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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1984)
Page 2B/The Battalion/Thursday, January 19, 1984 Biotech industry showing promise, little performance United Press International NEW YORK — Gene-splicing may be Biotechnology’s glamour industry, but Robert MHch pre fers to run his business the old fashioned way. Milch heads IGI Biotechnol ogy a Maryland-based firm he says is “in the biological junk business.” Founded in 1981, it specializes in turning agricultu ral and marine waste products into new and salable materials. Its techniques, Milch said, in clude filtration, fermentation and enzyme reactions. /T* MSC INSIGHT A new committee on student/ faculty discussions is having its first meeting. Thursday, Jan. 19 Room 216 MSC 7:00 pm All are welcome “We decided to take the con ventional techniques, the stuff Pasteur did in 1890, and see what we could do with ir,” he said. Many of the new biotechnical companies use recombinant DNA techniques, splicing genes to create new organisms that will react in a specific way with an existing material. “There’s no problem splicing the gene,” Milch said. ‘The problem is getting it to work once you’ve got it spliced and put in another organism.” A gene that fails to interact as desired once it is let loose is said to have an “expression prob lem,” Milch said. “Expression has become the major problem in genetic engineering. It hasn’t produced the great wonders everyone said. Biotechnical companies in general have been a lot in the way of promise, little in the way of performance.” Genetic engineering will ful fill its potential ultimately, Milch E redicted. But in the meantime, e said, there is still plenty to do with the old techniques. IGI, he said, has patented a method of turning the refuse from Orange juice making — mostly peel and pulp — into a fungicide. The shells of crabs and lobsters, he said, have yielded a protein that can be used to kill certain species of (0 CL a> cc Ken’s Automotive 421 S. Main — Bryan 822-2823 “A Complete Automotive Service Center” One of IBI’s projects involves whey, a byproduct of cheese making that is high in protein and carbohydrate. The Amer ican dairy industry produces ab out 46 billion pounds of whey a year, Milch said. While some is used to produce non-dairy pro ducts like cofTee creamer and whipped topping, about half of it is simply thrown out. O 3 < 0) cu a. E o O Brakes Tune-Ups Clutches Front End Parts Replacement Standard Transmission Repairs GM Computer Testing All American Cars Datsun-Honda Toyota OPEN SATURDAYS 10% Discount with Student I.D. on parts (Master Card & VISA Accepted) CX V fy S$> Women’s shoes & bags Van Eli Nickles Liz Clairbome 9 West Nina Red Cross Magdesians Bags jCewii Shot GaMerij k -; 'i*. Post Oak Mall O 2 “In whey there are proteins -O and carbohydrates and ash,” (D Milch said. “From the proteins, <D you can make food and feed ^ products.” One of IBI’s pro- £. ducts, he said, is a supplement ° that adds protein to junk foods, 30 bread products and pet foods. ■S The biggest success IGI has 2. had with whey so far, however, is in manufacturing a culture medium for pharmaceutical companies. A medium is an en vironment in which bacteria can interact to make vitamins, hor mones, antibiotics and cheese it self. IGI uses “novel combinations of conventional state-of-the-art technology,” Milch said. “We’ve never lived in a re source-scarce society,” he said. “But I think we’re beginning to realize the resources aren’t free. When you’re dumping 23 billion pounds of whey you’re dumping a hell of a lot of material.” Milch was an orthopedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Uni versity School of Medicine when he became interested in business management and earned an M.B.A. from Loyola College in Baltimore. He was dean of gra duate management programs at Loyola, he said, “when a student came up with the idea of going into the enzyme business.” APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Delegates — Hosts — Hostesses MEDIA MMM a ^ HHh MSC SCONA 29 January 16 — 20 216 MSC Interviews January 23 — 25 OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS Costs uncontrollable United Press International NEW YORK — Business leaders who are hoping they can control health costs through redesigned medical plans, health maintenance organizations or for-profit hospitals may be in for frus tration, according to one ex pert. Dr. Richard Egdahl, direc tor of the Boston University Medical Center, argues that improved efficiency and re duction of waste will only stem the growth in health costs, not reduce them. “If we’re going to be se rious about cost.containment, I’m not sure we aren’t kidding ourselves by doing individual programs that really result in cost shifting,” he said in a tele phone interview. In the January issue of The Harvard Business Review, Egdahl argued that often- E roposed remedies to soaring ealth costs do not seem to save money overall. As an example, he cited programs that decrease the length of hospital stays. Since patients near the end of their stay are cheapest to care for, he wrote, beds wind up being filled with more critical cases and the average cost per hos pital day rises. While a given company may reduce its own costs, there is no system-wide savings. The American system is geared to providing almost unlimited medical care to ev ery citizen, Egdahl noted. Medical science continually finds more sophisticated and more expensive treatments. Reductions on one hand only seem to create more demand on another. in which patients expect to have to wait years for elective