Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin • Hacker News Board

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#281

Post by squeaky-clean » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

pitched wrote: post #72

gentleman11 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s clearly about mocking decentralized home made solutions to problems, and of the people who opt for that approach. It’s an insult to every Amish person on earth and to home mechanics who shy away from garages. It’s also, by far, the most downvoted thing I’ve ever posted so thanks for using your other accounts to hit me for my acidic and savagely inappropriate comment

Growing wheat and grinding it out into flour isn’t something I’ve ever heard anyone take on as a hobby before. Having all that actually cost less (including time) than buying bread would be a huge achievement!

Adam Ragusea actually just did a 2 part video on growing his own bread from scratch in his backyard. Part 2 just came out a few hours ago.

Spoiler :P it definitely took way more time an effort than buying flour from the store and making bread. And the final product was a pretty poor loaf of bread because he couldn't find a way to buy the same type of wheat most farms use and had to settle for "animal feed" quality seeds.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPm7JtaxE4

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#282

Post by api » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #164

KoftaBob wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally someone has put into words my frustration with this healthcare system.

Obamacare was widely derided by many Democrats as a worst-of-both-worlds plan when the public option was scraped.

I've heard that Obama was reluctant to push harder for a public option because the health bureaucracy is such a massive employer. If true then we're basically dragging along a counter-productive boat anchor that eats a ton of our health care spending as a back-door jobs program.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#283

Post by YHK » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #230

mkoubaa wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment but decentralizing and downscaling production is a win for resiliency. This is a good example but others include recycling and power generation have clearer benefits

Yes, but what about economies or scale? And the the production is already decentralized. I guess there’s more than one plant in the US.

There is one plant for each big pharma. Eli lilly is in indianapolis. https://www.industryweek.com/expansion-management/strategic-... Novo Nordisk in Raleigh. https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/projects/novonordi...

This is not really decentralized and is really risky, for obvious reason. https://www.ibj.com/articles/eli-lilly-asking-employees-to-w...

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#284

Post by YHK » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #251

nknealk wrote: post #30

Some considerations on manufacturing — there’s a variety of product quality steps necessary to release batches of medicine. The FDA mandates this as part of GMP regulations. These steps help ensure things like: * How do I know that every vial has the same concentration of insulin each time? That is to say 1 unit from a vial today and 1 unit from another vial is going to have the same dosing. * How do I know the insul…

> there’s a lot of value to purchasing medicine from regulated sources. I’m not against upstart competition against big pharma, but I worry that you might literally kill someone if you don’t include these product quality steps in your process. Where are you getting this from? This goal of this isn't to have every diabetic brewing insulin in their garage so they evade the IP police in a distrubuted fasion. The goal is…

Thank you. This is exactly what we are trying to do. It is difficult for us to get rid of the mad scientist label.

We have a team in fact that evaluate the FDA requirement and looking at what would be the best way to do it.

Also, Open IP means for us that we will share the modified strains which are optimized for the expression of the insulin, and ideally, we will be able to provide scientific knowledge and resources to help the creation of local manufacturing plant.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#285

Post by wwweston » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

luffapi wrote: post #153

sremani wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the Health insurance stock after Obamacare was passed - they all sky rocketed.

As did the cost of healthcare. Also look at the health insurance stock when Biden was officially nominated. Edit: source https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/cramer-bidens-2020-bid-is-se...

Consider this graph of US healthcare spending acceleration:

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...

Spending and costs are distinct, of course, but they're related, and you'll see spending track costs directly unless there's a factor that increases/decreases demand for services

What do we see? An acceleration bump in 2014/2015, and then it settles back into data whose variation is much like pre-ACA dynamics. 2014 would have been when the exchanges and wide reach of access went into effect. The spending acceleration bump was almost certainly people who didn't have access before using medical services.

The idea that the ACA drove some kind of unprecedented increase in costs doesn't track:

https://www.thebalance.com/causes-of-rising-healthcare-costs...

And lots of stocks rose when Biden was nominated (and elected). Sensible leadership prospects have their own positive effect on enterprise.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#286

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

mkoubaa wrote: post #134

f6v wrote: post #17

As 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.

I agree with the sentiment but decentralizing and downscaling production is a win for resiliency. This is a good example but others include recycling and power generation have clearer benefits

The people plugged into the solar utility co-op on Kaua'i actually end up having a smaller carbon footprint than those generating solar power off the grid.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#287

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #260

dekhn wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go back to before real agriculture. 10K years ago People harvested wild grain, processed it, managed to make yeast starter, and produce an edible bread that sustained humanity until we learned how to domesticate it and build the infrastructure to study it until we know how all this works at the molecular level. But they managed to do it without any science or technology.

10k years ago they had actually already domesticated crops and weren't reliant (at least not in many places) on finding wild grain. Regardless, it was all still done with science: Observation followed by trial and error informed by those observations. Maybe not the scientific method formalized by Francis Bacon, but it's still there in the outlines.

[deleted]

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#288

Post by gruez » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #133

gruez wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you think their business would collapse, It would depend on the project's margins and/or sunk costs. A project that had very little invested in it or is a breakout success might we able to weather a 50% cut in exclusivity period, but a marginal product might not. Most of the already developed drugs are probably going to be fine, assuming that the financing for them was already secured. >or would they keep trying?…

I am arguing that there are no marginal projects at current profit levels, and that's why they can spend billions on stock buybacks. There is a point that lessening patent protections would cause companies to cut back, but we are not at that point.

>I am arguing that there are no marginal projects at current profit levels, and that's why they can spend billions on stock buybacks

How does the act of buybacks imply that there are no marginal projects?

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#289

Post by dekhn » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #260

dekhn wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go back to before real agriculture. 10K years ago People harvested wild grain, processed it, managed to make yeast starter, and produce an edible bread that sustained humanity until we learned how to domesticate it and build the infrastructure to study it until we know how all this works at the molecular level. But they managed to do it without any science or technology.

10k years ago they had actually already domesticated crops and weren't reliant (at least not in many places) on finding wild grain. Regardless, it was all still done with science: Observation followed by trial and error informed by those observations. Maybe not the scientific method formalized by Francis Bacon, but it's still there in the outlines.

OK, 12K years not ten. I wouldn't call that science- while observation and trial and error necessary, they aren't sufficient. What was done to turn teosinte into maize was more of... a large scale, long-term, unintentional engineering experiment.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#290

Post by not2b » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

sithlord wrote: post #27

sparrish wrote: post #8

This 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…

Thanks, sithlord. My wife is a type 1 diabetic and it's even worse than your comment suggests, because the different fast acting insulins have a different curve (when do they start working, when is the peak, how long do they have an effect) and our insurance company keeps making her switch to a different "equivalent" formulation because the price to them is lower this month. This means that there's a learning curve, more highs and lows, when she has to switch.

Humalog's patents have expired, as I understand it, but cartel behavior has kept the price high in the US.