QuoteThe American bioengineer pioneering this research is Christina Smolke and she's transforming the field of drug development by creating new opioid drugs from the humble baker's yeast. Her research could transform the manufacture and supply of a major industry -- prescription painkillers. Opioid painkillers such as morphine, hydrocodone (the ingredient in the painkiller Vicodin) and thebaine (found in oxycodone and codeine), provide pain relief by switching off pain receptors in the brain. The potent drugs are derived from the sap of an opium poppy, but turning them into medicines takes time -- the timeframe from the farmer's field to pharmacy typically takes a more than a year. If made from genetically-modified yeast, however, the drugs can be created in a fraction of that time, in just three to five days. Smolke's complex technology involves engineering the yeast to include 23 genes taken from six organisms -- three types of poppy (Californian, Iranian and opium), the goldthread herb, soil bacteria and a rat.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/05/health/smolke-bioengineering-to-mass-produce-opioids/index.html
Amazing gene splicing. But what happens when that special strain of yeast gets into the environment, including in baker's yeast? Dude ... radical!
Then you drink a beer or eat a Reuben sandwich, get fired from your job for failing a random drug test for opioids and eventually end up stepping in front of a bus. But you go out with a smile on your face and don't feel a thing.
Quote from: PopeyesPappy on April 05, 2016, 01:22:49 PM
Then you drink a beer or eat a Reuben sandwich, get fired from your job for failing a random drug test for opioids and eventually end up stepping in front of a bus. But you go out with a smile on your face and don't feel a thing.
Great! Carry on then with all due haste.
If everyone got permanently shitfaced on opioids, only the straight dudes would present a problem, and they would be an inconsequential minority. The rest of us could just go to work, live our lives, and conduct business shitfaced, and it wouldn't matter. Oh, there might be some quality control issues long term, but all businesses would be about the same, so we would never realize things could be better, and we would all be happy and shitfaced together, and it would seem normal.
Yeasts are fundamental in a lot of processes including fermentation and nutrition. Brewer's yeast has been a nutritional mainstay of body builders for decades. Certain yeasts are sources of protein and B vitamin complexes. Highly useful stuff, been around forever and we are just now figuring out all the potential benefits.
Quote from: Baruch on April 05, 2016, 01:09:49 PM
Amazing gene splicing. But what happens when that special strain of yeast gets into the environment, including in baker's yeast? Dude ... radical!
If only the tricorder were real.
The only real breakthrough I'm interested in with opioids is the ability to make them non-addictive.. Opium even in raw state is cheap and easy to produce so this sounds more like a money saving step for the drug manufacturers. The year mentioned doesn't mention that a crop of opium doesn't go bad just sitting on the shelf and can be grown in mass quantities quickly and easily.
Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on August 27, 2016, 01:05:50 PM
The only real breakthrough I'm interested in with opioids is the ability to make them non-addictive.. Opium even in raw state is cheap and easy to produce so this sounds more like a money saving step for the drug manufacturers. The year mentioned doesn't mention that a crop of opium doesn't go bad just sitting on the shelf and can be grown in mass quantities quickly and easily.
Opioids are inertly addictive, I think you mean finding non-addictive analgesics.
Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on August 27, 2016, 01:05:50 PM
The only real breakthrough I'm interested in with opioids is the ability to make them non-addictive.. Opium even in raw state is cheap and easy to produce so this sounds more like a money saving step for the drug manufacturers. The year mentioned doesn't mention that a crop of opium doesn't go bad just sitting on the shelf and can be grown in mass quantities quickly and easily.
How about a droud while you wait?
Hmmmm, a major source of hard currency in certain areas of the world is opium. If the demand for that was to dry up...
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on August 27, 2016, 02:00:16 PM
Hmmmm, a major source of hard currency in certain areas of the world is opium. If the demand for that was to dry up...
I think that's probably the aim.
Quote from: SGOS on April 05, 2016, 01:55:50 PM
If everyone got permanently shitfaced on opioids, only the straight dudes would present a problem, and they would be an inconsequential minority. The rest of us could just go to work, live our lives, and conduct business shitfaced, and it wouldn't matter. Oh, there might be some quality control issues long term, but all businesses would be about the same, so we would never realize things could be better, and we would all be happy and shitfaced together, and it would seem normal.
Or we would burn out our ability to have pleasure at all.
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on August 27, 2016, 06:49:20 PM
I think that's probably the aim.
Drug companies don't like natural sources of drugs. Also governments like that, because the drug companies can be controlled, but not the natural sources. There is a weed in the Mohave as good as LSD ...
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on August 27, 2016, 06:52:26 PM
Or we would burn out our ability to have pleasure at all.
Most likely .. the impact of excess, is to require ever greater stimulant, until the subject dies or attends an AA meeting. Or Jenny Craig if eating is your sin. Human beings are designed to fulfill needs in an austere environment, like Bushmen seeking water in the Kalahari. Now that there are no Bushmen leading ancestral lives, the human race has gone completely bad.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on August 27, 2016, 02:00:16 PM
Hmmmm, a major source of hard currency in certain areas of the world is opium. If the demand for that was to dry up...
