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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

#51

Post by zokier »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #29

I watched Michael present one of the most engaging and exciting talks at HOPE11 in NYC last year. On stage, he proceeded to make Deraprim (The pharma bro's jacked up price anti-toxiplasmosis drug) live on stage and then throw it in the audience. He then called Martin live and said he was his arch rival. Brilliant! Michael you are a legend and hero for our new dystopian pharma world.

> On stage, he proceeded to make Deraprim (The pharma bro's jacked up price anti-toxiplasmosis drug) live on stage and then throw it in the audience

I'm not familiar with the case, but I feel like probably NurdRages "cake mix" comment probably applies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7hXFnSHZc

The question always is that when you are making something, what are your dependencies, where are you starting from. Afterall, to make an apple pie from scratch you need to invent the universe.

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

#52

Post by fallingfrog »

fhood wrote: post #50
fallingfrog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, if you're dealing with someone on equal terms, it sort of forces you to be fair with them. It's only when you have power over someone that the option of being a total bastard is available, IMHO.

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

#53

Post by Chiba-City »

I imagine a curate Wiki of credible home non-invasive therapies and management regimens would garner more positive response than "anarchic" direct confrontations. There are tons of such therapies underwritten by medical researchers across countries. These infantile theatrics mostly subtract from sound cost containment.

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

#54

Post by jfarlow »

moh_maya wrote: post #49
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…

It is a bit of a simplification - but not by that many orders of magnitude ;). The really hard part (like small molecules) is the R&D to come up with that sequence. Unlike small molecules though, most people have the technological prowess to brew beer, make yoghurt, or buy an espresso. I've encapsidated plasmids into viruses for viral delivery in the lab and it took a day or two of work in a BSL2 hood to produce thousands of units of the virus - delivery in that case was relatively trivial; though you are right, I've never delivered the virus to humans - and that is not (yet) trivial. But neither is it as complicated as even the most basic of surgeries - literally. As far as I've heard, the 'treatment' to cure blindness with the above (and similar therapies) is a puff of air (containing aerosolized AAV) into a patient's eye, once - while alternative treatments are things like a syringe inserted behind the eyeball every few weeks for the rest of one's life.

I'd argue that the significance of the achievement of these modern gene therapies is in just how simple the technology is relative to other medical procedures. In this case 'simple' is very much a result of an astounding amount of knowledge and work. It's so powerful precisely because it is simple.

And to be clear - I don't actually think anyone should be trying to cure their own cancers with garage-built immunotherapies today. Home-grown insulin-kombucha, maybe... But the technologies of today realistically enable that possibility in the nearish future precisely because they are so elegantly built. Recouping the cost of that R&D to produce something so simple & powerful is always a challenge - and that challenge is far more social in nature than scientific.

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

#55

Post by fallingfrog »

icebraining wrote: post #37
kemiller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been wondering lately if there is room for the notion of a conservative anarchist, who questions hierarchy but dismantles carefully and incrementally. Sure! Those are the collaborationists, and are the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I'm only half-joking, see what happened to the Mensheviks in 1917-1921.

Sad but there's a lot of truth to that: if you are fighting against a nation state with an army, you have to have your own army to fight it. And on the day when you are victorious, you'll find yourself sitting on a large plot of land and people and the only intact organization around will be.. your army. And the government you form will closely resemble an army in form and function, and the high ranking members of the army will tend to become high ranking members of the new government. Hardly a blueprint for universal freedom. That's what tends to happen to violent revolutions.

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

#56

Post by Y_Y »

dannyw wrote: post #9
leggomylibro wrote: post #2

That seems both super dangerous, and super awesome. It's not something that we should have to consider. But this is the world we live in, now; legitimate supply lines of life-saving medicine have collapsed for a fair number of people. I understand why people might be troubled by someone actively going out and advocating this as opposed to simply making the information available, but if you're offered medicine with 95…

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)

If you don't misrepresent it then I can hardly see how. Does the writer of a recipe book incur blame if someone undercooks their chicken?

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

#57

Post by joering2 »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #3

DIY pharmaceuticals is ....well it sounds immensely dangerous. Not only is the chemistry frightening but quality and chemical availability. It reminds me of Naturopaths and herboligists claiming to cure and treat ailments with supplements. As much as I hate the pharmaceutical industry, I think it's best for now to leave the drug making to them.

DIY pharmaceuticals sounds dangerous. Sure! So is eating 47 teaspoon of salt, 480 bananas, or drinking 179 expressos [1].

If you happen to be unable to afford so much coffee, just rent a car and smash into a tree at 100 miles per hour. So driving cars is also immensely dangerous!

I really hate that nany state we are living in where an average 16 year old is lawfully allowed to drive 5,000 pounds metal machine and kill people at even limited speeds of 50 mph, but yet when it comes to DIY pharmaceuticals we immediately see a vision of most population dying at home because they mixed something wrong.

https://gizmodo.com/how-many-x-would-you-need-to-eat-to-die-...

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

#58

Post by zokier »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #4

Next up - DIY Lasik surgery.

Isn't the actual surgery in LASIK-style operations pretty much fully automated anyways? Feels actually quite a bit safer than DIY pharmaceuticals. And the failure-modes of LASIK seem kinda less worse than in pharmaceuticals too.

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

#59

Post by Sangermaine »

leggomylibro wrote: post #2

That seems both super dangerous, and super awesome. It's not something that we should have to consider. But this is the world we live in, now; legitimate supply lines of life-saving medicine have collapsed for a fair number of people. I understand why people might be troubled by someone actively going out and advocating this as opposed to simply making the information available, but if you're offered medicine with 95…

>but if you're offered medicine with 95% efficacy that you can afford

But it's not clear at all this is the case here. The article itself notes that it's unknown whether anyone has ever used any of these DIY medicines/medical devices, let alone how well they actually work. For all we know he could be pushing complete nonsense that kills people.

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

#60

Post by rayiner »

> “To deny someone access to a lifesaving medication is murder,” he said. And “an act of theft [of intellectual property] to prevent an act of murder is morally acceptable.”

I agree with the conclusion, but for a different reason. "Theft" is the wrong way to think about IP. The economic function of IP is not to protect producers from consumers, but to protect producers from free-riding by other producers.[1] Thus, for example, stealing pills does not offend a drug creator's IP monopoly. Teaching people to make their own pills, who couldn't afford pills anyway, does not really do so either. It doesn't implicate the real purpose of the patent monopoly, which is to keep some other company from profiting by free-riding on the R&D of the original drug creator.

[1] To use a copyright analogy, copyright does not exist to protect content creators from downloaders, but to protect them from companies like Youtube, which make their profits by selling other peoples' content.

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