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BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

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21–30 of 215 posts

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#21
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All it takes is one or a few people to start doing this for friends, and it begins to spread. Has this in fact happened? If the drugs are "actually" cheap and easy to make, I suggest importing them from India. If they aren't "actually" easy to make, you aren't going to successfully make them.

Yes, it has. Abortion access is one example.

Regular people would buy their mifepristone from across the border, in Mexico or ask a friendly Mexican. That's the correct way of hacking the system, not that kind of circus show.

That said, one wishes that you hadn't dragged abortion in, they use it to derail the discussion around universal medical care. Hey, you can't afford the dentist, but at least we fight for abortion.

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#22
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it has. Abortion access is one example.

Regular people would buy their mifepristone from across the border, in Mexico or ask a friendly Mexican. That's the correct way of hacking the system, not that kind of circus show. That said, one wishes that you hadn't dragged abortion in, they use it to derail the discussion around universal medical care. Hey, you can't afford the dentist, but at least we fight for abortion.

Perhaps, consider, that there may be more than one way to skin a cat.

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#23
post #16

I’m put off by their website. It seems too well crafted for their main focus to be on their stated goal of giving individuals the tools to treat themselves. The actual aim seems closer to marketing or perhaps influencing public discourse on the subject https://fourthievesvinegar.org/

> It seems too well crafted for their main focus to be on their stated goal of giving individuals the tools to treat themselves. Is this how you think about everything? Do you go to a restaurant with nice chairs and think, "The food here must suck, they spend too much money on the furniture"?

[deleted]

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#25

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/anarchist-drugs-ag... >"Our ultimate hope is to get to a point where we're no longer necessary because the notion of DIY medicine, no matter anybody's opinion of it is common enough that if it comes up in conversation, someone can say 'Oh I'm just going to 3D print a replacement'". >No, no, that is not going to be happening any time soon, or (frankly) at all. I could go one f…

Is the 4thieves content specifically wrong? I would rather take some risk with some autonomy than be subject to dealing with the sort of people I have encountered in the drugs and illness business, like said author. hacking is a way to provide dignity to people in how they relate to systems. be warey of the ones who object to that.

Are you going to dispose of your waste responsibily, or are you going to just dismiss local regulations as "infringements of your freedom" and dump it down the drain? Are you going to make sure your manufacturing processes don't create problems for your neighbors, or are you just going to say "screw them, it's my house" and be on your merry way?

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#26

> We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique tools are always better than something factory made. Right. We all know the best chips in the world are made by local artisan silicon-etchers. None of that TSMC pasteurized crap. You simply can't beat a 1nm brush and a steady hand. We all know this industrial revolution thing was a mistake.

Sure if you apply enough mental gymnastics you can invalidate any claim.

Good faith reading of his argument would be that a custom, artisan crafted hammer is better than a factory made one. I can’t say if that is true or not but using chips as an example- probably the most complex man made thing- is bad faith argumentation

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#28

The whole show feels like the financial literacy courses that are being offered by credit card companies. The system is stacked against the individual, we need to keep the notion of "personal responsibility" alive. Do we want this future: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/americas/mexican-ca... I know people who cook their own medicine, but they are trained as chemists or microbiologists and have access to lab…

I’m not an US citizen but it seems that people in the US just die because they don’t get the medicine they need to juice up profits. I’m sure the coming gov won’t improve that. In that situation I can empathise with people who “cook their own”. I am sure you would do the same if the alternative is agonising slow death.

There are many countries - for example Cuba - that can’t rely on these systems - they need to cook their own.

Is your proposal to rely on the government really realistic in those scenarios?

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#29

I’m put off by their website. It seems too well crafted for their main focus to be on their stated goal of giving individuals the tools to treat themselves. The actual aim seems closer to marketing or perhaps influencing public discourse on the subject https://fourthievesvinegar.org/

They do the whole warrant canary completely wrong tho.

Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]

#30
A lot of people miss the fact that this is more art project than practical solution. It’s meant to make a statement, but they have cherry-picked some extremely simple drugs to synthesize to make their point.

I have some online friends who met through a forum for their rare condition. The forum they’re in had a splinter group dedicated to getting companies in China to synthesize experimental drugs for them that they couldn’t secure through normal channels, either because they hadn’t been approved yet or because they were expensive and off-label so nobody would even prescribe them.

Even contracting with professional chemical synthesis operations in foreign countries turned out to be more difficult than they imagined. Several companies would take their deposit, then refund part of it after several months because they could never get the synthesis to work properly. They received one batch that tested as being so impure that it was useless.

Projects like this convince people that all drugs are actually really easy to make, when in reality this project has carefully selected the most simple examples to make that misleading point.

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