- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Sharing because I found this very interesting.
The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has a DIY design for a home lab you can set up to reproduce expensive medication for dirt cheap, producing medication like that used to cure Hepatitis C, along with software they developed that can be used to create chemical compounds out of common household materials.
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They have released a guide on making a CLR (basically several different pieces of lab equipment controlled to automate some of the process) and software to run on it to assist in the process of making the medications. Specifically to try and improve consistency of the medications produced.
It’s a really great cause. Worth reading the article. If someone had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars cost to access life-saving medication, and they couldn’t afford it, something like this could legitimately save their life.
And it’s only made more inspiring by the fact that he has his own personal history with the pharmaceutical industry that didn’t work for him.
I found another article on him and the collective, and there’s this honestly saddening quote:
“A toast to the dead, for children with cancer and AIDS,” Laufer said, raising a glass of bourbon and quoting the hip hop artist Felipe Andres Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique. “A cure exists, and you probably could have been saved.”
It’s even posted up on their page for the MicroLab right at the top.
He does mention the fact that medicine research is hard and requires money but doesn’t explain how to solve that. This is a big argument of big pharma prices, they say it finances future research. I think a good example is how incredibly fast we got a COVID vaccine. It happened because private investors had massively invested in research platforms and they invested because they are expecting gains.
How to solve it is simple, our tax dollars already pay for the research, the results are public property
Isn’t it the case that a lot of the research is funded by governments through universities and then the pharmaceutical companies come in and scoop up the IP and charge crazy prices.
Not only that, but then they go and blow half of their budget on adverts instead of R&D.
that’s not the full story though. according to the NIH, the US government spent over 30 billion dollars on the covid vaccines.
and this is not unique to the covid vaccine. here’s a source with two particularly damning quotes:
“Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has invested close to $900 billion in the basic and applied research that formed both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.”
and
A 2018 study on the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) financial contributions to new drug approvals found that the agency “contributed to published research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010–2016.” More than $100 billion in NIH funding went toward research that contributed directly or indirectly to the 210 drugs approved during that six-year period.
Ok, so we should be able to control the prices for drugs where the research has been publicly funded. But how do we avoid losing the private investors who contributed?
Medicine still works in europe and is also being developed in europe. Maybe look at how the EU/european countries do it? A lot of it is having regulations. The free market isn’t free if the choice between getting the product or not is the difference between life and death.
well, according to the congressional budget office,
In 2023, federal subsidies for health insurance are estimated to be $1.8 trillion
and this report by research america shows that the private sector spent around $150 billion on “research and development” in 2019.
it’s no secret that the private healthcare industry jacks up the prices of things to increase profits. so, some napkin math makes me think it’s not that far-fetched to think that we can save more than $150 billion in healthcare subsidies if we stop privatized healthcare and dramatically lower the costs of medical care. we could then put that $150 billion back into research, without needing to appease the private sector at all.
Nitro Clorox Queen 👑! For your COVID! It’s better than over the counter hydrocloroqueen!
You wouldn’t download a
carlife saving medicine!This is extremely dangerous and also something I feel must be considered a natural and obvious extension of a right I believe to be fundamental: bodily autonomy.
Would I do this? Probably not, maybe for some medicines, that are easily made administrable from bulk chemicals but likely not. But behind all rights stands bodily autonomy. It is your flesh and not mine. If we don’t want people doing this themselves the lever we should use is easing access to expert made medicines. Desperate people do stupid things.
Also this is cyberpunk as hell and aesthetically I’m so here for it
I think an off the shelf microlab that can reliably synthesize a particular medicine is something that’s commercially viable, which is probably a safe middle ground here and sort of what they’re proof of concepting. Rather than putting together a DIY lab like this, a pre-made kit that makes one medication would easily make a ton of meds available. Not just here but all around the world.
There was a serious fight against this in the COVID years, saying it was fighting anti-science that was recommending fake medicine to people. How can this model possibly subvert what happened in those years?
I agree with the idea of bodily autonomy. Above all, someone should have the right to do, or not do, whatever they want with their own person.
Whether that is to listen to doctors advice, buy pharmaceuticals and self-administer as prescribed, or even end your own life, and everything in between.
Quick disclaimer, suicide should still be evaluated by a psychiatric professional, and simply being suicidal shouldn’t necessarily mean that nobody can, or should stop you from committing that act. I’m mostly referring to medically assisted self termination, after the appropriate safeguards, checks, and balances have been cleared. Simply wanting to off yourself without being cleared as having sound mind should be something we, as a society, should address carefully, with the assistance of mental health professionals.
