I know a bunch about pharma. The folks who are doing this and saying it's cheaper are often completely neglecting costs that are borne by corporations: the initial R&D, but also the immense amount of quality control and regulatory compliance.<p>I've also talked to the biohackers. S ome of them are smart, careful, and just get stuff done in the lab. Then there are the attention hogs who inject themselves on youtube (typically with no ability to know if they did anything at all), many of whom, after a few years, realize that what they are doing is naive, and that there was actually a reason for the entire establishment around pharma.
I hope we can eventually have self-contained machines that can synthesize many different types of medications. By certifying the machines or testing them thoroughly, you can lessen the worry that people will synthesize the drugs wrong.<p>I think this is almost possible for a large range of simple, small-molecule drugs.
I remember a few years ago, someone made a suggestion, that, because a lot of these overpriced drugs are paid by insurance companies.<p>So why don't insurance companies contract an independent lab to make their own medicine instead of paying ridiculously high prices for out-of-patent medicine? Of course, it would be a proper lab, with certifications and quality control, not some guy's basement, so it would be expensive, but on the other hand, the alternative is also way too expensive.
It all sounded nice and good until I read the part about the microlab using spare bicycle tubing, and wanting drug dealers to cut heroin with PrEP meds...what can possibly go wrong with cutting everh dose of heroin with an HIV drug made through bicycle plastic tubing?
Not an Anachist but I wonder how much of the danger here is due to the law. Ideally they would simply be selling the epipencils and doing testing etc but there is no way they would be able to do this. So instead the best they can do is create DIY kits.<p>I wonder how far they can legally push the DIY kit. Can they ship you supplies with the kit? Can they ship you expresso-like packs for your DIY machine?
I love this. I have a disorder with no cure, so I will take medication daily for the rest of my life. Worse, it's a controlled substance, so there are all sorts of obstacles thrown in my way arbitrarily. I have to get a new prescription written by my doctor every 3 months, which is a pain in the ass as I have to deal with the bureaucracy. Every time I change jobs, new insurance requires "prior authorization" in addition to a new prescription, so more BS. If I'm traveling abroad, the pharmacy can't ship overseas, and if I get a prescription there, the insurance company won't cover it (and it's more than $1000 / month). Doctors office running a few days behind or not answering faxes (lol) from the pharmacy when I need a new script (happens most of the time I need one)? SOL. Fuck this whole system. I am sick of having to ask permission to get the medicine I need.
> “If you're going to die and you're being denied the medicine that can save you, would you rather break the law and live, or be a good upstanding citizen and a corpse?”<p>It's obviously better to risk using DIY medicine than to die, and it sounds appealing—mutual aid, neighbors helping neighbors, saving lives with free medicine! But framing it this way significantly misrepresents the issue of for-profit medicine.<p>People mostly aren't dying because they can't afford life-saving medicine. They are selling their homes, emptying retirement accounts and their kids college funds, going into debt and going bankrupt to pay for life-saving medicine.<p>These guys have given people a new option. You don't have to go into debt—you could instead choose DIY medicines of dubious quality that could have costly medical consequences for you.<p>This isn't quite as appealing. It isn't some radical, utopian alternative. It's just how the system works today for poor people in so many areas of life: education, housing, food, medical care, etc. The rich can afford quality, while the poor have to make hard trade-offs and take risks to stretch their dollars.
I can get the medicines I need to "save" me. I can't get the medicines that would help me to die. I wonder what this group's moral posture is on using their equipment to manufacture Nembutal (or other barbiturates).<p>I would like to have 15g of Nembutal in a safe place, so that I can kill myself painlessly and without leaving a mess, should the circumstances require that. I know that no medical professional would help me do that, because they would immediately be disqualified. Instead they would have to strive officiously to prolong my life.<p>Nembutal is illegal to possess, at least it is here. That's not like the drugs this group are helping people to make, which are all legal to possess provided you have a prescription, or so the article says. There's no "therapeutic" use for Nembutal that can't be met by a safer drug.<p>As a result Nembutal is really difficult to source (also because it's part of the traditional cocktail used in US death-by-poisoning executions).
This is pretty interesting, but skimming the article I didn't see any mention of lab testing the purity and quantity of drugs produced. There's a lot of fiery talk but how do we know that the results are usable?
Due to the pandemic I’ve often thought about what the ideal model for vaccines and other drugs would be. I understand that there’s enormous costs for pharma companies to bring a new drug to the market, and I guess a lot of new drug prospects end up not going anywhere, but it’s hard to swallow that there’s drugs out there that are cheap to manufacture and are life saving (or life changing) for people that need them yet some/many of them can’t afford them.<p>What’s the best way to fix this? Direct government funding? Indirect one via subsidising the drugs for those who need it? Im
My first thought was how dangerous this is. Then after thinking some more, I was left questioning how a developed country can mess up so badly that some people feel this is their only option.
> After a few minutes of gloating about pharma bro Martin Shkreli “rotting at Fort Dix” for raising the price of Daraprim, a lifesaving HIV medicine, from $13 to $750, Laufer grew serious. “It’s been two years, but despite everything that’s happened, the price of Daraprim hasn’t changed,” he said.<p>Shkreli went to jail for securities fraud- not raising the price of a drug. I think Shkreli was a convenient scapegoat for the pharmaceutical industry though. All the time and energy people spent angry at Shkreli was time spent not directing their anger at the industry that allowed it.