Genetically Engineered Yeast Makes It Possible To Brew Morphine 333
PvtVoid writes: The New York times reports that newly developed yeast strains will soon make it possible to create morphine from fermentation of sugar. While no one has claimed to make morphine in lab from scratch yet, concerns are already being raised about potential abuse. According to the Times article: "This rapid progress in synthetic biology has set off a debate about how — and whether — to regulate it. Dr. Oye and other experts said this week in a commentary in Nature Chemical Biology that drug-regulatory authorities are ill prepared to control a process that will benefit the heroin trade much more than the prescription painkiller industry. The world should take steps to head that off, they argue, by locking up the bioengineered yeast strains and restricting access to the DNA that would let drug cartels reproduce them.
Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget morphine - could I just get a way to simply, legally obtain sudafed without rigamarole at the pharmacy?
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Funny)
We KNOW what your up too, Pablo Escapebar! The cops are on their way to your drug lab to confiscate your chems, inhalers, and any other paraphernalia like shaving razor replacement packs and Q-tips. The jig is UP!
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Interesting)
Forget morphine - could I just get a way to simply, legally obtain sudafed without rigamarole at the pharmacy?
I recall someone posted the directions for how to make sudafed from crystal meth. Being as the latter is easier to buy than the former, you could start with that. For obvious reasons I'm not going to search for that method myself.
I don't recall if you get drain cleaner back out of it or not, though.
Here you go.... (Score:5, Informative)
heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
Fun fact: the word is "rigmarole [merriam-webster.com]," not "rigamarole."
I know nobody cares. Further evidence for this: nearly everyone gets that wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It does, actually. In fact, the shifting spelling of that word has already entered the spelling that you don't like into the dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigamarole
Definition of RIGAMAROLE: variant of rigmarole
Re: (Score:3)
It's widely enough used that it's listed as a variant in the link the OP gave.
That said, you're spot on about teleporters.
I've been saying Kirk et al were a bunch of zombies for decades.
Triticum aestivum spelta (Score:5, Interesting)
Fun fact: Spelt (Triticum aestivum spelta) [wikipedia.org] is a subspecies of wheat that has become more popular over the past couple decades for needing fewer fertilizers than common wheat. Thus "spelled" has come to be spelled "spelled" to distinguish it from spelt.
And America south of 49 degrees north latitude has been not an English colony for nearly 240 years.
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The last time I saw the word "smelt" outside of metallurgy was in The Hobbit.
The English language has been losing its grammatical nuances for a long time, which is why we don't wear shoon on our feet anymore. Although I suspect that the sheer weight of so many non-native English speakers participating these days has had an accelerating effect.
Britain will just have to console itself with the fact that Americans are giving up on "gray" in favor of "gree", I mean, "grey".
But that's a horse of another colour.
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Really? We have a small oily fish by that name. Also known to pioneers as a Candlefish, because you could catch them by the bucketfull, smoke them, and either eat them or actually *use them as candles* in your log cabin for months after.
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Fun fact: Spelt (Triticum aestivum spelta) [wikipedia.org] is a subspecies of wheat that has become more popular over the past couple decades for needing fewer fertilizers than common wheat. Thus "spelled" has come to be spelled "spelled" to distinguish it from spelt.
And America south of 49 degrees north latitude has been not an English colony for nearly 240 years.
As I understand it Spelt is wheat's wild ancestor. Now that its being cultivated there will probably be selective pressure through that process turning in to something else. Perhaps we could call the new stuff 'Spelled'
But on a very serious note: How long before these new strains of yeast become the dominant strains? It sounds like Ergot [wikipedia.org] all over again, with a new twist. In the middle ages a fungus called Ergot got into Rye grain stores causing trip-out LSD like effects. Folks had visions, heard the voice
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And America south of 49 degrees north latitude has been not an English colony for nearly 240 years.
What!? Why was I not told of this?
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Spelling comes from wheat? Learn something new every day.
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Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Fun fact: English is not a dead language. Proper usage shifts over time.
