pharmer
(FAR.mur)
n.
A scientist who creates pharmaceutical products by incorporating modified DNA into the cells of a plant or animal. —pharming, n. The practice of creating pharmaceuticals in this manner.
Example Citation:
"Designed plants that resist frost or insect pests have been around for a while now; somewhat newer is the engineering of cows that give milk containing large amounts of useful proteins. (The people who do this by injecting extraneous genes into cow embryos like to call themselves 'pharmers,' short for pharmaceutical farmers.)"
—Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box
Earliest Citation:
Animals with human genes aren't a novelty. Over the last few years gene splicers have, for instance, created sheep with human growth hormone and pigs with insulin in their blood. But harvesting the drugs requires killing the animals — a waste of the effort and expense it takes to engineer them. So when, in 1987, researchers slipped a human gene into mice so that they produced a human protein in their milk, "molecular pharmers" saw their chance.
—Sharon Begley, "Barnyard Bioengineers," Newsweek, September 9, 1991
