> Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on a budget outside of institutional channels.<p>Synthesized. Not developed. Synthesizing medicines is easy. Developing them is extremely difficult.
This is truly amazing work, and I hope they are able to achieve their goals. The future of humanity depends on it.<p>If you want to help, they need someone to crack a rar file containing the Chematica data (which was acquired by Merck pharmaceuticals)<p><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelSLaufer/status/1022637265602768896" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/MichaelSLaufer/status/102263726560276889...</a>
> <i>At the pharmacy, a pair of single use Mylan epipens can cost over $600 and the company’s generic version costs $300 per pair, but an ongoing shortage means you probably can’t find them, even if you can afford them.</i><p>This was true years ago but not anymore. CVS sells a generic epipen two-pack for $109 [1]. Still not cheap, but let’s not pretend that these cost $300 and are not even available. I wanted to like this article but when I read this it made me think either reading journalist didn’t check his facts or is more invested in the narrative than reality.<p>1: <a href="https://www.cvs.com/content/epipen-alternative" rel="nofollow">https://www.cvs.com/content/epipen-alternative</a><p>Edit: I posted this even though I figured it would attract downvotes. I’m curious if downvoters think my claims are untrue or don’t like the way I’ve phrased my comment.<p>To me, an article I can’t trust is basically worthless, which is why I pointed these inaccurate facts out.
As a former pharmaceutical chemist I’m calling bullshit.<p>Could they have made a few grams of nalaxone? Sure it’s pretty simple. Did they make enough to make a difference? No. Did they make sufficiently pure drug so that people don’t get poisoned? Probably not.<p>And did they make the AIDS drug? He’ll no. That synthesis is way more complicated than their mini lab can handle.<p>It makes for good VICE articles, but these guys are amateurs who are likely going to get someone killed.
I wish there was an equivalent of CI and peer-reviewed pull-requested contribution to their system, to ease collaborative improvement to the methods. You'd really want many sets of eyes able to look at all aspects of the drugs to vastly reduce risk.
> After a few minutes of gloating about pharma bro Martin Shkreli “rotting at Fort Dix” for raising the price of Daraprim<p>Except that’s totally unrelated to why he’s in prison.
> These precursors are controlled by the federal government ... they’d make medicine from poison [by using the street drugs to get back to the precursors]<p>cf: “A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudophedrine from N-Methylamphetamine”<p><a href="https://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf</a>
I don’t know if YC proactively seeks organizations to fund but these folks look like a pretty small potential investment with a huge social win. If ever there was a time to “do good” with that enormous pile of capital and connections y’all have— this might be it.
><i>“...the price of Daraprim hasn’t changed,” he said. He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of white pills. “I guess I better hand out some more,” Laufer said as he tossed the Daraprim into the audience.</i><p>I found it hard to keep reading after that. What's it called when people get so emotional about a cause they just start acting irrationally and doing more harm than good?
<i>...Chematica’s database is currently posted on a password protected website on the dark web. During his talk at HOPE this year, Laufer implored the audience to help with cracking the password and releasing the data into the world.</i><p>They're talking about an encrypted file, right? If Merck just had this posted on "the dark web", constantly hammering them with bad passwords would probably clue them in. Incidentally, which did Merck value more, the database or the opportunity to keep it away from this group?
Michaels first HOPE talk in 2016 is really worth watching - <a href="https://archive.org/details/livestream-130731041" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/livestream-130731041</a>.<p>I was at his 2018 talk and the Vice article did an excellent job of summing it up. Usually the HOPE videos come online a few weeks after the conference (it was last weekend).
This sort of reminds me of the ability to 3D print guns. Technology gets cheaper and more efficient and ultimately democratizes access to "things"... Physical printed items, transportation, drugs... I think we're only scratching the surface here with this.
An interesting approach to the criminal lack of healthcare to vulnerable populations in the US (and potentially other places with third world health systems)
The essential problem here seems to be that the FDA approval process for medicine laboratories is impractically severe and probably represents an instance of regulatory capture.<p>While this is cool, it doesn't seem to generate attention in a way that could fix the underlying problem, except by dint of people who already know about it. Legislators are infamously subject to undue influence from medical companies that want to protect their oligopolies. A better hacking initiative might work to expose and excoriate those pharmaceutical and medical device companies which have abused the right to lobby in order to generate profits.
I met Michael at free software conference in Havana, Cuba in November. Didn't know who he was at first, after one of the talks he approached me and asked me if I wanted to get a beer. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well and turned him down. Later I saw him give a talk and realized he was the EpiPencil guy. He gave a great talk and I had the opportunity to have a few more conversations with him. He's obviously very intelligent. But he's also a deeply empathetic and passionate person who's giving his best effort to make the world a better place. Super inspiring!
If you like pharma piracy, and dystopian science fiction, you may also like Annalee Newitz's novel _Autonomous_ <a href="https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/11/15/read-the-first-four-chapters-of-autonomous-by-annalee-newitz/" rel="nofollow">https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/11/15/read-the-first-four-...</a>
> “The rhetoric that is espoused by people who defend intellectual property law is that this is theft,” Laufer told me. “If you accept that axiomatically, then by the same logic when you withhold access to lifesaving medication that's murder. From a moral standpoint it's an imperative to enact theft to prevent murder.”<p>Exactly what I would also say as pro capitalist but anti patent.<p>The article is not about anarchism. It is about not staying idle while people can't afford drugs. The methods may be questionable, like the partnership with dealers. But at least they try to do something.<p>I just hope there is a way for them to make money without legal risks
> “The rhetoric that is espoused by people who defend intellectual property law is that this is theft,” Laufer told me. “If you accept that axiomatically, then by the same logic when you withhold access to lifesaving medication that's murder. From a moral standpoint it's an imperative to enact theft to prevent murder.”<p>If it's murder to apply intellectual property law and withhold drugs...what do we call the untold number of deaths that will result in the absence of a profit motive for developing new medicines? Is that murder?<p>The views of these people are childish and dangerous. I love their spirit, but their actual message here is just stupid and illiterate of basic economics.
>Although the initial clinical results with cabotegravir were extremely promising, Four Thieves grew impatient with waiting for it to become commercially available. (The drug is currently undergoing Phase III FDA trials, which means it’s being clinically tested on a large cohort of human subjects.)<p>>After Four Thieves synthesized cabotegravir, it was just a matter of convincing at-risk populations to use it. According to Laufer, some Four Thieves affiliates began partnering with heroin dealers to cut their product with the cabotegravir.<p>I know nothing about chemistry/medicine, but this seems stupidly dangerous. There are good reasons to be patient and wait for drugs to go through the phase trials.<p>It also seems stupidly dangerous to allow uneducated/untrained people to make their own drugs at home by following directions. What if they unknowingly miss a step? For instance, the article is stating that opioids are needed to create Naloxone. That would be a costly mistake to make. They should never release this particular recipe.<p>These are truly brilliant people who probably have not spent a lot of time hanging around the average person. One reason governments and systems are in place is to prevent the non-well-rounded geniuses from giving an untrained mind an opportunity to make a devastating mistake.<p>EDIT: This reminds me of the guy who attempted to develop a nuclear reactor in his parents shed. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn</a>
This owns. It's important to realize that a lot of at-risk populations that would most benefit from medication are often the most economically disadvantaged, and that our current healthcare system often excludes them from the help they need. Obviously, lab-grade medication is less risky than stuff that's been produced in a mason jar, but when the choice is between having access to life-saving medical equipment or not, the choice is pretty clear. If you have concerns with how this could hurt people, then the best solution would be to make sure that everyone has access to the care they need, rather then allocating care on the basis of how much they can afford.