LOS ANGELES (AP) – Scientists have figured out all the steps to make morphine and similar painkillers without using opium poppies, opening the door for home-brewed drugs and even wider abuse.
While no one has yet reported making morphine in the laboratory from scratch, some experts are calling for regulations to prevent garage tinkerers from making do-it-yourself morphine, which can be converted into heroin.
Society needs to “think this through now before it becomes a reality,” said bioengineer John Dueber of the University of California, Berkeley, who led a team that discovered the final missing link of the process.
Poppy plants have been farmed for centuries for opium, from which morphine is derived. The controlled substance is often used before and after surgeries to relieve severe pain.
For the past decade, various groups of researchers have hacked the DNA of yeast to mimic poppies, in hopes of creating cheaper and less addictive pain relievers. So far, the yeast strains created can only perform the last steps of a long process that can lead to morphine and other narcotic drugs.