Lets hear it for the open source movement. Tamiflu one of the medicines used for treating pandemic flu has been made open source… meaning the process to create the drug has been opened to the public.
The biggest advantage is that anyone can now synthesize the drug if required so the production bottleneck has been removed. However, the question that comes to my mind is that how willing will people be to trust a medicine that their next door neighbor made in his garage? Are you really willing to risk trying that medicine? Prob yeah, if you don’t have any other option but what if you do? I think most people (including me) would rather take a medicine prepared by a qualified/reputed lab than some homegrown varity…
But still its a step in the right direction. How you may ask? Well, now all the labs have the process without having to spend R&D to reinvent the wheel. So if the need arises everyone can pitch in to make the drug.
Original Article: MAKE: Blog: HOW TO – Make Tamiflu
Thanks to Adam Fields (weblog) for the link.
Thanks,
Suramya