With all that being said: I probably would DIY some pharmaceuticals. Anything that’s an opiate or other restricted substance, definitely not. But if I can buy the ingredients without needing a special permit or license, I definitely would.
Compounding pharmacies should not be subjected to patents. Then the costs are all local instead of tithes to the corporate clergy.
This is extremely dangerous and also something I feel must be considered a natural and obvious extension of a right I believe to be fundamental: bodily autonomy.
There is a significant distinction between the right to bodily autonomy and the right to distribute quack medicine. And that’s sort of the rub. As soon as you start marketing your product to third parties under false pretexts, we’re not longer talking about an individual’s right to self. And we get into an even more tangled web when we start talking about health care for children or the elderly, who lack the mental acuity to make informed choices.
Also this is cyberpunk as hell and aesthetically I’m so here for it
Everyone wants to get the military grade Sandevistan drive. Nobody thinks they’re going to succumb to cyberpsychosis.
Hope John Green is aware of this. He’s fighting tuberculosis globally!
By far one of the most interesting articles I’ve seen on Lemmy so far, thanks for the link
404 Media is doing excellent work; if you like this kind of thing you might want to sign up for their newsletter.
While this is definitely an interesting proposition, for most people in the US wouldn’t something like Mark Cuban’s CostPlus drugs website be a more reasonable solution?
They don’t have everything and especially rare mega expensive stuff that’s not widely generic options
They could do that, but the drugs are still much too expensive comparatively, and it doesn’t include many drugs, especially the ones that are the most absurdly priced.
For instance, after looking through various articles on him and scraping together some of the data, out of the medications referenced as being some that he’s made:
Misoprostol (Abortion Medication) - $14.90 on CPG - $0.89 via MicroLab
Sovaldi (Cures Hepatitis C) - Not available on CPG (normally $84,000) - $70 via MicroLab
Kalydeco (Treats Cystic Fibrosis) - Not available on CPG (Normally ~$500/day) - $10/day via MicroLab
Daraprim (Treats Parasitic Diseases & Some AIDS Patients) - $2443/30 pills on CPG - $80/30 Pills via MicroLab
Epinephrine (Treats Allergic Reactions, AKA epipen) - Not available on CPG (Normally $650-$750) - Initially $30 via MicroLab ($3/reload after)
The pharmaceutical industry is so screwed up, and these prices only show it more clearly.
I believe every American knows someone whose life is made substantially worse because of a lack of access to healthcare.
I want to set this up and learn to use it. I want to keep it and maintain it and wait. Because I’ll inevitably hear from someone that they can’t afford their life-saving medication.
Oh, also I have an exceedingly rare hereditary disease, so it feels like a certainty I’ll need it for myself someday.
I know someone whose life is made substantially worse because they have a lack of access to healthcare. They live in Europe and can’t get access to the specialized medicine that they need in the timeframe that they need it in. I’m not saying that socialized medicine is bad—I’m actually all for it—but it needs to be implemented well foe it to actually work. This is just my anecdotal evidence to say that just because everyone has access doesn’t automatically mean it’s adequate access.
I can’t really comment on the European experience though, so I said American, which I am, and which I am qualified to talk about.
I’m not European either. I’m also American. I wasn’t contradicting anything you were saying; I agree with it. I was just trying to add to the discussion by suggesting that if we are going to get universal healthcare right in America, we have to consider a lot more than just free access.
This seems both awesome and dangerous. The two analogies that come to mind are home canning and home brewing. They’re both generally safe and easy. But every so often someone gives their family botulism.
True. A lot of drugs you can perform tests on. But there is an inherent risk. I don’t think making medicine at home is going to be many people’s first choice. I think the people most likely to pursue this are those for whom obtaining medication other ways is not possible. When the government makes it impossible for someone to obtain health care, either due to literally making it illegal or by allowing it to become completely unaffordable for working class people, then they have to resort to other options.
With patience and diligent work it is possible to make many medications with (by comparison) significantly cheaper resources. And if someone were to do this, presumably, there are others who also have similar needs for the medications being produced. Which is how community medicine networks are formed. DIY Hormone replacement medications for trans people living in places where it’s illegal for them to access medication, or otherwise extremely difficult often access medicines made through networks like that.
This isn’t really a new thing, but the ease of access to documentation on how to do it certainly is new.
Yup. The trans community has been doing this with HRT meds for YEARS because it was either straight up illegal, or almost impossible to obtain access because of the dozens of hoops you had to jump through.
When a person has nothing left to lose they will take chances that otherwise they wouldn’t. If we weren’t living in a corporatocracy, perhaps there’d be no demand for this sort of thing, but we do and there is.
