LINDA, IN THERAPY, WITH SOMEONE'S BABY
They used to
make gin in the bathtub, and now lots of people make beer in the garage and/or
wine in the cellar. So, why not biopharmaceuticals
on the kitchen table?
Well, some
smart folks from MIT have done just that.
They have designed and assembled a three-stage process than can produce what you might call “small-batch” drugs.
They have tested it on several well-known concoctions, and found that it
turns out the real thing very quickly and, I would guess, relatively
economically. The hope is that these
units, which eventually may be miniaturized to a kit about the size of a standard ink-jet
printer, can be used by researchers to produce experimental drugs, as well as
by hospitals to create remedies for rare conditions. It seems to me that it might also bring down
the price if pharmaceuticals in general, but - don’t hold your breath.
This is all
well and good, but I can foresee problems.
For instance, the first drug the MIT team produced using their kitchen-table
still was human growth hormone (hGH).
hGH has many beneficial applications, but isn’t it also a banned
substance used by cheating athletes? If
you can turn it out in quantity using a gadget that can be hidden in the attic,
the game is up. You will know there is a
problem when slender lasses from Lithuania start flinging the shot over 85 ft.!
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