Morphine News

Beijing - China's Food and Drug Agency busted 35 restaurants across the country for using an illegal drug as seasoning in their food. No, the seasoning wasn't contaminated with bacteria or allergens. It was powder from opium poppies.

The process by which a poppy encodes enzymes to make morphine has been discovered. This relates to a specific gene. This could lead to alternative ways to produce the drug.

I remember staying with an old friend in Dublin many years ago, and I asked him if I could take a bath. Sorry, he said, "the bathtub is occupied – it's full of fermenting homemade beer."

Biologists have successfully introduced bacterial and poppy plant genes into yeast to manufacture morphine. The research is important because opiates are medically essential. However, current production via opium poppy leads to supply inefficiencies.

A Canadian study led by Toronto-based scientist Tara Gomes reports that the increased use of opiate pain medications is responsible for 1 out of 8 deaths among young people in 2010.

Centipede venom has been shown to work even better than morphine to dampen pain in rodents. The finding could be important for analgesic development.

French researchers say they have found in the venom of the deadly African black mamba, a painkiller that is as powerful as morphine but without most of its adverse side-effects.

After a string of drug thefts, officials in Spotsylvania County, Va. are faced with spending thousands of dollars in new locks to secure drug compartments in its ambulances.

The New York Times is reporting that last week Nigeria's health minister announced plans to immediately buy 55 pounds of Morphine for its nations hospitals, and that Nigeria will form an alliance with the Global Access to Pain Relief Initiative.

The use of codeine after an adenotonsillectomy may be a deadly mistake. Doctors are the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto are warning the use of that common pain medication can depress the lungs so much that they stop working.

A new U.S. report this week suggests that premature babies who have to undergo certain procedures feel more pain throughout their lives than previously thought, according to tests carried out on lab rats