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I can assure you I would give you an equally unclean garbage product whether I extracted or synthesized.


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If I were one of those tens of thousands of people, I would be buying this substance from a dodgy chemical synthesis person...

Synthesizing it from organic waste is possible today. It is mostly a question of efficiency.

Could we synthesize this chemical and feed it to rapists?

My point is that synthetic versus natural is not a particularly useful line to draw here. If someone had figured out how to get tons of this stuff from bacteria, we’d be in the exact same situation.

Or you could purchase meth (easy to come by, as with the majority of illegal substances) and do the reverse synthesis in your kitchen? /s

https://web.archive.org/web/20120301155008/https://heterodox...


Anyone with access to good chemical lab has done so.

Rule of thumb - the deadlier it is, the easier it is to make.


> It should be pointed out that most US-based oligo synthesis companies will screen orders for potentially "dangerous" sequences.

Static analysis, in other words. Enumerating badness. Schneier would not be pleased.

I wouldn't put it past someone to create a mold with a complex life-cycle which eventually enters a form that secretes cocaine.


Why can we not synthesize this stuff by now? Seems like we know what's in it, and a cheap and non animal derived version would be pretty useful.

If you can persuade people that you can make that hypothetical substance, there are a few pissed off investors around at the moment who will throw money at you.

Also now that I think about it. Basically anything at all can contaminate the process and include living things...

Probably not realistic on industrial scale. And then how do you get to the clean starting point...


Great to see this innovation. Good luck with your venture. I'm very hopeful that we can replace many other industrial toxic processes with clean bio alternatives

> The only place it exists in inside Biogen.

You would order it from a compounding pharmacy, would would then do a custom synthesis for you. Or else just make it yourself in your basement.


AGH. I was going to use this to make IP-free drugs.

Because it could have been synthesized.

Solvent separation would be possible.

as long as the end-to-end manufacture of the cells is done in a sterile environment...

the lab-grown stuff will actually be _cleaner_ than anything made 'organically'

cells don't poop (the same way), and aren't exposed to pathogens in a lab


You'd be amazed at the variety of compounds you can pay to have synthesized.

I'm not sure if that is true. E.g. we might be able to synthesize smells like we cook food, where there is little to no danger of producing toxins from innocent ingredients.

Isolating a new antibiotic (even if it wouldn't work on humans) is typically worth a chemistry PhD. Call me when you get it.
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