Collagen

Nizorel have now removed animal collagen from their shampoo. I thought you might like to know that.

That made me wonder a little more about collagen, and its use in cosmetic procedures. One website informed me:

"Several types of Collagen fillers are on the market. For example, collagen fillers containing human collagen include CosmoDerm and Cosmoplast. Cow (bovine) collagen fillers include Zyderm and Zyplast. ArteFill is a hybrid gel filler consisting of millions of synthetic microspheres (polymethylmethacrylate or PMMA) suspended in purified bovine (cow) collagen."

Synthetic microspheres suspended in purified bovine collagen, eh? And who is donating the human collagen? Apparently there aren't lines of plump skinned toddlers being marched down to the Pfeizer HQ to alleviate their parents' poverty through skin juice removal; scientists can make their own human collagen. Though if they do that is it really human collagen? It's never been in a human. It might be the same stuff, but there's a sense of ownership implied here. It would be like calling an apple OS compatible computer a Mac. It isn't, even if it's identical in all serious respects? It's nothing more than a human-compatible rip-off.

Humans clearly need a patent. I'm human. Do I get any money every time someone makes some human collagen? Everytime someone spends £100 on getting some quorn-style human juice pumped into their forehead, a proportion of the fee ought to be hived off, dividing by 6,000,000,000 and shared out amongst everyone around the world. Except Rupert Murdoch, a man who clearly has no collagen, and is only just human.