DIY Biosynthesis of Insulin and Thyroxine - Disaster Resilience and Personal Biotech
A twitter acquaintance asked me today about DIY thyroxine. As this acquaintance is a “collapsonomics” nerd, I took this question to be in the context of “what if the world's supply chains freeze and I/we/my friends die?". The question broadened to include insulin, another critical drug needed daily by those with a common condition, diabetes. That's a fair question. After all, while one can grow food locally, and purify rainwater (when blessed by rainfall like we are in most of Europe), and tend to many other necessities of life locally in a total infrastructural breakdown scenario, pharmaceuticals are one of the few things that we can't DIY easily.