Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate.

  • Walgate, Robert
Date:
[1990]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Chapter 6: Biotechnology and human health 85 NEW DRUGS For pharmaceuticals, as with vaccines, the objective of research should be to find a drug which is effective in a single dose, has few adverse reactions, is cheap, and is easily administered in primary health-care systems. New drugs are particularly needed against tuberculosis, against viruses, and against parasites. Promising new drugs include the interferons and interleukins, which stimulate the immune system, helping the body to fight infection. These are true products of the new biotechnology. They are human proteins that cannot be produced in any useful amount except from genetically engineered bacteria into which the relevant human genes have been transplanted. Molecular biology has also helped to identify a possible new drug against one of the two forms of African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Difluoromethyl ornithine blocks a precise metabolic pathway in the trypanosome which causes West African sleeping sickness, without harming the patient's own cells. As for the production and delivery of such drugs at low cost, the TDR's biotechnology initiative could help. Another model, expressly for encouraging local antibiotic production, is one developed by the UK-based Biotics Ltd for approval by the European Commission. Called the Regional Antibiotics Manufacturing Project (RAMP), it envisages joint antibiotic-making ventures between regional groups of developing countries, established pharmaceutical companies and international donors. The plants would be built in developing countries at the donors' cost; the country would provide labour, raw materials — for example, molasses — and a guaranteed local market, and gain jobs and a technology; the pharmaceutical company would gain a new source of supply at zero capital cost [lO]. Some scientific strategies for developing new drugs are discussed in the next chapter. MICRONUTRIENTS In many regions there are deficiencies of micronutrients (vitamins and trace elements needed in small amounts for health). Lack of vitamin A causes 500,000 cases of corneal blindness and 5 million cases of non-comeal xerophthalmia — a thickening of the eye-ball — among pre-school children. Research is showing the key role of vitamin A in diminishing mortality from, and occurrence of, common tropical diseases and certain cancers. Some 800 million people live in areas deficient in iodine — Í
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