we are in a good position to challenge our "non-compete" agreement. Other pharmaceutical concerns will almost certainly be willing to work with UCLA to examine and potentially exploit this new collection, but due to our existing partnership with Adsorption, we felt it only proper to offer you this opportunity first.