Ghost Stories: Sciencey Tales of Unforeseen Consequences... Episode 1 - A Gel Capsule's Invisible Enemy

Ever seen supercooled water suddenly freeze?

Or sourdough rise from just a “starter”?

That same kind of chain reaction once wrecked a miracle HIV drug.
Science story time 🧪👇

In the late ’90s, a gel version of Ritonavir—a life-saving HIV medication—spontaneously converted into a more stable crystal form.
It became a paste full of tiny solid shards. (Ostwald’s Rule, if you're curious.)

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The problem?
The new form didn’t dissolve in water—so it couldn’t be absorbed in the bloodstream.
The drug simply stopped working.

Even weirder: after U.S. scientists visited a still-uncontaminated manufacturing plant in Italy...
The same transformation occurred there too.

What?! How?!
It's likely a submicroscopic "seed" of the new crystal structure—possibly carried on their clothing.
Like a small disturbance to the bottle of supercooled water spontaneously creating a block of ice.

The drug was pulled. Hundreds of millions were lost.
Eventually, scientists reformulated it.
But it took years—all because of a crystal form that nobody saw coming.

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Science is full of ghost stories like this.
This is just one in a series of posts exploring the space where often seemingly small factors or chain reactions led to significant, sometimes catastrophic, consequences.