Insulin From Flowers

Type I diabetics require insulin. Many type II diabetics require insulin. Depending on how and where you shop for things, insulin is either the most expensive or the second most expensive regular expense of diabetes. (The most expensive for many, including me, are the test strips. It should be noted this post ignores the cost of complications from diabetes.)

For a long time insulin came from cows and pigs. Later it was found that the effect of insulin lasted longer if it was mixed with the semen of river trout. (I wish I was making that up.) This made it somewhat rare and expensive, and there were sometimes immune reactions. Then came gene splicing.

Though the package insert delicately says "recombinant DNA origin" it skips over just what is going on. In point of fact human genes are inserted into E. coli bacteria. My brain is fine with that, but occasionally if I think about E. coli too long my stomach feels a bit uneasy. Not logical, but real.

Now comes word of "Prairie Insulin," using genetically engineered safflowers.

But scientists at the University of Calgary are now working to change that. They have figured out a way to genetically manipulate safflower flowers to produce insulin. By inserting a human insulin gene into the plant, the safflowers become little insulin factories. Their seeds are then ground, the oil extracted, and the insulin harvested.

It's passed phase 2 tests, showing it is safe, and now will begin phase III tests to insure that it is effective. If it works the price of insulin could drop dramatically in a few years.

Each acre of safflower flowers could produce more than one kilogram of insulin, which could treat 2,500 diabetic patients for one year. That means just 16,000 acres of safflowers could meet the world's total demand each year.

Now if someone would just come up with genetically engineered test strips.

(Via PopSci.com)

The Poor vs the Tax Burden

Last night I made and then deleted a post that linked to this image from Doctor Jerry Pournelle's blog. I deleted the post because I was having formatting problems with the image on the main page. It was too wide for the column and about 40% was cut off. However the post didn't go entirely unnoticed because my posts go to a few people who are close to me via e-mail as soon as they are posted.

One person seemed to think that I was attacking the poor. I started on an e-mail reply, but as it grew it seemed like it would make a better blog post. And since the person I started writing it for gets the posts via e-mail that person will still get their very own e-mail message with my reply.

The cartoon (with live figures) is not about poverty, unless you believe that 50% of the people in the United States live in poverty.

Because 50% of the country doesn't pay any net Federal income tax.

The official definition of living in poverty is being in the bottom 20% of income. This definition means that there will always be someone "in poverty" and thus protects the jobs of the government workers who exist to fight poverty.

Divide the $6 trillion (rounded off, but a real figure) spent on fighting poverty since 1965 into the number of people who have been in poverty in that time and they'd all be millionaires- Except they aren't. Someone absorbed it along the way, and used it in part to build the giant Federal empire that is the Department of Health and Human Services.

But that's a side issue. Half of the people are being taxed to buy the votes of the other half. Both major parties do it. They just argue over how far to go. It's an unstable situation that would be more or less tolerable if we were headed in the direction of a balanced budget, and if the Social Security "Trust Fund" hadn't been looted so that it exists entirely of filing cabinets full of Government IOUs. But Social Security WAS looted (again by politicians from BOTH major parties) and we're spending $5 for each $3 we take in. And half the people don't care because THEY aren't being taxed to make up the difference.

It's a cynical game that both sides play. George W. Bush, in his tax cut "for the wealthy" actually adjusted the tax brackets for everyone and removed more people from the list of people who pay net taxes than anyone in the history of the US. Bush and the Republicans in congress were the ones who moved the line from just under 42% to a bit over 49%.

To most politicians the poor mean 2 things:

1. A voting block that can be bought by promising more goodies, or by saying the other side is trying to take away the existing goodies.
2. A way to tug on the heart strings of good people who want to help the less fortunate.

George Bernard Shaw, who was hardly a raving conservative, famously said "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." Our country needs to find a way to stop robbing Peter without being beaten to death with the specter of starving Paul. Nobody wants to do that; it's a straw man created by politicians to keep us from uniting against them.

What Have I Been Up To?

While trying to get up the gumption to post more on my blog, a friend on Twitter told me about a new Internet radio station for conservatives. This was RFC Radio, Radio for Conservatives. I became first a fan, and then was invited to become part of the technical staff. I worked to fix things that broke on a day to day basis, and then to improve the overall stability of the station.

Unfortunately, the primary founder treated it more like his toy that he sometimes let his friends play with than a business. This not only frustrated us as we tried to grow, but repeatedly caused the volunteer staff to have to drop everything for a day or two in order to deal with the latest crisis created because someone felt like making a change RIGHT NOW.

A month ago ago six of us who did the day to day work that kept the station operating and grew the talent pool and traffic to the web site reached a point where we could no longer go on with the situation as it existed. Three weeks ago we reached a point where we could not reach an agreement with the founder of RFC on how to reorganize in order to move forward.

The upshot was that we left RFC Radio, and began our own station, From The Right Radio.

In under a week the people who understand things like HTML and CSS (notice that this is still on Blogger; I am not one of them) had a web site live. In another week we had a server configured, patched, an ftp server set up for hosts to upload their podcasts to, and all of the software installed and configured to operate an Internet radio station. There was much creating of special scripts to automate the operation of the station, testing, swearing, fixing, testing, swearing, fixing, etc. That was my part of the job. Meanwhile the folks who work directly with the talent and show producers were talking to people we had worked with in the past. Over 90% of the hosts who had worked with us at RFC joined us at FTR Radio.

Meanwhile the founder of RFC had ceased operations and sold the assets of RFC Radio to a podcast producer we had worked with in the past, Take That! Media. The folks at Take That! decided that they didn't want to operate a streaming internet radio station at this time, so they sold the assets of RFC Radio to FTR Radio.

FTR Radio is conservative talk radio. You won't hear talk radio hosts who are famous yet. FTR Radio is a grass roots organization. We don't have a sugar daddy; no astroturf for us. We're running it out of our own pockets and in what is laughingly referred to as our "free time." We're building a reliable platform, a stable of talented but so far little known hosts, and working hard to build a loyal audience. We aren't doing this to become rich, but we ARE capitalists and this is not a non-profit corporation. If we can advance the conservative cause and become prosperous too that's a Good Thing- But first we advance the cause.

You can find From The Right Radio at http://www.ftrradio.com/

FTR Radio Facebook fan page

FTR Radio's Twitter feed

My list of Twitter feeds for people associated with FTR Radio