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and mouth. His hoarseness and inability to swallow was caused
by the cancer's spread from his nose and throat to his neck to
press on the nerves that control the muscles for swallowing.
More than 1000 cases of nasopharyngeal cancer are now
diagnosed each year in the US. The most common known causes
of nasopharyngeal cancer are the Epstein-Barr virus and the
sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is
spread commonly by sexual contact to cause cancers of the cervix, vagina, nose, throat, mouth, tonsils, and nasopharynx. Babe
Ruth was a notorious womanizer. Every new sexual exposure
is also a potential exposure to the >150 diﬀerent HPV viruses.
In June 1946, Babe Ruth received radiation and 6 weeks of
daily injections of teropterin. Thus, he became one of the ﬁrst
humans to be treated with chemotherapy. Although Ruth did
not know he had cancer, he agreed to take the experimental drug
that helped him almost immediately. His neck lymph nodes
shrank, his pain lessened, and he regained much of the recently
lost 80 pounds. Unfortunately, the beneﬁts of teropterin were
temporary, but nevertheless this was the start of chemotherapy.
Methotrexate, a chemical similar to teropterin, is of course still
used today. Today most of the HPV-type cancers can be prevented by the HPV vaccination, but the latter must be given
before any exposures have occurred.
WEST TEXAS OILFIELDS AND METHAMPHETAMINES
(CRYSTAL METH)
Oilﬁeld workers are well paid for their long hours, but one of
the consequences of that often lonely existence is heavy drug use
(7). Cocaine, marijuana, and opioids are very proﬁtable to drug
dealers in the remote locations where oil and gas drilling takes
place. The favorite choice in West Texas is methamphetamine, a
powerful stimulant. There is a powerful correlation between the
rise of drilling activity and the number of crystal meth seizures
in the area, a ﬁvefold increase from 2009 to 2014 in the Permian
Basin. Three times as many workers tested positive for methamphetamines in the ﬁrst half of 2017 than in the ﬁrst half of
2009. The increased drug abuse in West Texas has exacerbated
the struggle of the oil industry to ﬁnd workers as it rebuilds its
labor forces after widespread layoﬀs during the recent downturn.
It is the Mexican drug cartels that dominate the commerce of
"meth" in West Texas. The meth is transported in liquid form
across the US-Mexico border, stored in fake gasoline tanks, ice
tea bottles, or windshield washer ﬂuid reservoirs.
THE NEW HUMAN FOSSILS
The closest living relative to Homo sapiens are chimpanzees
and bonobos, with whom we share an ancestor that lived over
6 million years ago. Until now, the oldest fossil that clearly belonged to Homo sapiens was discovered in Ethiopia in 2003;
studies of the skull estimated it to be about 160,000 years old
(8). Skulls discovered at another site were estimated to be around
195,000 years old. Discoveries such as these suggest that our
species evolved in a small region of Africa, perhaps Ethiopia or
in East Africa. Homo sapiens ﬁrst spread out over the African
continent. Much later, roughly 70,000 years ago, a small group
of Africans made their way to other continents. Recently, at a
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site in Morocco, paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin found
fossils estimated to be 300,000 years old, thus providing evidence
that Homo sapiens began much earlier than previously believed.
CREATIVITY BY AGE
Pagan Kennedy is the author of Inventology: How We Dream
Up Things That Change the World (9). A 2016 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Study found that inventors
peak in their late 40s and tend to be highly productive in the last
half of their careers. The study found that the average inventor
sends in his or her application to the patent oﬃce at age 47
and that the highest-value patents often come from inventors
>55 years of age. The study also found that among those granted
international patents in information technology, materials science, and the life sciences, 29% were aged 26 to 45, 53% aged
46 to 60, and 19% aged 61 to 80. The study of Nobel physics laureates found that since the 1980s, they have made their
discoveries on average at age 50. The study also found that the
peak of creativity for Nobel winners is getting higher every year.
Kennedy described John Goodenough, who at age 57 coinvented the lithium-ion battery that shrank power into a tiny
package. In the 1970s, the energy crisis inspired him to imagine
how one could store power in tiny packages. Dr. Goodenough
believes that the lithium-ion battery is liable to explode, is too
expensive, and is too weak to compete eﬀectively with petroleum. And now he and his team at the University of Texas at
Austin ﬁled a patent application on a new kind of battery. If it
works as promised, it would be cheap, lightweight, and safe, and
would revolutionize electric cars and kill oﬀ petroleum-fueled
vehicles. His announcement at age 94 has caused a stir. It seems
never to be too late.
CREATORS ON A COLOSSAL SCALE
My son Charles introduced me to Paul Johnson a few years
ago, and subsequently he has become one of my favorite authors. Johnson, now 88 years old, has written nearly 20 books.
He has done a trilogy of books: Creators: From Chaucer and
Dürer to Picasso and Disney (10), Intellectuals: From Marx and
Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, and Heroes: From Alexander the
Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle. To me he is
all three: a creator, an intellectual, and a hero. He puts his own
thoughts into every facet of his writing. Although an Englishman, he authored A History of the American People (1997). The
following comes from The Creators that describes rather brieﬂy
but beautifully the lives of 17 creators.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400): Chaucer may have been
the most creative spirit ever to write in English. Indeed, according to Johnson, it could be argued that he created English
as a medium of art. Before Chaucer, the ruling class spoke
French and wrote in Latin. The rise of English as the language
of law and government was formally recognized by the Statute
of Pleading (1362) when Chaucer was a young man. It ordered that all court cases shall be pleaded, showed, answered,
debated, and judged in English. The following year the Lord
Chancellor for the ﬁrst time opened Parliament with a speech
in English. Chaucer, as Johnson writes, found a language and

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