(Open Source) - The International Laboratory for the Identification of New Drugs - '..new antibiotics..'

<blockquote>'The ILIAD project looks to amass an army of citizen scientists

Along with Mark Opal, a neurobiologist specializing in drug development, Zayner has launched The International Laboratory for the Identification of New Drugs (or "The ILIAD Project"). The idea behind ILIAD is remarkably simple: instead of relying on research institutions and pharmaceutical companies to come up with new antibiotics, ask citizen scientists to do it instead by having them test specimens like plants and insects for antibiotic properties. Indeed, heaps of conventional antibiotics owe their existence to nature: penicillin is derived from fungi, and a promising drug devised from the Chinese plant red sage is currently in clinical trials.

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With some of the money they raise online, the two also plan to develop an interactive, Wiki-style ILIAD website — one that offers a map-based database of which substances have been tested, in which locations, and whether or not they yielded successful results. The site would operate as a one-stop shop, they hope, for professional and citizen scientists alike. "People in the community can verify your results, or identify specimens you aren't familiar with," Zayner says. "What we really want is for this to be used by people around the world."

And if one of the project's participants does hit the jackpot with that weird-looking root they found in a nearby forest? They might not garner international acclaim, as Zayner notes that the patent system "is kind of fucked up, and doesn't acknowledge first to discover," but they will be making a valuable contribution to thwarting a growing public health risk. And for Zayner, the importance of open-sourced science is just that possibility. "I grew up during the open-sourced software movement, and computing was completely changed by that," he says. "I want science to work the same way. Imagine the breakthroughs we could have if science was available to everybody." '

- Katie Drummond, Drug detectives: scientists want to crowdsource the discovery of new antibiotics, December 2, 2013</blockquote>


Context

<blockquote>(The Electric Universe - Electrified plasma) To Heal - '..the new world of plasma medicine..'</blockquote>