Uh, proper usage? Of the word rigmarole?
You mean when we stopped calling it balderdash because it was too old-fashioned, or when we stopped calling it a clusterfuck due to the overly protective censors?
Bullshit words deserve their ongoing confusion, and belong in the Urban Dictionary and not much further.
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
Pseudoephederine is already produced from yeast.
Of course, if it becomes cheaper to produce opiates from yeast than from current processes, trying to keep the yeasts secret or locked up will be futile. The stuff reproduces itself; all it takes is one well-bribed or entrepreneurial employee.
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
Whole new angle on home-brewing and probably a heck of a lot less obvious than a field of poppies growing on your property
I thought that the development of coal-tar based opioid synthesis processes in the US was supposed to support the wholesale eradication of poppies and black market production of opium and heroin.
That obviously failed because farmers want the income, so in the EU they allow farmers to grow poppies, then purchase the entire crop in bulk for use in their pharmaceutical processes. This allows the farmers to get the income and reduces the opiates in the black market
When will the US stop deluding itself and simply purchase bulk poppies from farmers in Central and South America who simply want a source of income? This will reduce the number of people who trade in the black market and reduce the opium available for heroin production
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Because then the CIA would have no source of 'black' income and means to bribe officials/governments with...
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
all it takes is one well-bribed or entrepreneurial employee.
Or one employee that believes in personal freedom, and also realizes that yeast produced opiates will shut down the cartels, hurt the Taliban, reduce violence, and pretty much make the world a better place ... unless you are either a criminal or a cop.
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Or one employee that believes in personal freedom, and also realizes that yeast produced opiates will shut down the cartels, hurt the Taliban, reduce violence, and pretty much make the world a better place ... unless you are either a criminal or a cop.
Unless, of course, the government goes on a pogrom against any large scale yeast operation, in which case only organizations with the resources to operate one illicitly will be able to benefit: the cartels and the Taliban.
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Or one employee that believes in personal freedom, and also realizes that yeast produced opiates will shut down the cartels, hurt the Taliban, reduce violence, and pretty much make the world a better place ... unless you are either a criminal or a cop.
Unless, of course, the government goes on a pogrom against any large scale yeast operation, in which case only organizations with the resources to operate one illicitly will be able to benefit: the cartels and the Taliban.
Oh the humanity, Budweiser and Miller breweries shut down by the feds.
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Oh the humanity, Budweiser and Miller breweries shut down by the feds.
It happened a century ago.
Re: Sudafed (Score:5, Funny)
Budweiser/Miller make beer? With yeast? I always thought they made it with water flavored with leftover hops from a real brewery.
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I'd be curious, then, to know your explanation why the US hops farmers all got screwed when AB and InBev consolidated? AB had been propping up the farmers by purchasing hops even when they didn't need them and stockpiling the reserves. InBev came in and saw a chance to save a bunch of money by using the stockpile, causing farmers to go out of business.
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Unless, of course, the government goes on a pogrom against any large scale yeast operation, in which case only organizations with the resources to operate one illicitly will be able to benefit: the cartels and the Taliban.
The only "resources" needed to grow yeast are a container, a loose fitting lid, and some way to keep it warm (a bowl of warm water works well). I know this because I make my own pizza dough.
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
Further complication include issues with production of the new substance possibly interfering with the lifecycle of the host itself. (That's the yeast if anyone didn't get that.) And let's not forget the separation and purification of the desired product.
You do know that they use microbes to make a number of different things, such as human insulin and interferon? Just look up some of the history of those developments, and you'll get a hint of some possible difficulties. Besides, there was a market for large quantities of cheap human insulin & interferon, while the previous methods of production were horribly inefficient and could never even come close to the demand.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the criminal cartels would be opposed to this technology because it would be more expensive to the them to set up, would require workers of a higher skill & training, would cut out entire chunks of their existing structure, and would be easily capable of flooding the market and suppressing prices.
