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Massachusetts court paves way for reviews of tainted drugs cases

Massachusetts’ top court on Monday paved the way for potentially thousands of people convicted of drugs crimes to be re-tried because their cases involved evidence from a rogue crime lab scientist. The decision from the Supreme Judicial Court is the latest fallout from one of the country’s biggest crime lab scandals, in which scientist Annie Dookhan tainted as many as 40,000 drugs cases at the now-closed Hinton State Laboratory Institute

Gene breakthrough sparks 'home-brewed morphine' fears

Other experts agreed, saying anyone with basic skills could use such a yeast to churn out morphine, codeine and drugs using a simple home-brew beer kit. The discovery, published in the scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology, comes on the heels of a study published last month in the journal PLOS ONE. Together, the papers describe key steps towards bio-engineering yeast that would feed on sugar and exude opiates and other