Patience is bitter, its fruit is sweet.

Utterly remarkable! Did you see this? Chimpanzees in West Africa have been observed making spears from tree branches and using them to hunt prey (Pruetz 2007). It’s the first time anyone has documented the routine production and use of deadly weapons by a creature other than a human being. That’s page 1 news in my book. MICHAEL D. DALZELL Iowa State University researcher Jill Pruetz and her colleagues spent years gaining the chimpanzees’ trust, eventually becoming privy to their hunting rituals. The primates peel back the bark of a branch, sharpen one end, grasp it in what Pruetz calls a “power grip,” and then poke it into darkened tree hollows where bush babies live. Then they pull the stick out and taste the end to see if they were successful. Pruetz told the Washington Post the forcefulness of the jabbing was “kind of scary” and reminded her of the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitch-cock’s Psycho. What does this teach us about evolution? Well, for one thing, it was the females who made the weapons and used them, lending credence to the suggestion that females deserve more credit as creative problem solvers. My wife thought that was page 1 news. To me, it demonstrates an extraordinary thought process that until now was believed to be exclusively human. Imagine... plotting to kill! Not just monkey-see, monkey-do, but monkey (OK, primate) actually follows concrete steps to plan and execute (no pun intended). What it also tells me is how rich the course of scientific discovery can be, and how nature will reveal herself to us if we give her the time and patience to do so. Often, patience involves bitter failures, but the results can be sweet indeed. Two articles about drug development in this month’s issue of provide timely examples. As Bob Carlson, MHA, reports, the emergence of aptamers may give monoclonal antibodies a run for their money — literally — doing what an antibody can do for a fraction of the cost. A separate story by Lola Butcher suggests that we might be edging closer to breakthroughs in HIV treatment — not cures, but therapeutic pathways that could lead to dramatic quality-of-life improvements for people who live with the virus that causes AIDS. Cures may come later, but for now we’ll take what science gives us and patiently work with nature to reveal herself some more.