Besides, other than banning the opiate producing strain, which only takes one leak to effectively neutralize that ban, what are you going to do? Ban genetically altered strains of microbes, and tobacco? Sorry, but I'd rather shoot the asshole that tries to do that, my life depends on one of those products, and so do a LOT of other peoples. Maybe you just want to ban the research into making illegal products. That would be a little better, but still futile. Eventually it will be easy enough to do that a talented high school student will someday succeed. Additionally, if it's not banned worldwide, someone will eventually do it someplace it's not illegal, and then there is the distinct possibility that it will get loose.
Of course, there is still something people are not looking at, their strain produces morphine, a controlled, but legal, substance. Yeah, it can be turned into heroin, but so can all the legal morphine which is usually made from FLOWERS that people grow! It's used in medicine. I was once in a hospital ward and I was the only patient not receiving morphine. (The reason for that doesn't matter.) So there IS a legal trade in the product produced by that yeast, but because it can be used to make an illegal one, some people want to ban it. You know, that's not a wise path to tread upon. If something can be banned because something illegal can be made from/with it, how long until everything is banned? You know politicians, give them an inch, and they'll run you over with your own vehicle and drag you a mile down the road.
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Interesting)
Or worse, this shit becomes like wild yeast and the next time I brew beer I have to worry about creating a drink full of dope instead of just worrying a wild fermentation might just make it taste bad.
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and the next time I brew beer I have to worry about creating a drink full of dope
You mean you accidentally brew super beer
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Next Australians will be stopped at airport security for smuggling.
Security Goon: "We detected a suspicious dark slurry in your luggage"
Bloke: "Strewth mate, I'm not stupid enough to bring drugs into a country, with the tragic deaths of Chan and Sukumaran..."
SG: "The canister gave off a salty odour. We fed a sample to our narcotics canine Charlie, who is now convulsing on the floor"
Bloke: "Sorry um that's just my Vegemite. I have it on toast for breakfast"
SG: "You eat that stuff? Surely not!"
Bloke: "Honest
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Actually it would probably be considered closer to laudanum than beer.
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We had this "better world" 130ish years ago. It was not better, addicts were becoming a huge problem for the society - the actual reason drugs became illegal. And yes, there still was a war in Afghanistan.
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We had this "better world" 130ish years ago. It was not better, addicts were becoming a huge problem for the society - the actual reason drugs became illegal. And yes, there still was a war in Afghanistan.
Yes, but 130 years ago we were still in an "all hands on deck" global economy. We now have the ability to produce all the things that the world needs or wants with far less than 100% of the population. The global economy no longer needs a significant portion of the population to participate in the economy. How do you solve that? Having a class of people who do nothing but drugs all day long may actually be somewhat helpful in solving the problem of what to do with all the people that society doesn't ne
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone should read history.
Drug laws in the US are less than 100 years old. It was the late 1930's for most of them. I would suggest you read the arguments in congress while debating the law. It seems that the group FOR the law was arguing that these substances empowered the lesser races. (Im making it polite and not using the slang they used)
Drug laws in the US had more to due with racial control than they did with helping the addicts.
Just to make a point stoners are considered "lazy, irresponsible, thieves, untrustworthy, etc" All the same stereotypes used to describe blacks in the 30's, 40's, and 50's.
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Interesting)
The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed in 1914, but the impetus started closer to 1901.
While it's a common theme in anti-drug control rhetoric to blame racism for drug bans, I think the race/drug tie-in is possibly something that happened later and not a prime mover for the origin of drug controls. I think once drugs were already illegal, the laws were adjusted in ways that made them more effective tools to use against people deemed undesirable.
Personally I think the laws against drug use were probably at least as much motivated by industrialists who saw drug use as an obstacle in using low-skilled poor people in the new mass-production factories. Prior to the assembly line, I think a fair amount of industrial work was little more than scaling up the work of skilled artisans, people who probably had internalized a certain amount of self-discipline and work ethic. They were probably also drunks, too, but by virtue of their holding a skilled trade they were sort of self-selected into the group of people who could more or less hold their liquor.
