Scientific research has made leaps and bounds in modern medicine. Recently scientists have discovered the genetic code of the opium poppy plant. For ages the opium poppy has been known and used for it’s medicinal qualities but the way that the opium poppy was able to make codeine had remained inexplicable to scientists until now. The enzymes and genetic code of the poppy plant had been a mystery to scientists for years until this recent discovery. This discovery has widened the alternatives for the pharmaceutical industry to be able to make this commonly used medicine because there is a new way to make it.
Codeine is a drug that treats pain for patients in hospitals. Extracts of the opium poppy plant have long been used to make painkillers like codeine and morphine. This finding of the genetic code of the opium poppy will make it easier for scientists to make these widely used pain killers. Due to this discovery of how the enzymes work and the genetic code of the opium poppy scientists may now be able to engineer the plants that can produce morphine and codeine as well as create alternative ways to manufacture these drugs in a lab.
just think of the commercial possibilities! science in the service of venture capitalism!
Why is it that scientist are just now figuring it out when teenagers have figured out before? My son at 19 years old died of a morphine overdose from poppy seeds! He mixed poppy seeds with hot water and poof you have liquid morphine. Its all over the internet but scientist just figured it all out. Wow i guess the really smart people are a bit behind the druggys.
Ah, the active opiates are not in the seeds? It’s from milking the plant.
You can if you boil like several pounds of them to obtain trace alkaloid content. Pain staking process, but within reach for someone who really really wants to get high.
You cannot get high off of poppy seeds. Its the sap that would get you high. There has been rare occurances of getting high via poppy seeds, but most are said to be placebo and a rare occasion of sap on the seeds.
Melissa, read the article again. You obviously didn’t understand it the first time.
did you even read the fucking post? It said the GENETIC CODE of the poppy. Meaning what it came from, what in its genes allow it to produces the codeine. Of course they fucking knew how to make morphine, its been in use since the mid 1800s. Learn to read rather than try to talk shit for no reason.
great lets get everyone hooked on painkillers!!! That junk destroys lives!!!
I take morphine everyday for chronic pain due to spinal stenosis, I wonder if their discovery will lead to a form of morphine that has no withdrawal symptoms. I recently ran out of my perscription and was without it for 2 1/2 days and I’ve never been so sick in my life. That John Lennon song “Cold Turkey” doesnt even come close to how bad it is.
i doubt the powers that be will ever create a non habit forming drug if they did that they would not have us on there purse strings for the rest of our lifes. i do however sympathize with your unfortunate situation and agree that you should do what ever it takes to treat chronic pain.
Just a few more ways for the pharmaceutical companies to get the western world strung out on opiates. The cost to rehab all the addicts created will be funded by you and I “Joe Taxpayer”. We have all seen time and time again how much money the addict will have left when they finally wash up in an emergency room. What will these greed driven drug dealers (oops i mean our fine pharmaceutical companies) think of next.
How does one get from reserchers mapping the genetic code of the opium poppy to venture science in the service of capitalism, how scientists are dumber than drug addicts and everyone will be hooked on painkillers?
Do you ever examine your own thought processes? Because your irrational conclusions have nothing to do with what is printed in the article.
Interesting. They can now engineer a plant which will prduce opium alkaloids. It seems that poppies already do that.
Having this information will have many positive effects:
(i) being able to modify the structure of the drug to be more effective and with no addiction, withdrawl
(ii) be able to produce the drug in bacteria or yeast that would produce more drug in one vat than hectares of poppies, requiring less time, less resources = cheaper to us and our drug plans
As for addiction and pharma, then by the same token we should be closing all bars, liquor stores and distilleries since THEY are causing us to be alcoholics, costing taxpayers for re-hab, deaths due to drunken driving, alcohol related domestic and child abuse, etc.
Yup, let’s just blame everyone else and not take responsibility for ourselves. Many things can be used to our benefit or detriment.
Has anyone thought that maybe they could now create a painkiller with less or no addictive properties? Has anyone thought that maybe they can produce painkillers that will be much lower in cost and thus lower the price of health care to some degree. As someone who was once addicted to opiates while waiting 3 years for back surgery, these ideas kind of seem pretty good to me.
The leap from scientists Peter and Jillian to venture capitalists/big pharma is pretty big! Perhaps reading some more about the actual research or watching the video on the ucalgary website would be informative.
Try ucalgary(dot)ca/news/utoday/march15-2010/painkillers
What about the peace aspect? If we are at war for oil and opium (and don’t think we aren’t government is involved in drugs big time and we need the poppy(papaver somiferum)to make all sorts of drugs). Does that mean that are involvement in Middle East,and Asia might be altered? Also the producers ain’t ‘getting high on their own supply” as so aptly stated in Scarface. Compare the number of opiate addicts in Afghanistan compared to Canada. Canada is the higher consumer of opiates in the world. They already have their problem. Less dependence on war ridden countries might be in our advantage.