It's a lucrative operation and the products are modified before injection to make them less contagious preventing 'resale'.
Syd has a side-line in infecting himself with product to get it out of the building, extracting it and undoing the copy protection for sale on the bootleg market.
When he gets a chance at an amazing scoop he injects himself straight from the source.
No good will come of this
CW: needles, lots of needles and mild body horror throughout
Brandon Cronenberg follows in his father's footsteps with a high concept body horror yukfest.
This is a world where there are butchers and restaurants selling meat cultured from celebrity muscle cells.
It's all very weird and stylised but the absurd parasocial relationships shown here are closer to reality than when this was made a decade ago. There were Mr. Beast chocolate bars on the counter of the petrol station the other day. OK they weren't grown from his body but...
I'm not sure what it really says about this productisation of the person though. Setting aside the fleshy parasocial weirdness it becomes a pretty standard story of industrial espionage and corporate ruthlessness and it's far too long. Maybe when it was made it would have seemed more impactful.
If you loved Cronenberg of old this is for you. Anybody else, maybe not 6/10.