Exciting news! Scientists are working on identifying the biochemical pathways that produce a miniscule component of this plant’s chemical defenses!
Botanical Wednesday: High times
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Sniffing out the secrets of coca, are they?
Yes, we’re all excited, hardly able to sit still….
Glen Davidson
I wonder if they could come up with a sort of general anaesthetic/analgesic from this as an alternative à la methadone, and/or, like methadone, be a withdrawal/maintenance treatment.
↑ I managed to get three whacks in that sentence, and now it looks like an URL.
Why is it that the greatest drug creations are almost as good as natures originals but … patentable?
Actually that’s ‘minuscule’, as in ‘minus’.
A minuscule part of the plant’s defense? Cue in the people screaming about wasted research money!
My mother spent hours railing about studies of fruit fly DNA – why are we spending money on fruit flies? No amount of explanation about the importance of this research would convince her.
Aw, give the poor guy a break on “miniscule,” he’s a biologist, not a linguist. What’s more, my spell checker didn’t flag it here.