Prairie Landing
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Transgenic goats, unite!
My client is holding something called War Games for which I had to research a bunch of drugs. The most interesting of these is made from transgenic goats' milk. Apparently that's a cheap way to produce complex biologic drugs. I just googled "transgenic goat" and 102,000 entries came up.
I never knew before this job that there are all kinds of new drugs that are not technically drugs, but proteins and antibodies and the like. People synthesize them out of human and mouse proteins. The FDA doesn't even really consider them drugs, since they're not chemicals but free agents that wander around your body acting like they belong there. I find this stuff fascinating and am glad I didn't have to go to grad school to enjoy it.
Recently I read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, which is an "in the near future"-type dystopia that I highly recommend. In that book drug companies lord over the world. Corporate employees in all industries live in isolated compounds, but drug company compounds are the best. I find that creepily true to life.
I never knew before this job that there are all kinds of new drugs that are not technically drugs, but proteins and antibodies and the like. People synthesize them out of human and mouse proteins. The FDA doesn't even really consider them drugs, since they're not chemicals but free agents that wander around your body acting like they belong there. I find this stuff fascinating and am glad I didn't have to go to grad school to enjoy it.
Recently I read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, which is an "in the near future"-type dystopia that I highly recommend. In that book drug companies lord over the world. Corporate employees in all industries live in isolated compounds, but drug company compounds are the best. I find that creepily true to life.
