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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

#141

Post by namlem »

WalterSear wrote: post #23
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…

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…

Can you not just get it from an online Canadian pharmacy?

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

#142

Post by abhi3 »

rayiner wrote: post #60

> “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, fo…

The purpose of granting patents historically was to incentivize innovators to bring their knowledge into the public domain in exchange for a monopoly for a certain period of time. Before patents, there was a disincentive to sharing your knowledge as others would free ride on it so inventors would just sell their products on their own and their knowledge would likely die with them. Imagine you developed penicillin but there were no patents. You just sell it and never tell anyone how you created it.

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

#143

Post by milcron »

alexanderstears wrote: post #109
Sangermaine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Long term don't these companies think that charging outrageous prices for drugs will cause a future voter/government backlash of some sort No, because it demonstrably won't. People say they're angry and then do nothing about it. The US has an entire political party angrily decrying any effort to regulate healthcare as socialist slavery. The drug companies know they'll be just fine. Maybe some token slaps on the wris…

the US has an entire political party angrily decrying any effort to regulate healthcare as socialist slavery. Argubly regulation is the problem we're in this mess. Do you think an epipen would cost $600 if there weren't a Government granted monopoly? We have two parties who love the current amount of regulations on competition - you need to go to an AMA approved medical school to become a doctor, there aren't H1Bs fo…

Party A: Create new regulations which benefit pharma

Party B: Remove old regulations which disadvantage pharma

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

#144

Post by the_watcher »

namlem wrote: post #141
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…

Can you not just get it from an online Canadian pharmacy?

It's much easier to avoid detection, since the only laws being broken are when you actually make the drug. This is in your home, so you can feasibly break no laws in the view of anyone (as opposed to buying from a Canadian pharmacy and running the risk of USPS catching it).

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

#145

Post by SilasX »

r00fus wrote: post #134
SilasX wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree on both counts: 1) Preserving a reliable institution of private property is also a "public goods problem", and thieves (of physical goods) are free-riding in a very analogous sense (disrupting the very system that enables the production of things-worth-stealing). That free-riding is exactly what makes piracy intuitively feel like theft. 2) Enabling the down-low production of a drug does disrupt the…

Are these outcomes you describe actually bad? While I believe in the rule of law, the fact is that law has been bent to serve the wealthy and powerful. Perhaps such lawbreaking is simply the symptom of the disease as Dr. Prasad says, which is (patent laws that allow current) drug pricing.

I was only speaking to rayiner's a) attempt to break the analogy between physical theft and piracy, and b) insistence that teaching DIY production of patented drugs "doesn't offend" the monopoly.

But yes, I strongly believe that it's a very bad economic model that insists that drugs -- or any physical good for that matter -- should (in any sense of "should") be sold at marginal production cost.

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

#146

Post by alasdair_ »

wfo wrote: post #94
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)

The moral answer is obviously no, given the context in which we live. That the moral and legal answers are completely opposite of each other is telling. Imagine a natural disaster happens, and the strong hoard more water and food and shelter and medicine than they could ever use in a million lifetimes and protect it with guns. Then you tell the poor "in an emergency scenario, here are some options to keep you and you…

>the natural disaster is free market capitalism

Government-protected monopolies (i.e. drug patents) are almost the antithesis of free-market capitalism.

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

#147

Post by computator »

Interesting assertion from the FAQ on Michael Laufer's website[1]:

> Q: What about quality control? A: It’s important to know that making small quantities of a chemical is vastly different than making it on an industrial scale. The chemistry isn’t even the same. This is a big reason why chemical engineering is an entire field of study. With smaller reactions, while you do have to be more precise in your measurements sometimes. There are fewer things to go wrong.

Why would making small quantities be vastly different than making it on an industrial scale?

I've heard the same thing about cooking and baking. Supposedly, if a recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of baking powder, then you scale it up 50 fold, you can't simply use 50 tablespoons of baking powder. The claim was that you had to use way more baking powder or much less (I forget which). It sounded like nonsense, but now I'm wondering.

[1] https://fourthievesvinegar.org/faq

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

#148

Post by beisner »

enugu wrote: post #93
aero142 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are arguing with a straw man. The other side doesn't believe that a dollar spent by the government is as effective as a dollar spent by the private sector.

If that is the primary obstacle, you can have a design which assigns money to a private research organization to develop drugs for government. Also, current pharma will be biased against any cost effective solutions as this will cut their margins. There's got to be some alternative path to research and bring in these treatments to the public.

I 100% support a drug bounty program, where the government puts up a huge bounty (I.e. $1-3bn) for diseases where cures/treatments are needed, and pharma companies compete for those bounties. Victors would get the full bounty, and the govt would get the rights to the drug. Would allow the public to incentivize treatments that are best for public health, since companies are incentivized to create long-lasting, expensive treatments vs 1-off cures. And would decouple end-user price.

For instance, i think we would have found a vaccine for HIV by now if antiretrovirals weren’t so damn profitable over the lifespan of a patient.

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

#149

Post by dclowd9901 »

rightos wrote: post #70
octaveguin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a difficult balance to strike - you want the companies to keep developing drugs, you want onerous regulation on those drugs to make sure they're produced and tested for safety and efficacy. But then you want them to be cheap for patients and insurance companies. The best solution is probably to simply drop patent extensions for these things and allow generic drug manufacturers to do what they do best, but if you…

My problem is: It's in the public interest for these drugs to exist, but how do we keep drug companies from becoming an industrial complex ala Lockheed/Boeing?

They should be non-profits.

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

#150

Post by kazinator »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #149
rightos wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a difficult balance to strike - you want the companies to keep developing drugs, you want onerous regulation on those drugs to make sure they're produced and tested for safety and efficacy. But then you want them to be cheap for patients and insurance companies. The best solution is probably to simply drop patent extensions for these things and allow generic drug manufacturers to do what they do best, but if you…

My problem is: It's in the public interest for these drugs to exist, but how do we keep drug companies from becoming an industrial complex ala Lockheed/Boeing? They should be non-profits.

Developing drugs is very expensive. It takes years of research, most of which fails. I.e. out of the various molecules being researched, only few actually make it through all the trials and approval and get to market.

Due to the risk, investors are looking for high returns from successful drugs.

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