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Wednesday, May 20th, 2015

‘Home-brewed Morphine’ Made Possible

Author:     James Gallagher
Source:     BBC News (U.K.)
Publication Date:     19 May 2015
 Link: ‘Home-brewed Morphine’ Made Possible
Stephan:   This is a game changer. If heroin can be brewed like beer, it will be. There will be no way to control this, and this in an already rising trend of opiate drug use.  So we stand at a cross roads. We can continue the losing model we have followed for decades, an approach that is oh so profitable for corporations, law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, everyone whose budget lives on drugs, which has proven to be an an abject failure as social policy. Or we can take an entirely new compassionate and life-affirming tack, and recognize that drugs like heroin are taken by people who have issues that are so painful, drugs are the only thing offering surcease. That's the problem, not the drugs.

Opium will soon be able to be brewed

Until now the only way to get morophine was opium poppies

Scientists have figured out how to brew morphine using the same kit used to make beer at home.

They have genetically modified yeast to perform the complicated chemistry needed to convert sugar to morphine. The findings, published in Nature Chemical Biology, raise promise for medicine but also concerns about “home-brewed” illegal drugs. Experts have called for tight control of organisms genetically modified to produce narcotics.

Brewing bad

If you brew beer at home, then you are relying on microscopic yeast that turns sugars into alcohol. But by borrowing DNA from plants, scientists have been genetically engineering yeasts that can perform each of the steps needed to convert sugar into morphine.

One stage of the process – the production of an intermediary chemical called reticuline – had been a stumbling block. That has been solved by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, […]

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