Once you got the assembly line and mass production involved, the growth in industrial employment required large workforces of unskilled workers from the lower classes of society, a demographic at the time that came from cultures where alcohol use was high and who probably used drugs and alcohol more like a crude anti-depressant tonic against the fairly harsh standard of living of being poor in the late 19th century.
But you can't build an industrial empire with people who see a subsistence living under the influence as more desirable than industrial wage slavery, so better to criminalize their substance use and make work a slightly more palatable option than prison.
It was really no different for the Harrison Act -- the impetus was some Protestant religious figure appalled with opium-consuming native savages in the Philippines who knew that he wasn't going to convert them into good little Protestants if chasing the dragon and lying in the sun was an alternative.
I think a lot of the opposition to marijuana legalization really boils down to this -- a lot of moral cluckers who worry that if Johnny smokes pot, he won't be enthusiastic about going $150.000 in debt for a college degree and buying a house in the suburbs -- he'll think that it'd make much more sense to, in the words of Grandmaster Flash, "...learn to smoke reefer and be a street sweeper."
Society *needs* bodies on the treadmill to keep it going. People who use substances tend to give a lot less of a shit about the treadmill.
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Re:Sudafed (Score:4, Interesting)
The US was founded as a republic, a structure designed solely to protect & defend the rights of the people.
Today, this organization is used to limit and suppress the rights of the people through intimidation and force.
Society does NOT need bodies on a treadmill unless you're using society as a massive global offensive weapon.
Most working individuals within a "modern" society DO NOT PRODUCE A PHYSICAL PRODUCT.
"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller
Re:Sudafed (Score:5, Informative)
The story is deeper than that. The Chinese liked to get paid in silver for their products (tea, porcelain, silk). Unfortunately silver is what the British money was made of (the pound sterling meant a pound of sterling silver = 92.5% pure). So it was creating a currency shortage. Britain thus wanted a product to balance trade and stop the silver outflow. Opium was that product.
The Chinese didn't want their people hooked on Opium, so they made it illegal. British trading companies that supplied the opium (it was grown in India at the time) formed a cartel to bring it in illegally, thus becoming the first drug cartel. When their people got arrested and goods seized, the British government forced China to submit in what is known as the Opium Wars. They acquired Hong Kong in the process. Later, the now legalized trading companies needed financing for the ships to deliver the expanded opium trade. So they founded the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company. Now known as HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, it is no stranger to laundering money for cartels, because it was*founded* by drug cartel members. To this day they print paper bank notes (currency) for Hong Kong. This makes money laundering really easy, because they can give you a suitcase of brand new money, with no traceable history.
Re: Sudafed (Score:5, Insightful)
And the products which replaced it are useless. I notice the party of small government has yet to get the government out if that part of our lives. The whole behind the counter/mandatory ID thing is one of the most intrusive, idiotic things in the history of this country and a testament to the social, economic, and freedom disaster that is the war on drugs. End it.
As to this situation, how about we, you know, stop locking people up for wanting to briefly escape the miserable reality we force on too many and start offering proper treatment (including proper pain treatment where applicable) to those who need it? Addiction is no joke, but the crimes that go with it are largely the government's creation. They empower these drug dealers the same way they empowered gangs during prohibition. In a way they deserve each other, but we all end up paying for it.
Re: Sudafed (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like we're incapable of learning from our mistakes and just keep repeating them over an over endlessly. How I wish people could just quit saying "they should make a law." That horrible, ignorant phrase has caused more harm than any other.
Taliban tally... (Score:5, Funny)
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Just like in the US. Swap out the old wife for the young one.
Major changes in many countries (Score:4, Interesting)
If we eliminated the need to grow opium, a some countries would find their economies transformed. Imagine Afghanistan without opium financing various criminal factions. We just need to figure out how to make cocaine without coca, and Middle America would be changed too.
Of course that relies on the secret getting out. Otherwise we are still stuck with the morass of violent crime.
