So how did this mountain of fossilised bird crap lead to treatment for cancer (via a Nobel prize winner and poison gas)?

Chemistry, my dudes. A thread.

I already explained how this bird crap pile has led to Bolivia not having a coastline, and guano is where we get 'guanine', one of the base pairs of DNA.

But this is a bit more tricky. So stick with me. https://twitter.com/rmathematicus/status/1280869926950051840

The bird poo was mined for sodium nitrate. This was used for fertilizer and gunpowder. It was a major industry that made the Atacama desert a (white) gold mine.

So of course chemists wanted an alternative. Can you get nitrates from somewhere else?

Enter this dude: Fritz Haber

Haber was an amazing chemist. In the early 20th century, pioneered the Haber process. Short version? Pressure + temperature = ammonia from air!

This was incredible. Half the world's population is alive because of this process. It feeds *billions* and won him the Nobel prize.

BUT! Haber had a hard-on for, well. Mass murder. In addition to solving the world's food crisis, during WW1 he pioneered a different type of chemistry: chemical warfare.

Shouting "GOD PUNISH ENGLAND!" he launched the first gas attack (using chlorine) on 22 April 1915.

Now, you don't need me to tell you that chemical weapons = bad. But Haber LOVED them. So much so that when his wife Clara told him it was her or the super-killy-death-gas, he picked the gas.

Clara committed suicide. Haber, grieving, went off to gas the Russians.

Haber had opened a Pandora's Box of face-melting horror. Chemists *on both sides* got involved, including several other Nobel laureates (including Otto Hahn, who'd go on to discover nuclear fission and give us atomic bombs).

And one of the most infamous weapons was mustard gas.

But after the war, doctors noticed something weird. Soldiers who had been exposed to sulfur mustard had unusually low counts of white blood cells. Huh!

So, in 1942, two Drs at Yale, Alfred Gilman and Louis Goodman, began looking at a related chemical agent called mustine.

In 1943, mustine was given to a patient dying of lymphoma. To their astonishment, the patient’s tumours shrunk, only to return when treatment was stopped.

Thanks to mustard gas, the doctors had just discovered chemotherapy.

Without that bird poo, Haber wouldn't have been famous, wouldn't have started chemical weapons, and chemotherapy wouldn't have been found.

Which goes to show how complex science really is! Anyone who says chemical warfare is *solely* evil is telling porkies.

And YES, in conclusion, that means one pile of bird shit:
* Landlocked Bolivia
* Saved 1/2 the world's population 100yrs before Avengers Endgame
* Gave the guy who started chemical weapons his big break
* Led to an early form of chemotherapy.

All thanks to chemistry.