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An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

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Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#41

Post by fallingfrog »

fallingfrog wrote: post #33
fhood wrote: post #6

Honest question: What does it even mean to be an anarchist these days? What is the default "anarchist"? Because Wikipedia isn't really helping.

In a nutshell: No masters, and no slaves.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-yo...

Favorite quote: "Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to."

Other favorite quote: "human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others. Give someone such power, they will almost invariably abuse it in some way or another."

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#42

Post by dpeterson »

wccrawford wrote: post #11

>Then he took another sip from a flute of Taittinger Champagne. What? >Swaggering, charismatic, and complex, Gag me. >Michael Laufer has become a fixture in the growing biohacker movement ever since he published plans last year for a do-it-yourself EpiPencil — a $35 alternative to the pricey EpiPen. That couldn't possibly go wrong, eh? >It’s not clear whether anyone has actually ever used a homemade EpiPencil to prev…

I don't think people understand just how quickly the liver, kidneys, hormone levels, your whole body can be destroyed in the blink of an eye by bad drugs. I would say, I've seen more than a few HN contributors have a less than cautious attitude toward recreational drugs. Drugs, period, without proper knowledge and guidance can do irreparable harm to internal organs and should be treated with proper respect.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#43

Post by QAPereo »

wavefunction wrote: post #13
dannyw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When you actively advocate for this, do you face moral responsibility when someone prepares it wrong and dies? (I’m pretty sure the legal answer would be yes on so many fronts)

I don't know that the legal system necessarily cares about morality or moral responsibility. It seems like the only criteria that would matter would be legal responsibility, whatever that standard might be.

If you take actions which a reasonable person would expect to cause harm to others, there is a legal dimension there ranging from civil liability, to the extreme of 2nd degree murder via “depraved indifference” statutes.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#44

Post by danharaj »

kemiller wrote: post #21
jchanimal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“”” Noam Chomsky: Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal famili…

Vs the classical conservative world view in which order, even if it's unjust, is usually better for everyone, even the people on the bottom, than chaos; and that dismantling power structures, if done suddenly or without care, is more likely to result in chaos than in a new, more just, order. I've been wondering lately if there is room for the notion of a conservative anarchist, who questions hierarchy but dismantles…

Some strains of Daoist thought could be construed as a conservative anarchism, although such conservatism would be completely at odds with conservatism these days.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#45

Post by dnautics »

>A decade ago, while he was volunteering with aid workers in El Salvador, Laufer said a nurse at a remote health outpost told him she’d run out of antibiotics and birth control pills — cheap, generic medicines that even her suppliers couldn’t immediately replenish. “This is ridiculous. They should be able to build their own simple lab” to make the pills, he recalled thinking at the time.

This is pure crazy. If these drug were generic (versus patented), the problem of getting them to El Salvador is not a price problem, it's a supply chain/infrastructure/corruption and theft/political (in the case of birth control in a very Catholic country) problem. Some of these drugs are highly complex and building, supplying, and feedstocking chemicals for a lab to make them is even harder than finding the money for a $5/pop or less prescription

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#46

Post by ShabbosGoy »

dpeterson wrote: post #42
wccrawford wrote: post #11

>Then he took another sip from a flute of Taittinger Champagne. What? >Swaggering, charismatic, and complex, Gag me. >Michael Laufer has become a fixture in the growing biohacker movement ever since he published plans last year for a do-it-yourself EpiPencil — a $35 alternative to the pricey EpiPen. That couldn't possibly go wrong, eh? >It’s not clear whether anyone has actually ever used a homemade EpiPencil to prev…

I don't think people understand just how quickly the liver, kidneys, hormone levels, your whole body can be destroyed in the blink of an eye by bad drugs. I would say, I've seen more than a few HN contributors have a less than cautious attitude toward recreational drugs. Drugs, period, without proper knowledge and guidance can do irreparable harm to internal organs and should be treated with proper respect.

Recreational drugs are one thing, synthesizing compounds yourself is another. The risk profiles are completely different.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#48

Post by dv_dt »

octaveguin wrote: post #40
WalterSear wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of medicine I require to be functional enough to hold down a job has risen so much that the copay is the equivalent of the entire out-of-pocket cost from a few years ago. The medication was discovered in 1969. The application method, which is the shitty excuse for the patents protecting its $2,200/month price tag, was first approved for use by the FDA in 1979. The drug has been for sale in it's current form…

Enbrel? They just received another patent extension, too. This is what government granted monopolies look like.

This is what the breakdown of working competitive markets look like, and in this case it takes both government monopolies, as well as well as overwhelming short-term greed on the part of the private companies.

Long term don't these companies think that charging outrageous prices for drugs will cause a future voter/government backlash of some sort... or maybe they think they should extract profits now because of a chance of drug price regulation coming to the US in the future?

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#49

Post by moh_maya »

jfarlow wrote: post #14

Open Insulin @ Counter Culture Labs: https://experiment.com/projects/open-insulin If you want to look at templates for your own immunotherapy, CRISPR, optogenetic tools etc.: https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/ Which, once built can be then be ordered as DNA, shapeways-style using: https://serotiny.bio/notes/pinecone/ The cure for certain kinds of blindness, just approved by the FDA yesterday is, in total, a well-de…

Oh man. I agree with your sentiment, but this is a remarkable over simplification!

The sequence may cost 700$ to synthesise. But it's delivery vector is a virus. Synthesizing the DNA, encapsulating the DNA in the virus.. not trivial stuff.

While I agree that drug prices in the US are absurd beyond comprehension or justification, and I've had a ring side view of life sci research, drug development as well as the drug pricing; to posit that, hah, a path breaking gene therapy product just costs a few hundreds or a couple of thousands to produce is misrepresenting the complexity as well as the significance of the achievement.

The amount of research (largely public funded but for the clinical trials, which may also have been public funded: no idea) to get to this point is staggering. the company also likely invested large amounts to Shepard a lab possibility into a viable treatment. FDA approval is a big deal because they are, justifiably, exceedingly strict. It is an arduous process.

There has to be a better solution, which would start with allowing the US CMS / Medicare & Medicaid to negotiate drug prices with the manufacturers. The problem is policy.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#50

Post by fhood »

fallingfrog wrote: post #41
fallingfrog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a nutshell: No masters, and no slaves.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-yo... Favorite quote: "Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to." Other favorite quote: "human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others. Give someone such power, they will almost invariably abuse it in some way or another."

What on earth would give a person that impression?
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