01.02.13
Synthetic Hoo-Ha
Remember when the wonder of synthetic biology was going to eliminate malaria through the miraculous production of artemisinin?
No? Here’s a refresher on the propaganda which reached a peak about two years ago. Enough fabulous claims to gag even the most skeptical.
Malaria, however, has stubbornly ignored the the alchemists of synthetic biology.
There has been no wondrous production of the drug. It still mostly comes from wormwood cultivation and is not easy to produce.
And now this, showing nature relentlessly moves on, heedless of press releases:
To Nosten [a malaria doctor in Thailand], it was further evidence of an alarming rise in resistance to artemisinin, currently the front-line drug in the treatment of malaria. He fears it could be the start of a global “nightmare” in which millions of people could lose their lives.
“We have to beat this resistance, win this race and eliminate the parasite before it’s too late. That’s our challenge now,” he said.
He said that artemisinin should take about 24 hours to deal with the parasite, but it was now taking three or four days in some cases. “We are going to see patients that don’t respond to the treatment anymore,??? he warned …
He first sounded the alarm in research published earlier this year, following the emergence of similar drug resistance along the Thai-Cambodia border.
“Keasling realized that the tools of synthetic biology, if properly deployed, could dispense with nature entirely, providing an abundant new source of artemisinin,” reads some standard high button blow job from 2009, published at the New Yorker. “If each cell became its own factory, churning out the chemical required to make the drug, there would be no need for an elaborate and costly manufacturing process, either.”
It never happened.
From the World Health Organization (bold mine):
About 3.3 billion people – half of the world’s population – are at risk of malaria. In 2010, there were about 216 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty range of 149 million to 274 million) and an estimated 655 000 malaria deaths (with an uncertainty range of 537 000 to 907 000). Increased prevention and control measures have led to a reduction in malaria mortality rates by more than 25% globally since 2000 and by 33% in the WHO African Region.
Like most old synthetic biology pieces, the New Yorker “annals of science” essay is full of promises about shit that never quite happened. Although the people quoted, Jay Keasling et al, became very wealthy and semi-famous.