surgery and many citizens do not receive every conceivable treatment. In the past decade doctors increasingly have performed ambulatory surgery that allows their patients to avoid hospital stays, he wrote. But despite that, the rate of hospit al operations also increased on a per capita basis. ‘‘Competition among physicians has led to the intro duction of new marketing techniques, including adver tising, which may have in creased the public’s desire for elective surgery,” he con cluded. “Nobody over 65 in Eng land gets dialyzed,” Egdahl said. “The doctor says:‘It wouldn’t be good for you.' They’ve decided, in effect, to ration.” Cutting costs would mean reducing the number of avail able hospital beds and laying off workers, he added, “the price of getting true cost con tainment is very great. It's not only less jobs, it’s lessaccess.lt means in general things just won’t be as readily available.” M The only way to really slab lasn hospital costs is to slash the availability of care, Engdahl argued. ‘Most individual health care cost-management prog rams cannot succeed unless there is a simultaneous shrink age of the health care delivery sytem, including the number of hospitals and employees,” he wrote. In Britain, Egdahl said, health costs are controlled by an implicit rationing system. Egdahl doesn't believe Americans are ready to accept j such a change, and isn’t sure | they should be. But he argues I that it’s time to begin talking) about the hard choices that! would have to accompany a! dramatic cutback in health! costs so the population can i make informed choices. He is not, however, opposed to smaller cost con tainment programs. In fact, hys they will be necessary simply to hold back the inevit able increases in health cart spending that will come with an aging population. Hightower pessimistic Farms facing dange th ih United Press International DES MOINES — The na tion’s farmers must take an ac tive role in drafting and passing a “farmer program” by 1985 if family farms and rural com munities are to survive, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower said Wednesday. Hightower said American agriculture is in the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, due primarily to a decade of “high volume and low prices” farm policy that be gan under former U.S. Agricul ture Secretary Earl Butz. He said if the Reagan admi nistration’s current farm prog ram, or lack of one, is allowed to continue, the family farm will “be extinct by 1990.” He said farm policy has “gone from Butz to nuts” in the past 10 years. With government leaders soon to begin work on a 1985 farm bill, the Texas Democrat said his party has made the crisis facing agriculture, especially small producers, one of the lop issues in this year’s elections. “Today you can describe the American family farmer with just five words — he’s hardwork ing, efficient, innovative, pro ductive and broke,” said High tower. The Texan was in Iowa to g romote activities in Ames aturday that include a Demo cratic presidential candidate forum on agricultural issues. “Tens of thousands of them are being run out of business through qo fault of their own,” the chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s agricul ture council said. “As a result, our small towns are drying up and the economies of entire states in the farm belt remain severely depressed. “And what’s the administra tion’s response? John Block sort of shrugs his shoulders and David Stockman winks as ifhti] a little amused that people haHj caught on to his little scheme. “We can’t let them get awai with it, and we’re not goingto,’ Hightower said. “We’regoingn mak.e one very simple question! major issue in this election year Ate we going to have a lamis bed farm system or not?” Hightower will be one Democrats participating ini farm policy forum precedinr the candidate forum Saturdayitj discuss a comprehensive, Mjfi term farm program. Other panel members will it elude Kansas Gov. John Carlin Mel shot Rep. Tom Harkin, D-l0wa,Mit who nesota Commissioner of Ajpf joy 1 culture Jim Nichols andjiflf doin Wuttcl.m .m unsuccessful cand 1 an h Riordan, an unsuccessful cand dale for Iowa Secretary of Ap- culture in 1982. 5 Other Models Available Aggie Special $550.00 + TTL GET AROUND THE HIGH COST OF GETTING AROUND Whether shopping, commuting or just soaking up sun. the Aero” 50 is the economical way to make it all fun. 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Aero~ 50 TWIN CITY HONDA 903 South Main, Bryan 823-0545 Hightower urged Iowa far mers to attend the forum to put vide ideas to be included inti* 1985 farm legislation. “Te leas« lion; 1 of t anm job a pile “We want the wisdom an6\h experience of family farmers those individual entrepreneur! out on the turnrow who doni get to attend those closed-door, invitation-only Republican farm policy ‘summits’ but nonetheless nave to live under the policiei handed down to them from on high by a bunch of out-of-toud bureaucrats who wouldn’t kno» a hog from a howitzer.” an h A Davi (Mis; pel Corn Mee: : t Hightower said a “wholenev mechanism” is needed in farm policy to improve prices that far mers receive for their goods, saying the government has been “tossing farmers pigs’ feet and pork rinds but it’s about tiitf they got hams.” £or,nrnV tfn viteA 6 iio u '■et^ fjdri'nuul ' ( s/t ttny Sltt.di f ST/ttf t-x/an, fyanua'iu 49 } 4984, 'jdiSo't Sf^uau (0 ft. td'o'i tAtc/ie 3 > n£o / tmulio / n fyiade erf 260=60JO <yt SW a J 260 -2284 UULli phih siasn forev I T highl Weel by Itg gatay F comp bios: McM his “ been our ; and ^ Bo iress poun cessp good hood j j La: comii finish which m