Re:Major changes in many countries (Score:4, Insightful)
We already did eliminate the need to grow opium and all opioids used in American pharmaceuticals come from a coal-tar process.
This was supposed to bring about the end of illegal opium and heroin, but has not had the effect because it is very hard to get people to stop growing a plant that they can get paid lots of money for.
Countries like Hungary allow farmers to grow a limited amount of poppies, which are purchased for use in the European pharma industry. This allows the farmers to make money and keeps it from becoming heroin
There is no reason to believe that creating new ways to synthesize opioids will reduce the growing of poppies
Re:Major changes in many countries (Score:5, Insightful)
There has been practically zero progress on handling the demand side. Doing so would require a radical rethink of how Western countries deal with drugs and drug addiction. This is not likely to happen in the next 20 years at least, and it is stupid to condemn other countries to 20 more years of violence by keeping our focus on limiting supply.
Re:Major changes in many countries (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the one effective treatment for opioid addiction is Ibogaine, and medical study or application of it in America is illegal because it is a schedule 1 drug
Yippee for 'Merica shooting itself in the foot for over 200 years
Re:Major changes in many countries (Score:5, Insightful)
There has been practically zero progress on handling the demand side. Doing so would require a radical rethink of how Western countries deal with drugs and drug addiction. This is not likely to happen in the next 20 years at least, and it is stupid to condemn other countries to 20 more years of violence by keeping our focus on limiting supply.
In Canada (at least in Sydney, Nova Scotia), addicts get their fix right at the hospital. For free.
It seems stupid at first, but it is extremely effective in reducing all kinds of crime related to drugs and addiction. Nobody there is breaking into houses or summer cabins looking for painkillers or goods to pawn. Nobody is stealing car stereos and pawning them to finance their habit. The number of people mixing dangerous chemicals in their house or garage is reduced. Why bother with all that when you just go to the hospital and get your legal high for free? Product originating from Taliban-controlled areas can't compete with free.
If Marijuana is more your style, they have medical marijuana laws and lax enforcement of recreational use. The end result is that local people grow it in their basements, cutting out any foreign supplier or middlemen. Marijuana isn't free, but I have yet to hear of any case where someone broke the law in order to get money to buy weed.
Re:Major changes in many countries (Score:5, Insightful)
oh, I dunno...figuring out how to not ensure demand stays at 100%.
An obvious first step is to start treating addiction as a medical problem rather than as a criminal problem. Maybe we should spend less on police and prison guards, and more on doctors and nurses.
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How about we work on prevention as well.
Re:Major changes in many countries (Score:5, Insightful)
You are playing word games
An addict can either pay for heroin, or pay for a substitute like methadone (assuming that they want to get off of heroin)
If they decide to use heroin for their addiction, then they are criminals because there is no legal way to get heroin in America.
This is very expensive and in many cases requires that they either steal from others, or sell heroin themselves. These are both criminal activities
We have a lot of 'prevention' activities going on right now. They seem to be ineffective. One big problem with them is that they have created a large blackmarket infrastructure that is particularly good at finding and supplying new customers.
Portugal has decriminalized all drugs and as a result reduced the number of new users, which is to say that decriminalization is the path to prevention
Try selling that idea in America
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Possession of heroin is a felony
The theory is that having a felony for possession allows the police to pressure the defendant into turning over their supplier
The theory goes onto suggest that they can use this technique to gain knowledge of and arrest the kingpins of the drug syndicate
This has not been demonstrated in reality where most of the people serving time for drug possession are wither users or low level stooges used to transport the products
Yeah good luck with that! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think its inevitable that the drug cartels will find a way to get this. The answer to the drug problem is legalisation and regulation, treat addiction as the disease it is!
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I think its inevitable that the drug cartels will find a way to get this.
When this gets out, the cartels will be out of business. No one has a greater interest in keeping these yeast locked up.
The answer to the drug problem is legalisation and regulation
That would also put the cartels out of business.
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If, by drug cartels, you mean Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis, then yes, they will find a way to get this.
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Interesting...
