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According to the World Health Organization, malaria is responsible for approximately 445,000 deaths every year. That number may be due to drop, however, as scientists have found that a human-safe blue dye kills parasites in patients' bloodstreams within two days – that's faster than has ever been possible before.
...
That's where the methylene blue dye comes in.In field tests conducted in Mali, it was added to artemisinin-based medication, and was found to eradicate all gametocytes in patients' bloodstreams within as little as 48 hours. The dye is typically used in laboratories to distinguish dead cells from living cells, and was reportedly well-tolerated by the test subjects. It does, however, have one interesting side effect.
According to the lead scientist it turns your urine blue, which is reason enough for anybody to take it, really.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 09 2018, @02:14PM (3 children)
Thats kinda the problem. wikipedia reports $191.40 for a 50 mg dose. I didn't exactly call Walgreens to verify, but, sounds believable.
Carolina Biological sells half a liter of 0.1% for ten bucks for microscope slides, so figure a mL is a gram so 500 mL = 500 g = half a gram aka 500 mg per bottle so microscope slide grade is about $1 per non-human rated dose.
Now personally I wouldn't eat most of the stuff Carolina Biological sells, but think about it for a second, if the microscope slide stain was full of human poop or pathogens it would contaminate the hell out of the slides you're trying to run lab tests upon... its legally not pharma grade, but practically and technologically its probably cleaner than your supermarket produce aisle.
I guess one way to phrase it is a dose costs $1 to manufacture, ship, and deliver, but the markup for malpractice and corruption is about $190.40 in the USA.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)
It surely has nothing structured in it (as that would, as you say, make problems in the microscope images). But what about solvents that are less than healthy?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:36PM
There are impurities that screw up your experiments such that you can "choose your poison" and purchase ethanol that's tested and assayed for biological purity to a level far beyond consumer booze labeled as non-denatured molecular biology grade ethanol thats absolutely DNA-free
OR
you can buy ethanol for organic chemistry foolishness thats been tested and assayed for solvent purity to a level far beyond consumer booze labeled as non-denatured spectrographically pure grade thats proven to have less than a part per billion or whatever of competing solvents (so you don't accidentally methylate a methanol molecule for for ochem experiment or whatever)
I assume you can buy rotgut thats not terribly pure or merely good enough for shellac manufacture. That would be something to avoid! Yet its also easy from an engineering perspective to buy safe to consume stuff.
A good fraction of a century ago I can personally assure you that even back then chemistry supply companies were wise to underage drinkers and refused to ship un-denatured pure "ethyl hydroxl" or WTF smartass analogy to kids.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Friday February 09 2018, @05:39PM
That's not a regulatory markup, it's a fuck you because we can markup. Otherwise, how could other drugs with the same regulatory and malpractice hazards possible sell for less that that $191?