Tropes

popsci_2013 03169.txt

#Herd Of Secret Drug Goats Discovered At Biotech Ranchlet's say you're a giant biotech company in sunny California and you have a big ranch where you keep thousands of goats. You use the goats to produce all kinds of antibodies that you then extract and sell to biological researchers all over the world. You are in fact one of the world's biggest suppliers of these antibodies--a true industry leader. Anyway everything is going quite well for you except that the USDA keeps poking their big government nose into your operations sending inspectors over to your ranch to have a look around and the inspectors are not liking what they're finding. They keep telling you that you need to provide adequate veterinary care for your goats and that the animals'facilities must be maintained in good care and soon enough they're filing a complaint that lists 17 of these little violations and alleges that you have violated willfully the Animal Welfare Act. What are you going to do? You could go through all the trouble of hiring a couple extra people to look the animals over and treat them when they're sick etc etc OR you could get really clever and outsmart the big government outfit by I don't know failing to mention that you've got a barn down the road with 841 goats inside of it--give'em one less place to make trouble. When the real-life company Santa cruz Biotechnology found themselves in this position they went with option number two. And it worked! --for a little while. But then late last October the USDA received a tip about the barn and an inspector went down there and found it along with the 841 goats 12 of which were not technically speaking in good shape. To make matters worse the inspector could tell that the barn had been used for a while which made it obvious to everyone that the staff on the Santa cruz Biotechnology ranch had been blatantly lying when they claimed--as they had on multiple occasions--that the building didn't exist and that there weren't any animals inside it. The company may face fines or a suspended license for their violations of animal welfare and for lying to the USDA but an even bigger problem (for Santa cruz Biotechnology) may come from the NIH who currently exempts off-the-shelf antibodies from the set of animal treatment rules that governs NIH-funded research. If the NIH decides to change that rule Santa cruz Biotechnology may soon long for the simple days of USDA oversight. via Nature Liars should not prosper especially by breaking the law and I hate abuse to animals. I understand some animals are used for medical science and all but they should still be clean and humane to the animals. I hate big Pharm! They don't care about the animals under their supervision they don't care about people's illnesses they just care about corrupting governments and selling their crap. whoa darth maybe you want to dial it back. First this doesn't seem to be a pharmaceutical company. They're not making or selling drugs to anyone. They're extracting antibodies for use in research by other companies. Second it doesn't sound as if they're a real big operation. They might produce a large percentage of the antibodies used in research --but that could be a pretty small market. I'm also not sure how an animal cruelty story comes under the heading of science or science news. Should they be busted--sure but I don't see this as science. HAHA Robot Liars should not prosperlying is the only way to succeed in the US

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