Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take to the streets, like the French do?
Actually, the French mostly stay at home: the last gubernatorial elections had like 34% participation.
They mean strikes, and protests
Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
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Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#32This is bogus. Wal-mart sells insulin for $24.88 a vial without prescription currently. It's only the newer 'guchi' insulin brands that are crazy expensive. Stuff from 1996 that is compared to in this article is actually cheaper than it was in 1996 (adjusted for inflation).
This is like saying a car and a bicycle are equivalent means of transportation. Sometimes a bike is the right solution for some people and a bike is usually better than nothing but it’s really not fast enough to be a practical solution for most people’s daily needs.
Edit: Perhaps high speed internet vs dial-up would be a better analogy to spare us the comments about how bikes are actually better than cars...
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#33This is bogus. Wal-mart sells insulin for $24.88 a vial without prescription currently. It's only the newer 'guchi' insulin brands that are crazy expensive. Stuff from 1996 that is compared to in this article is actually cheaper than it was in 1996 (adjusted for inflation).
This is so incredibly wrong - and trying to claim something you know obviously nothing about is hilarious. The different between NPH (regular insulin) (maybe R too, not sure??) sold by walmart and Fast Acting insulins (Novolog, Humalog, Apidra) is massive. Fast acting insulins start working at about in about 30 minutes and "peak" at like 2 hours, and may slowly have some effects for another 1-2 hours. NPH on the othe…
Would it be possible to get a limited amount of the fast acting stuff for unpredictable situations and then normally use the "cheap" stuff? I don't know how this works so I would like some info from someone who seems to know.
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take to the streets, like the French do?
Actually, the French mostly stay at home: the last gubernatorial elections had like 34% participation.
In the second round of the 2017 presidential election there was 65.3% turnout. In the 2020 US presidential election there was 66.8% turnout.
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#35I really wish this would be a higher priority for the current class of billionaire philanthropists: open source science. Medical research guided by the idea of preventing disease rather than creating expensive life-long treatments, and prioritizing the diseases that cause the most amount of suffering rather than present the best opportunity for profit. And not just medicine, but just about any industry could benefit.
Wall Street Smart Genius types have long held that curing disease is bad business, managing symptoms over the entire lifetime allows them to extract more capital out of the cattle. So, if you're looking to cure something you're going to struggle to find funding. Don't worry though, the economy will survive.
I wonder how the Hep C cures, COVID vaccines, shingles vaccine, HPV vaccines, and other cures got funding over the past 2 decades.
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#36As someone who had to create transgenic E.coli in a lab, I admire the effort. It’s hard to get it right, especially when trying to make bacteria produce stuff for you. However, it feels like a huge step backward. Imagine you couldn’t afford to buy a piece of bread. Instead, you need to grow your own grains and build a windmill first. Sounds ridiculous in 2021.
My wife bakes bread almost every day and grows her own yeast. She loves it and the bread is fantastic. What is so ridiculous?
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#37Insulin is a solved problem, in first-world countries the sale price is fixed and there's public healthcare. But in America you are supposed to take "personal responsibility" for your own health and biohack your way ouf of type 1 diabetes?! Srsly? This s a political, not a scientific problem. Call your congresscritter.
Found your problem:
"African American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes by a physician."
Given that the middle class is very white and employed with insurance coverage, it virtually doesn't affect white people. Our politics takes black people's votes for granted and don't do anything for them.
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#38Every time this stuff comes up it feels like we focus on the politics and not the people with diabetes.
If you or your kid or your friends have Type 1 and are struggling to make your insulin out of pockets please, please, please call the Eli Lily hotline and get the copay card. They've dropped the monthly cost for Humalog to $35.
Don't ration. Work the system. https://www.humalog.com/savings-support
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#39This is bogus. Wal-mart sells insulin for $24.88 a vial without prescription currently. It's only the newer 'guchi' insulin brands that are crazy expensive. Stuff from 1996 that is compared to in this article is actually cheaper than it was in 1996 (adjusted for inflation).
The hard part is getting doctors to offer prescriptions for the cheaper brands as an alternative. A lot of doctors will prescribe the most expensive drug simply because they believe or know that it is better in some way without regard to it's cost. It's changed a lot recently as doctors have become more aware of the cost of these drugs. But you still have to self advocate for less expensive drugs. Less savvy people o…
It has been many years since pharmacies have been allowed to substitute brand name medications with generic medications. In fact, doctors have to write "dispense as written" if they want the patient to only get the brand name medication they prescribe.
Additionally, managed care organizations (MCOs, commonly known as insurance companies) do not pay for brand name medications just because a doctor prescribes them. If the MCO is aware of a generic option, then they will only pay for the generic or they will ask the doctor for a "prior authorization" to justify the use of a brand name medicine (such as the generic version not working).
The pediatricians I have visited in recent years even have the MCOs' formulary available for the patient in their systems, so they can see which medicines need a prior authorization and which do not so there is no time wasted on figuring out what the MCO will pay for without prior authorizations.
Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin
#40This is bogus. Wal-mart sells insulin for $24.88 a vial without prescription currently. It's only the newer 'guchi' insulin brands that are crazy expensive. Stuff from 1996 that is compared to in this article is actually cheaper than it was in 1996 (adjusted for inflation).
Type 1 diabetic here. Managing T1D even with the "Gucci" insulins (I use Novolog and have tried Fiasp) is still a huge pain in the butt; you have to give yourself a dose of insulin a fairly precise amount of time before eating, and accurately judge how much you're going to need, which is half science and half wild guesswork. My per-meal dosage requirements vary randomly from month to month -- a dose that would be fine one month is either inadequate or deadly on another month, and the only way to tell if you've got it right is to obsessively monitor your blood sugar.
And that's with the $700/vial insulin... the $25/vial stuff is stone age technology by comparison; you have to take it twice a day, and then eat at two specific times afterwards, or you'll go hypoglycemic (unconscious or maybe dead hypoglycemic, not just the feeling-a-bit-tired kind that people who don't use insulin are familiar with).
The situation right now is that the best and most expensive T1D technology, even the various "artificial pancreas" solutions, still gives you nothing like the experience of a normal pancreas. It would be really nice if the Walmart insulin were a viable long term solution for the cost problem, but unfortunately the negative health effects of older insulin tech are considerable :(