On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Tim May wrote:
Speaking of which, I recall that the origins of LSD were from some kind of fungus or "rust" found on some types of grain.
It was developed from "ergot", a fungus that grows on rye.
And there's that other type of fungus, the mushroom.
I expect Steve is right that someone will find a way to engineer a drug-producing common mold or yeast. The profit motive, per se, will not be much of an impediment, provided the costs of development are not huge. I can think of many who would participate, were any reasonable directions apparent.
Mushrooms are hard to grow unless you have a controlled environment. (They tend to cross with other species of mushroom from what I have been told. A friend used to grow mushrooms commercially many years back.)
BTW, this was a topic of conversation several years ago in the nanotech discussion group I was in: home chemistry with instructions dowloaded from the Net. Sort of a "Click here to download manufacturing instructions for LSD."
(Downloaded into a tabletop production machine, of course.)
The instructions for LSD production are already on the net, but not in a nanotech format. (HTML v66.6?) Most of the instructions for LSD are bogus. A friend sent me a huge collection of bogus recipes from sci.chemistry from a few years back. (They get losts of newbies who want to learn how to make LSD.) My favorite is the one that uses Foster's Lauger as a base.
We are probably still several decades away from the mechanosynthesis form of nanotech, presumably less far away from biological forms.
I expect that we will see bioengeneered designer drugs within the next 10 years. The methods for manufacture will not be widely distributed for a much longer period...
Such "dangerous knowledge" will join bombmaking instructions in being added to Fineswine's law. Downloading of instructuctions for NC machine tools, too, if the instructions are for zip guns and even real guns.
When she figures out that such information is available, she will add it on. And it will not stop there... The forces of sanitized thinking will not stop until anything that could be a threat to them is illegal and/or abolished. Sometimes I think the Chinese had the right idea by making it impossible for their civil servants to reproduce. alano@teleport.com | "Those who are without history are doomed to retype it."