• Question: Have you ever worked with a harmful drug that may become illegal as it has bad consequences? if so what was it? Also what does it do to the body?

    Asked by to Clare, Ian, Jess, Lewis on 19 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Well I work with a lot of harmful chemicals, which would have bad consequences if you drank them! These are things like chloroform (which can knock you out), acids (which are corrosive), methanol (which is poisonous). It would be illegal to sell them without the correct authorization and controls.

      If someone is doing research on a molecule, hoping that it can be used as a drug, but it turns out to be harmful, then it wont be authorized and it would be illegal to sell it as a drug. An example of this could be if the drug was found to cause a seizure, or raise your temperature really high. This happens all the time, because for every drug that makes it to the shelf, thousands and thousands didn’t pass the test. It is illegal to sell drugs without authorization, so they don’t go around making each failed drug illegal to sell. I have not worked on a failed drug yet, but that is just because I have only been here 3 years and am mainly working on an implant!

    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      No I have never worked with harmful drugs. I don’t tend to work with drugs at all (I am not very good with pipettes and test tubes; I am much better with whole animals!).

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      Dealing with a neurobiology group I’ve had to handle already illegal stuff like amphetamines and morphine – we need full written permission from the goverment to buy them and not many chemical companies are allowed to sell them. They’re also kept in a locked room with a camera trained on it and we have to sign in and out and record where every last bit of it goes.

      Morphine reacts in the brain like chemicals our body makes itself to deal with pleasure and pain called endorphins but it’s stronger and lasts longer and supresses our bodies ability to deal with endorphins itself which is part of what makes it addictive.

      Amphetamine behaves like a neurotransmitter called phenethylamine and triggers a whole load of stimulant activity in the body making your heart beat faster and stopping the need for sleep – and is also massively addictive and bad for the body.

      They’re used because they’re very well studied so if we’re looking at how cells respond to similar things – made by the body or made in the test tube they’re a useful comparison.

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