Which do you think we're getting first?
Which do you think we're getting first?
My bet’s on 3D printed meat making it to our plates before we’re DIY’ing insulin.
Regulation for medications like insulin is super tight (rightly so!). You can’t just whip up life-saving stuff in your garage without some heavy-duty checks and balances from the FDA and the like. Plus, the DIY part is insane, we’re talking high-level genetic engineering and biochemistry here, not homebrew beer.
Then there’s the demand part. The hype for environmentally-friendly, cruelty-free meat is real and growing every day. If they can get the taste and texture right, not to mention a decent price, lab-grown meat is gonna fly off the shelves.
Meanwhile, homebrew insulin’s got a smaller audience - mainly type 1 diabetics and some type 2s. And given that botched insulin can be lethal, a lot of folks might stick to the tried-and-true stuff from pharmaceutical companies.
So yeah, I’m thinking lab-grown burgers beat homebrew insulin to the punch. But hey, it’s 2023, who knows what’s around the corner? Fun to think about though!
USA is the only developed country that doesn't have affordable insulin, so my vote's on 3D printed meat
The meat because big pharma probably won't hesitate to go harder than the RIAA on home formulas
It's sad. People will die. But this is the world we live in. We will also have to watch rich people eat 3D printed meat before the rest of us get this cruelty free choice.
Unless printed meat ends up being cheaper to produce, then actual farm animals will exist solely for the rich.
3d printed meat for sure. Getting food right has more margin for error.
Though the open insulin project has been making progress on open sourcing insulin!
Though the open insulin project has been making progress on open sourcing insulin!
Whoa, this is a real thing? I thought OP was goofing.
I just looked them up, it sounds like a great project!
They already have chocolate 3D printers, and lab meat is almost or already at market somewhere and would also actually make someone money in our largely capitalist dominated world, so I'm gonna go with that.
I'm just thinking that having food safe printing stuff makes it slightly closer to reality than the other option, even if the medium would require reengineering some of the internal parts.
Just don't live in a country where one company has a monopoly on Insulin and you also can't Import it. Then problem one is not a problem anymore.
There's not really a problem with meat either. You don't have to eat it and if you do, you don't have to feel bad about eating animals.
That said, there is kind of a problem with insulin manufacturing in that it's kind of centralized and distribution can be difficult, especially in remote areas with unreliable electricity. If insulin manufacturing could be done at the garage or shipping container scale in the places where it's needed, it would help a lot of people.
If insurance companies weren't greedy parasites insuling could be much more available too.
I heard a podcast episode about a guy who homebrewed insulin in an area of Nazi occupation and saved a bunch of people. Warsaw ghetto perhaps?
It was Eva Saxl. She had fled the Nazis from Czechoslovakia only to find herself under Japanese occupation in Shanghai. From the Wikipedia article, it seems like she extracted the insulin from water buffalo pancreas. I'm not sure if that counts as homebrewing. When I think of homebrew insulin, I think of actually manufacturing it by fermenting specialized yeast as opposed to harvesting it from animals. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it isn't really the same.
Insulin. The buzz on the street is that cultured meat works like shit. Insulin on the other hand is already made in bioreactors, and there's no reason that you couldn't do it yourself with the know-how as far as I know.
Said people on the street are people involved in the production, not the consumption. It tastes fine, but animal cells don't want to grow like that so it's massively expensive and resource hungry, and will take a lot of research and trouble to make less so if it's even possible in this regulatory environment (the EU doesn't like GMOs).
Maybe stick with plant-based alternatives? They're really good now and they didn't used to be.
I really feel for my ISSs brothers and sisters and your unaffordable medicine. I count myself lucky living where I do.