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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

#301

Post by GrinningFool »

clarkrinker wrote: post #38

Every 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

> please, please, please call the Eli Lily hotline and get the copay card.

While this is a great thing, it's also necessary that you be prepared to fork over personal data - especially proof of income - and otherwise do whatever is required to prove that you are (un?)worthy enough as with any similar medical financial aid program.

https://www.lillycares.com/assets/pdf/lilly_cares_applicatio...

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

#302

Post by GrinningFool »

epmaybe wrote: post #207
nceqs3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every drug company gives away their drugs for free to people who can't afford it in the US. It's sad that not enough people take advantage of patient assistance programs.

This is apologist thinking at best, intentionally misleading at worst. You are correct that companies do have patient assistance programs. What you’re leaving out is that this applies to a small subset of people that usually have to be denied federal/state insurance, not have any other kind of insurance, and make less than 4x federal poverty level. additionally, they rarely provide a lifelong supply. Imagine being a…

Not only this, on top of it all - as if it's not hard enough to ask for 'handouts' - they require you to submit evidence that you don't make too much money.

Just a W-2 or a federal tax return should do - not like those poor people should care about their data or privacy or dignity or anything ~s

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

#303

Post by chaps »

YHK wrote: post #279
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #213

My 3 year old daughter was recently diagnosed Type 1. Soon after her diagnosis I discovered a heap of articles about the Open Insulin Foundation. I was even on their website 24 hours ago. However, for the life of me I can't find anything "open" about the Open Insulin Foundation. Could someone please point me in the right direction where I can read anything with more substance than a news article quoting an interview?…

Hi, I am one of the scientists working on the project. We had a lot of discussion on the project about defensive strategies to avoid any issue, since we are dealing with a massive industry. We don't have a definitive protocol yet, so this is why it is not publish. But if you want more details, I would be happy to answer your questions.

I've seen a lot of projects like yours with the purest of goals never get past this stage because, simply, nobody makes the first move. It's almost like the attention gets in the way of publication. Either that, or there was never anything there, and it was just good PR from the beginning.

Your project is too damn important to let this happen. Please find or do whatever you have to do in order to publish what needs to be published. If that means taking a leap of faith, please, for the love of goodness, please do it.

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

#304

Post by luffapi »

wwweston wrote: post #280
luffapi wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, you're welcome to lay out your model of how the democrats are responsible. Simple, prior to the ACA I was able to cover my health expenses out of pocket. I’m healthy and literally went to the doctor 3 times in a decade. After being forced by the ACA to buy unneeded and unwanted health insurance, I ended up paying >10k /year for literally nothing. I’ve since paid so much in health insurance that I could have…

> unneeded and unwanted health insurance Insurance is not something you have because you are ill, it's something you have as a hedge against the probability that you will be ill. Whether you're healthy now has limited bearing on that. And if you want to be able to have it when you are ill, you need to be willing to contribute to premiums even when you're not. Whether that contribution comes in the form of an explicit…

My costs in NY:

When I was a single contractor: $900 /month

After I married a healthy partner: $2100 /month for the both of us.

After transitioning to full time employment: $2300 /month

These numbers align with my friends. In no way was paying $300 /month an option.

Health insurance is not health care. I don’t want it. I want public healthcare, barring that I want affordable healthcare. Pre-ACA was much more affordable.

I really wish neo-liberals could just admit when their policies fail. This one is not on the GOP. It’s 100% the result of DNC policy and actions.

I assume you want people to vote Democrat. To be effective there, step one would be to listen to people who have legitimate grievances and when your party is at fault, own it. Do not go on a tirade about how paying for insurance is actually a good thing. It’s not, it’s a failure of our social safety net.

I have no misconceptions about Biden. He was part of the admin that screwed me with the ACA, I watched every debate and heard him repeatedly state that he was going to continue to enrich the insurance industry on my back. Which is exactly what he’s done since taking office.

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

#306

Post by luffapi »

wwweston wrote: post #285
luffapi wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

> And lots of stocks rose when Biden was nominated (and elected).

Yes, because he’s a corrupt corporate puppet.

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

#307

Post by Spooky23 »

tashi wrote: post #273
6502nerdface wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA blames "big pharma's stranglehold" for high insulin prices, but interestingly the cheapinsulin.org explanation [1] seems to be much more about "big insurance", with pharma companies basically forced to kow-tow if they want their products to be covered. [1] https://cheapinsulin.org/high-insulin-prices

Their claim is that if the pharma companies lowered the cost of insulin but then refused to give rebates to insurance companies for it, the insurance companies would stop covering insulin for diabetic patients? And they're using a diagram created by a pharmaceutical trade group to explain this? I'll be honest: I'm skeptical.

It’s a pretty… lame argument. The insulin maker is saying they want to lower the price for you, but hose the insurance company.

Frankly, we should nationalize insulin production and stop people and insurance plans from going broke buying it. Imagine if Medicaid wasn’t paying usurious margins for a commodity that has been around for a century.

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

#308

Post by rfrey »

v77 wrote: post #295
ggm wrote: post #277

As an observation, The UK, USA, Canada and Australia are all in the top 10 for type-1 diabetes incidence in the Only the USA imposes private health cost burdens on the diabetics (from my quick scan of national health info on the web)

Not true, Canada doesn't cover medications by default, you rely on employer-provided private plans for that.

While that is true, the cost of insulin in Canada is less than $100/month (81 USD).

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

#309

Post by ineedasername »

dekhn wrote: post #289
ineedasername wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure you can have engineering without some at least rudimentary approximation of a scientific method. Maybe that's a nitpick though.

Either way, I don't see a fundamental aspect of the scientific method missing from an observation -> trial -> results loop. I also don't see crop cultivation as unintentional, although I'm not clear what you meant by that. What wasn't intentional? Deciding to experiment with planting seeds would have been a deliberate choice. Probably based on some observation that where wild grains were gathered together and and little things fell off of them, sometimes the same type of plant would grow. Followed by the idea that putting those things in different places might produce the same effect. Etc.

I don't think you get from wild gathering in a nomadic lifestyle to settled agriculture without observing, coming up with ideas about what you observed, testing those ideas, and checking the results. That is. A scientific process.

Toesinte turning into maize would may have simply been a blind generations long domestication process, but not that spark of insight and experimentation that led to stationary agricultural societies.

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

#310

Post by LinuxBender »

YHK wrote: post #284
shkkmo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Off topic question: Is there a database maintained by BioHackers that has reverse engineered some or all of the prescription pharmaceuticals, showing not only the compounds used, but how to make, measure and test them? There are government sites that list all the chemical compounds, but details are scattered all over the place on how to make, measure and test them. Asking as a prepper that wants to stock up on food, water and medications. Doubling or tripling BP prescriptions is insufficient by my standards.
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