What's up doc?

[Jeff Barr]

First reaction:
  I didn't know that carrots could catch Hepatitis B :-)

Second reaction:
  Who gets to decide which beneficial vaccines, booster shots,
  contraceptives, and so forth? The potential for evil and for
  disaster is really, really high here.

Jeff;

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam L. Beberg" <beberg@mithral.com>
To: <fork@xent.com>
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 11:20 AM
Subject: What's up doc?


> Hopefully we'll be seeing alot more of this kind of thing soon. The upside
> it it's easy to produce, the downside is that until someone smuggles
> out some seeds, user costs have no reason at all to drop. You can save
> a million lives a year with just a little breaking and entering - bring in
> the shadowrunners bayyybeeee...
> 
> ------------------
> 
> Carrots Modified to Contain Hepatitis B Vaccine
> Fri May 10, 5:35 PM ET
> By Hannah Cleaver
> 
> BERLIN (Reuters Health) - German scientists have grown genetically modified
> carrots that contain the vaccine against hepatitis B, which they say could
> dramatically cut the costs of preventing the disease.
> 
> Development has reached the stage where the carrots are ready to begin
> pre-clinical trials and researchers say that carrot-sourced vaccines could
> be a reality within about 3 years.
> 
> The current vaccine against hepatitis B is expensive to produce and is
> administered via three injections, which further increases costs and strains
> health services.
> 
> But now plant specialists and virologists from Giessen University in Germany
> have successfully inserted the gene for the hepatitis B surface antigen
> normally used in the vaccine into carrots, and have been growing the
> vegetables in the thousands.
> 
> "We can make 100,000 or so plants in 2 weeks and within 3 months they are
> ready to eat," said Dr. Jafargholi Imani from the research group at Giessen
> University.
> 
> He explained to Reuters Health that carrots are particularly good for this
> purpose as they are easy to grow in many different climates and soil types.
> 
> "But it's not as if we will be able to hand out packets of seeds for people
> to grow their own," he said. "These are transgenic plants and need to be
> isolated. But it does mean that the plants can be grown where the vaccine is
> needed."
> 
> Carrots are also easy to store, transport and consume raw, he said. Other
> attempts to grow transgenic drug-containing tomatoes or potatoes have
> suffered from the delicate physical nature of tomatoes and the fact that
> potatoes are difficult to eat raw, while cooking would destroy the vaccine.
> 
> Imani's team has been working on the carrots for around 2 years now and are
> about to publish their initial report in the Dutch journal Plant Cell,
> Tissue and Organ Culture. The paper has already been accepted and should
> appear this summer.
> 
> "This now needs to be tested clinically, on animals and then people, to see
> what kind of dosage will be needed and how it all works in practice," he
> said, adding that such testing would likely take at least 2 years.
> 
> "Here we could be ready to start producing within months if all goes
> according to plan. I am very optimistic; it has been working very well. At
> the moment the vaccine costs up to 200 euros and you have to have three
> injections. We can afford this in the developed world but in other places it
> is not an option."
> 
> Giessen University estimates there are around 350 million people around the
> world infected with hepatitis B virus, which can severely damage the liver
> and can be fatal. One million people are believed to die from the disease
> annually.
> 
> 
> 
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>