“Shake and Bake” Meth is a new method of making methamphetamine and it is posing a risk even to those who never get anywhere near the drug. It is produced by combining raw, unstable ingredients in a 2-liter soda bottle. However if the person mixing the noxious brew makes the slightest error, like removing the cap too soon or accidentally puncturing the plastic, the mixture can explode, roasting the flesh and causing permanent disfigurement, blindness or even death. This method is also known as the “one pot” approach and it has become the method of choice because it yields meth in minutes rather than hours and it’s cheaper and easier to conceal. Anyone can carry the ingredients in a backpack and mix them in a bathroom stall or the seat of a car. However the explosions cause by this new method has filled hospitals with thousands of burn patients requiring advanced treatment. Larger meth labs have been bursting into flames for years but those were fires that people could usually escape; using the shake and bake method, the drug-makers typically hold the flammable mixture up close, causing burns from the waist to the face and these burn injuries can take weeks and months to heal. However medical science has a new tool, a spray gun that fires stem cells onto burned skin, cutting recovery time and saving lives.
Researchers are now harvesting stem cells from a patch of healthy skin, putting them into a water solution and then spraying the mixture onto the burned area, quickening the healing time to a few days. The process only takes 90 minutes, compared to the traditional treatments that can take weeks or months, from which patients are at risk of dying from infection. This skin gun device is being developed by researchers at the US-based University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. With this device, a section of skin heavily damaged by burns can be fully repaired. The recovery is incredibly fast and no need for months of rehabilitation.
From the medical perspective, the increase in the number of burn patients showing up on emergency rooms is due to the greater numbers of producers of meth using this fast and easy one pot method. Most of these burn victims are uninsured and it becomes a burden so costly to burn units of hospitals however with this new spray gun device, it will provide these burn victims hope for faster healing of burn injuries and at the same time, helps hospitals save money by the fast recovery it brings to the uninsured patients.