Drug cartels make money because drugs are illegal
Therefore, politicians that work to keep drugs illegal are enabling drug cartels to make money
Would it be going too far to wonder if the drug cartels would bother to support the election of politicians who work to keep drugs illegal?
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Drug cartels make money because drugs are illegal
No, drugs are regulated.
After a whole bunch of deaths, addictions, permanent damage, and otherwise destroyed lives, laws regulating medicine were established to help protect people both from scammers and also from their own ignorance. Back in the late 1800's morphine was available to anyone and was widely abused, then in 1895 Bayer launched heroin as a less addictive substitute sold directly to the public, only to have it lead to even more drug abuse problems. Drug stores were not regulated and would freq
Reshape prohibition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Reshape prohibition (Score:2)
Or the US government could suddenly declare that genetic engineering is subject to DEA oversight, subjecting that particular field to a dark age.
Which given the US government's stupidly overzealous substance control laws, it's not far removed from being a reality.
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Re: Reshape prohibition (Score:4, Insightful)
Who gives @#$*( if people start brewing narcotics at home.
The same people who take the time to airbrush and blur out a boob [jezebel.com] on a Picasso, that's who. The best part is this kind of person thinks it is doing the world a favor.
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The health care industry was unregulated until about the 20's. So many people died that the FDA and a host of health and sanitation laws were pass. Then the death rate started to drop.
People forget that for a long time going to a hospital actually increased your odds of dying.
Re: Reshape prohibition (Score:5, Funny)
Most people still die in hospitals. Avoid them if you can.
Yeah, good luck with that (Score:2)
The world should take steps to head that off, they argue, by locking up the bioengineered yeast strains and restricting access to the DNA that would let drug cartels reproduce them
How would they restrict them to something that someone with enough money couldn't buy their way around? Being as the drug cartels have no shortage of money, it seems like a pointless move.
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How would they restrict them to something that someone with enough money couldn't buy their way around?
Now that it's known to be possible, the drug cartels don't even need to buy or steal the recipe. If necessary, they could just hire some genetic engineers to independently re-discover how to do it.
They can't stop tons of heroin (Score:3, Insightful)
But they can prevent even a few spores from getting into the hands of the cartels.
Truthfully it would be the cartels who would fight a desperate drug war to keep this production democratizing yeast out of the hands of home brew street dealers and junkies killing off their trillion dollar middleman industry and their other side of the drug war profits with it.
This is dangerous as it would take all of the violence and money form the heroin trade.
Fan-tastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
That'll be fun.
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How? (Score:3)
I'm not sure how they hope to contain such a yeast strain. Sure, they can lock it up *now*, but for how long will that last? It'll only take a single corrupt employee, or group of employees, being offered more money than they could ever hope to make in several lifetimes. Then it's out in the wild. Unless they plan on building in some kind of critical vulnerability in the strain, any home brewer can replicate the yeast with ease. Even if they do build in a critical vulnerability, it'll be an "addon" and thus, possible to disable.
I foresee another "War on Drugs" coming, where the objective in unobtainable. Fortunately after the first round of funding, the objective becomes irrelevant ( of course, the cynic in me is YELLING that the objective IS the funding..but I digress ).
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Imagine auto-brewery syndrome with this... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system."
Now imagine this with a yeast that produces morphine...
Re:Imagine auto-brewery syndrome with this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now imagine this with a yeast that produces morphine...
Or just a standard yeast infection...
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Why fight it? (Score:4, Funny)
Destroy the cartels (Score:5, Interesting)
Just wait for it... (Score:3)
A lot of people would worry: (Score:2)
If it works out and is economical compared to the old methods (and that's a heck of a big "if"):
There are a lot of illegal opium poppy growing operations that would have to drop their prices, use other means (killing those running brewing operations) or go out of business.
I can't say I'll shed many tears for some of the leaders of those groups.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What can you do about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people who abuse drugs do so because their lives suck. Maybe they don't care about their long term health because they have no hope for the future and don't care if it kills them. Efforts to penalize them for using drugs simply makes their lives suck more and their future even more hopeless.