What do you have against the CIA?
Quote from: DeltaEpsilon on August 27, 2016, 12:58:25 PM
If only the tricorder were real.
The Tribbles were the result of crazy bioengineering ;-)
Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on August 27, 2016, 01:05:50 PM
The only real breakthrough I'm interested in with opioids is the ability to make them non-addictive.. Opium even in raw state is cheap and easy to produce so this sounds more like a money saving step for the drug manufacturers. The year mentioned doesn't mention that a crop of opium doesn't go bad just sitting on the shelf and can be grown in mass quantities quickly and easily.
A breakthrough like ... food that has no calories ... perfect for diabetics ... can eat all you want and not gain weight or get sick? Eat sand. It is cheap and has no calories, and I bet you can't get addicted to it. Or maybe you can have this in a parallel universe different from ours;-)
Quote from: Baruch on August 27, 2016, 08:12:44 PM
Drug companies don't like natural sources of drugs. Also governments like that, because the drug companies can be controlled, but not the natural sources. There is a weed in the Mohave as good as LSD ...
Share the tin foil, that's a good lad.
Peyote?
Quote from: Sal1981 on August 29, 2016, 06:02:00 AM
Peyote?
What about it? It is a psychedelic cactus containing mescaline. It is awesome.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on August 28, 2016, 08:45:24 PM
Share the tin foil, that's a good lad.
The government also doesn't like free money, unless it is to the buddies, and they don't let you make your own. Conspiracy theory?
Quote from: Sal1981 on August 29, 2016, 06:02:00 AM
Peyote?
Only for certain Native Americans conducting certain religious ceremonies.
Quote from: Baruch on August 29, 2016, 07:05:35 PM
Only for certain Native Americans conducting certain religious ceremonies.
Yes, I bet everyone that takes peyote are part of said groups. That's bullshit, everyone should be able to take mescaline/peyote, if Native Americans can take peyote than "Cantheists" should be able to blaze one legally. My new religion Cocainism should allow all followers to snort a line legally, otherwise it'd violate my deeply held religion. People who are religious should be taken as seriously as Flat Earth proponents.
Up in the Great White North the sex education curriculum is pending changes due to some religious parents being offended and thinking that the curriculum might offend their delusions.
Quote from: Baruch on August 29, 2016, 07:04:36 PM
The government also doesn't like free money, unless it is to the buddies, and they don't let you make your own. Conspiracy theory?
Actually, that's just economics.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on August 30, 2016, 07:09:54 AM
Actually, that's just economics.
Yes, Congressmen never coordinate ... the WH and the Congress never are in secret agreement (watch out when some legislations flies thru without debate, that is the real thing, not the circus they usually show us).
Economics is people making a living, even government people. Crime is how you get ahead in any society. Smart criminals work for the government ... then their favorite crimes are legal.
Actually it is court decisions, that allow for Native Americans to use peyote. They are lawyers ... the true master race ;-)
You know any wise guy who interested in drug dealing could be paying attention to this. Don't think there couldn't be a street version of this.
Like crystal meth only biological instead.
To me this really sounds like an excuse to be able to jack up the cost of opiate pain medication. It's dirt fucking cheap to produce as is and the only reason it costs as much as it does now is because of the black market that was created by governments..
If we can get away from 270 mg. of oxycontin a day to something that doesn't constantly threaten full respiratory arrest, that would be nice.
If they could develop pain medication with the ability of opiaiates to block pain without the near orgasmic feeling it offers to many people that would be huge.. I doubt many of you have ever shot heroin or morphine, but during withdrawal which is probably the worse feeling the body can feel without actually dying if you 'reup' it's almost instantaneous when injected and you go from feeling absolutely horrible to feeling great within seconds and that feeling is almost impossible to put into words so the average person can understand.. if they could ever eliminate that aspect of pain killers it would change medicine as we know it.
I think everyone should have to go through that at least once in their lives, but if they did 99% of the population would be hopeless addicts.. Probably not such a good idea after all..
To almost every addict I've ever known that feeling is better than sex.. People wonder why anyone would want to shoot heroin, but that's probably the biggest reason I can think of..
Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on August 31, 2016, 07:40:58 AM
If they could develop pain medication with the ability of opiaiates to block pain without the near orgasmic feeling it offers to many people that would be huge.. I doubt many of you have ever shot heroin or morphine, but during withdrawal which is probably the worse feeling the body can feel without actually dying if you 'reup' it's almost instantaneous when injected and you go from feeling absolutely horrible to feeling great within seconds and that feeling is almost impossible to put into words so the average person can understand.. if they could ever eliminate that aspect of pain killers it would change medicine as we know it.
I think everyone should have to go through that at least once in their lives, but if they did 99% of the population would be hopeless addicts.. Probably not such a good idea after all..
To almost every addict I've ever known that feeling is better than sex.. People wonder why anyone would want to shoot heroin, but that's probably the biggest reason I can think of..
In the hospital they put me on a morphine drip when I broke my leg.