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*
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A new committee on student/
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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
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822-2823
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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.
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Front End Parts Replacement
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GM Computer Testing
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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.”
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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.
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Hightower urged Iowa far
mers to attend the forum to put
vide ideas to be included inti*
1985 farm legislation.
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“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.”
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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.”
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