Finally, an end to the War on Drugs (Score:3)
There's already a drug with many harmful effects that is widely abused, that was legally (as in, the Constitution was modified) banned, and is made by yeast.
All your genes are belong to us! (Score:4, Insightful)
One problem there - Humans contain the DNA for producing morphine. It works so well precisely because out body already uses it to regulate our natural pain response.
Politicians... (Score:2)
Given the amount of sense I've come to expect from regulators, I'm sure sugar is about to become a controlled substance...
Surprised it has taken this long (Score:2)
"Restricting Access to DNA" R.O.F.L. (Score:3)
You want yeast DNA?
Lick your hand.
Lick your feet.
Lick your *beep*.
And the best thing D.N.A. is a puzzle, but a very logical one.
When you have watched bio engineering students doing their *basic* experiments with basic yeast you will be astonished what they can achieve by just playing around.
DNA is a perfect self assembling puzzle you will quickly see how things work out.
Basically what I want to lay out is that there is not just even the slightest chance of succeeding to conceal that information from drug makers, because they will find out otherwise because in DNA if it works .. you can redo steps or start variations and your own research.
So yes, the cartels will find a way and hey .. they won the war on drugs haven't they?
Also in case genetic engineering is too complex there is still Afghanistan.
1.) So you have many (and I mean many) "underpaid" bio engineering students.
2.) Decent equipment makes everything easier, but you can built that equipment, that knowledge cannot be subdued(it's too widespread)
3.) You have "fungus"(yeast) DNA everywhere
4.) Variations - If you want to find an unknown strain .. go to a brothel, public toilet, the more cultures clash .. the more variations you will find in one spot.
5.) you have scientific journals (and you also have a black list of crap journals)
6.) Money = Resources (Hey we are talking here about drug cartels that have no problem to just loose cocain worth being 200 mUSD)
7.) We have a black pharma market that produces counterfight - and at a 50% chance high quality - drugs for old mens problems from industrial scale made basic chemicals. And nobody can stop them - or wants to.
I can't wait for Anheuser-Busch gets ahold of this (Score:2)
But...it's GMO! (Score:3)
No self-respecting drug addict would use franken-morphine!
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No, no, no! This time it will be Pasteur!
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You betcha, just ask Freeway Ricky Ross...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%... [wikipedia.org]
about the conduit that he was apart of between Central America and the mean streets of LA as part of the Iran Contra fiasco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Fascinating
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Do a little reading on Iran-Contra and the role drug money played. See also how the same approach was used to fund an illegal war in Laos by the CIA, Panama, Mexico and a host of others.
Here's a starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
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How do you stop people from making sour dough? Yeast is literally everywhere...
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The only thing that stops you from guzzling Laudanum is the law?
In the USA all drugs are _readily_ available to any adult that want's them. Laws mean nothing.
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Also, it takes a good guy with a yeast to stop a bad guy with a yeast.
As any baker will tell you, it often only takes a little bit of bad yeast to stop the good yeast...
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Re:the inevitable (Score:4, Informative)
Re:the inevitable (Score:4, Funny)
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We could spend one quarter of the money on treatment programs and end up with fewer drug abusers than we've managed with the "War on Drugs".
That's not how libertarians work.
It's more like:
1) Abolish laws that make drugs illegal, thus saving money on prisons and law enforcement, and lower taxes accordingly
2) Let addicted people pay for their own treatment, "entitlement" and whatnot
3) Wealthy Americans install better security or live in gated communities, paid for by the savings in taxes
4) Who cares about everyone else? If they were important, they'd have money.
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1) Your idea of a republic doesn't resemble any actual government in the world. Idealism is nice, I suppose, but that's just not the way things work. Also, I've met quite a few libertarians who believe (as did pre-civil war Democrats) that the government shouldn't be responsible for public infrastructure, such as roads. The free market - that magic bullet that fixes everything - will take care of it.
2) I was not arguing that the government would force addicts to seek treatment, only that libertarians wo