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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."
Totally O/T, but what ever happened with those anthrax postal investigations from a few years ago? Last I heard about it was that they traced the strain back to the military then they just kind of shrugged their shoulders and let it go.
Totally offtopic message to you, meringuoid. I have enjoyed your sig for sometime, and only with the recent airing of the new Dr. Who series have I understood what it even meant. But damnit, I was so sure the disbaled dalek they found in the bunker was going to blast the place to hell when they all ran into the stairwell. It was a big disappointment when it simply went into hover mode. :(
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --