Post AJ5KfOSMUGmJc8KyDA by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
 (DIR) More posts by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
 (DIR) Post #AJ5Kf6MjkRaFVTZDwe by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:26:17Z
       
       1 likes, 4 repeats
       
       The story of how we have cheap hormones (birth control, transgender hrt, cortisol for arthritis) is WILD. It's called Marker degradation; an unpatented process that turns a product of yams in Mexico into various mammalian hormones.https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/progesteronesynthesis.html
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5Kf8nOiI692k3XmK by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:26:18Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Russell Marker was a chemist who did that movie-scientist thing of "everybody else is wrong about this, my own research shows that these side-chains in this family of molecules are reactive under certain conditions. If only I could get an abundant source of them from plants..."
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5Kf9Ue7Uh1CsI5Bo by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:26:19Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       So he started going on field trips out into the woods and deserts looking for good tubers. When we saw a picture in a magazine of a 100 kilo root from mexico called Dioscorea or cabeza de negro he dropped everything and was like "I gotta get that tater" and went to Mexico city.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfANapCe3xHzxpo by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:26:20Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       (ignoring the advice of the US embassy bc WWII was on and there was "widespread anti-American sentiment")
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfBda9F1rrAUFOa by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:26:20Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       But he was helped by the locals,  found the root, bagged two of them (remember these are BIG), and loaded them onto the top of a bus... which were promptly stolen and he only got one back by bribing a policeman.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfCpJj60hXqz8KG by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:29:15Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       (they stories say they were stolen, but remember he's here Indiana Jonesing these native plants without a license for transport across international borders... so who's really the thief)
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfE2pCMPRK2JR1E by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:29:16Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Anyway, he gets a single 50 pound tuber back, renders it into syrup, makes the largest batch of progesterone the world had ever seen — selling this ONE batch of potato-goop for millions of today's dollars.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfEsw4c5pveh3FA by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:29:17Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Now usually the way this story goes is: he patents it, founds a US-based corporation, and makes its fortune by exploiting the biodiversity of other countries.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfG2XmNNBVkCErI by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:29:18Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       But he was convinced that it made more sense to, y'know, do the processing where the yams grow instead of lugging these huge things halfway across the world. His collaborators (proto-Pfizer) were like "um lol no Mexico doesn't have a pharmaceutical industry so rasicm rasicm"
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfHNUnxj7f10U9g by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:29:18Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       The article doesn't say why he persisted (maybe from his experience with how hard it was to transport the damn things?), but it was enough that Marker ditched proto-Pfizer, didn't patent shit for them, and moved to Mexico to find collaborators there.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfIOb1MCWoiWsVc by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:32:07Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Long story short, since hormones were like liquid gold, it ended up kickstarting the Mexican steroid industry and the institute of chemistry at the largest public university in Latin America.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfJnRoRfrA5AEsq by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:32:07Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Oh, also he stopped being the only one in the world who knew how to do the process (talk about modern alchemy) after getting into another fight with his partners and left behind a lab full of unlabeled ingredients and no instructions.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfKvdbTosfm0IHw by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:32:08Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       The poor chemist the partners brought in to clean it up had to basically reinvent the process from whatever he had left behind.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfMyC0x3H0HDMY4 by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:32:09Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Marker eventually retired to a private life of commissioning reproductions of 18th-century silversmiths' work and nitpicking the pieces by spending a lot of time in museums looking at the originals.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfOSMUGmJc8KyDA by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T15:51:44Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       I dunno whether to valorize the guy since his previous work was for fossil fuels, and I can't tell from these sources if his motivation was for justice & accessible medicine or being petty & starting fights with business majors... but thanks for letting me have boobs, at least.
       
 (DIR) Post #AJ5KfQB45Y8Ax4GBWq by jovialthunder@xoxo.zone
       2022-05-03T16:17:11Z
       
       1 likes, 1 repeats
       
       Anyway tl;dr
       
 (DIR) Post #AKgkn4D2z7h5BSrfOK by dhfir@expired.mentality.rip
       2022-06-20T18:46:57.170852Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @jovialthunder dude was probably kinda crazy, but he was right about shit and opposed patents, so...I'd say thumbs up.