With the same risk to blindness as moonshine?
That was due to additives to ethanol cleaning agents - it was a thing done on purpose
If you’re going to die because you can’t afford it, then does the risk really matter?
And when you do die, you won’t see it coming!
I you make your own, there is no risk for blindness. Blindness comes from methanol, not ethanol. If you use a yeast based process to produce the alcohol and then distill it, there is no way to accidentally produce methanol in that process. The cases where people get blind or die from moonshine stems from when the feds replaced moonshine with methanol to be able to make that claim and disrupt the business of organized crime during the prohibition. There are still cases now and then where people try to make drinkable alcohol from some industrial base and don’t know how to.
TLDR: Don’t buy, make.
And use copper pot still with silver solder.
You are correct. If I gave the impression that it is a safe endeavour, I am sorry. It is safe IF done correctly, but it can get explodey if you fuck up bad enough.
Do your research, keep it small scale and don’t sell.
Piracy is how you got Netflix.
This is how we’ll change the pharmaceutical industry. They’ll overreact and Streisand Effect this and it’ll blow up. Become normalized. The open source tech will improve.
This is a good thing. Period.
The all new sudafeb…like Sudafed but with a D at the end because they’re chemically the same just with a D at the end.
I wish there was some kind of open source collective organization under which you could release anything with eternal open source license that’d be free forever. It could be anything from software, tech or medicine like penicillin so that megacorps could not benefit from it in any way.
The Open Source Initiative has a giant list of licenses that anyone can use to make their works fully open-source.
Some are just for code, but I’m sure they could be adapted to things like medicine, if needed.
Pirating movies and games can’t kill you
Home brewing seizure medication can
This is America dude. Human life costs $7.25 an hour here. We can’t even do anything to keep children safe from their number 1 killer here.
Nobody cares. Those who do care are completely powerless to change anything.
Yes. Mistakes will happen. People will die. People die every day right now. Many of them because they can’t afford life saving medicine. I’d happy take a risk on this before I’d saddle my family with $50,000 a month for medicine that you can get in Canada or Mexico for $50.
Move to Canada.
Instructions unclear, moved to Alberta and I’m surrounded by Trump flags and austerity measures.
Canada doesn’t accept just anyone for no reason.
Can confirm. I tried. Long time ago. Spoke to a lady at a Canadian Embassy.
I didn’t meet the education requirements.
We can’t even do anything to keep children safe from their number 1 killer here.
By this the parent commenter means “car crashes,” by the way. Car dependent zoning is literally mass-murdering more children than school shooters ever did and we’re doing almost nothing to fix it.
I personally think open source software and hardware is a good starting point to making DIY stuff legal in the future.
Man, I would be so worried about impurities and side reactions. A good example is the recalls of drugs because of nitrosamine contamination. If stuff like this already happens to the experts.
And what is with the whole galenics side? How to make sure the absorption is about right…
If stuff like this already happens to the experts.
Keep in mind that almost all drugs are made in India. There is a huge issue with corporate corruption as well as poverty wages that prevent workers from ever whistleblowing. It’s a disastrous combination. It’s frankly a miracle that things don’t go wrong more often.
The corruption runs so deep that pharmaceutical factories keep exploding and wiping out whole towns every few years.
Here’s a fun thought, the drug you make fails but doesn’t kill you.
Instead you now have another life long ailment that cause pain/degradation of daily life.
Sounds like a great idea.
And that’s different from the commercial pharmaceutical industry how?
Commercial drugs are giving people life long diseases on top of the ones they’re trying to cure?
News to me, got any source?
Never heard of, eg, Vioxx or thalidomide, I take it?
The most notorious is probably thalidomide, but there are plenty others on this list of withdrawn drugs that cause long-term side effects.
Very interesting, I wasn’t aware of specifics. Obviously I don’t think it’s impossible, but I would think that the grand majority don’t, while this bootleg technique would have a higher rate of creating worse problems for people already suffering and essentially sealing their fate.
We need to tackle big pharma for the problem it is: greed and neglect and I don’t think a pirated solution will make that in any way better for people.
Maybe it does for some but hurts others worse. Which is the same coin as big pharma but worse for some. That’s my perspective, but I hope that an open-source style solution would gain more traction rather than one that’s essentially just ripped music.
People deserve to be healthy
As opposed to dying from the disease you already have because the traditional pharmaceutical industry makes the drugs you need out of your price range?
It won’t be a life long ailment for long if you’re going to die from a lack of care soon anyways.
No no.
In addition to
And stop pretending that the only people to use this are those that would absolutely need it. You know damn well penny pinchers would also go after this
