Frog Cells Turned Drug Detectors

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Saw on Webdrift that New Scientist has an article on color-changing frog cells and that they could be used to drug test athletes. Apparently the cells are particularly good at detecting opiate drugs, and you don't even have to know which one you're testing for!"

Performance Enhancing Drugs?

[filtrs]

I'm not a doctor or a pharmacologist, but since when have opiates been a performance-enhancing drug? The article seems to make a leap from catching cheaters in sporting events to testing for opiates. I didn't see anything connecting the two. The only point it made was that opiates can be used in rehab, which is obvious, but I've never heard of someone gaining a competitive edge by being smacked out on morphine.

OK, so Brett Favre had a good season while high on hydrocodone, but I doubt you'll see many players from other sports where speed, agility and mental clarity are more important than avoiding pain using these drugs.

Re:Performance Enhancing Drugs?

[Nyphur]

I concur. The article wasn't given much thought.

The one thing I have to say in the writer's defence is that opiates can be used to dull the pain caused by lactic acids resulting from anaerobic respiration, such as pushing yourself harder than your oxygen supply will allow, or doing the 100m (done anaerobically) without having to think about the pain which will come at the end. Admittedly, 100m runners don't actually think of the pain at all because of their mental training, but some events would be affected by any lack of pain.

Why opiates?

[RevAaron]

Why have the cells testing for opiates? Opiates are very easy to detect in the blood as it is. And furthermore, who cares of an athlete uses an opiate? It would be 'performance enhancing' for any sport other than sitting-around-and-ircing, which AFAIK, is still not an olympic sport (DAMN THEM! perhaps we should buy the OC off?)

poppy seeds

[evenprime]

I don't like the idea of testing people for opiates without knowing *which* opiates you are testing for. Prescription medication or poppy seed bagels could be a major problem if this becomes a widely used testing method.

Hopefully they will only use this as a primary test, and use more discriminating tests to distinguish *which* opiates are present in people who test positive

Re:poppy seeds

[moncyb]

Yes, I agree. I have never taken any illegal drugs in my life, but when I go in for a Nazi drug test, I am always worry whether or not it'll be a false postive and I'll be labeled a drug attic.

When will the idiots realize that hiring some nimrod to pour chemicals (and now frog cells) onto people's piss won't solve any social problems! Yeah, it may keep a few atheletes from competing or some crack addicts from using heavy machinery, but how many innocent people's lives have been ruined? The real abusers find ways to bypass the tests anyway...

Re:poppy seeds

[easter1916]

Drug "attic"? Are you sure you aren't already a drug addict?

Re:poppy seeds

[moncyb]

Yeah yeah. I attended school in the US pwublick educayshonel swysshem. So kill me.

Strange Emphasis

[Kotetsu]

The last paragraph of the article says:

The sensor has other uses too. Since it changes colour with any chemical that acts like an opiate, it could be used to screen chemical compounds for useful opiate drugs, says Bayley.

I would have thought that this was more valuable to society - the ability to rapidly screen thousands of compounds for potential activity of a specific type. The process sounds like it may lend itself to similar screening of compounds of other types which bind to cell membrane receptors. But these researchers apparent first thought was about how they could use it to identify evil drug abusers, including people abusing something never before seen which has the same effects. Maybe there's more money in helping find drug abusers.

Frog cells?

[Lazyhound]

Is anyone else reminded of Jurassic Park?