Bird Flu Drug Mass Production Technique Discovered

creepygeek writes to mention a New Scientist article detailing a new process for creating Tamiflu, an antiviral drug currently thought to be our best defense against the bird flu. From the article: "Making Tamiflu is slow, partly because shikimic is hard to get, but also because one step in the process involves a highly explosive chemical called an azide. As a result, Tamiflu can be made only in small batches of a few tens of litres at a time. But Elias Corey of Harvard University - who won a Nobel prize in 1990 for chemical synthesis - and colleagues have devised a new way to make the drug from two cheap, plentiful petrochemicals, acrylate and butadiene."

Comments

Is it almost over?

[Phantombrain]

Can I come out of my air-tight bubble yet?

Thanks, but...

[gEvil (beta)]

Thanks, but no thanks. I prefer the highly explosive vaccine, thank you very much...

We just need Yogi Bear.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear Yogi Bear is quite good at getting baskets full of shikimic. I might have heard wrong, though.

Hey Boo-Boo, let's go grab the shik-a-mic basket, the mi-grr-a-tor-ee birds are coming with the flooo!

Real threat? Real solution?

[hj43us]

Till know aound 50 people worldwide had died of bird flu. I guess more people die being stroke by a lightning. But the worst thing is that nobody knows whether Tamiflu will cure bird flu or not. Meanwhile health authorities all over the wold had been doing massive buys of that medicine ... sounds weird. I, for one, start a business of selling a new drug that is suppossed to protect you against being struck by a lightning. I'm already taking orders. Anyone?

Petrochemicals?

[MOtisBeard]

Tamiflu is made from petrochemicals???

How long before we see a story about making bioTamiflu out of used vegetable oil from McDonald's?

Re:Good News....right?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be better to just stock up on old-fashioned Jewish penicillin.

Not a good plan. If Bird Flu strikes, chicken will be rarer than shikimic acid.

Re:Bird flu?

[mgblst]

*raised stump*

Re:Good News....right?

[elmarkitse]

wait a minute. You're suggesting that the best defense for a pandemic of BIRD FLU would be to consume CHICKEN Soup?

That smacks of a vaguely Matrix 'human as the incubator' approach to a new 'mass produced' production technique of generating the necessary antibodies quickly, no?

Re:Cytokine Storm == Deadly

[gEvil (beta)]

So the fact that the more healthy you are, the more likely this thing could kill you.

A collective sigh of relief is heard emanating from the readers of slashdot...

reading between lines

[LinuxRulz]

"...from highly explosive..."
hmmm I see... They plan to eliminate bird flu by making every sick bird explode. clever!

Don't worry, the gov't is prepared

[ThinWhiteDuke]

They have a plan