Recently, from Derek Lowe, on this project: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/anarchist-drugs-ag...
"It's like saying that you're going to make your own aluminum foil."
BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
81–90 of 215 posts
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#82I guess they're not so concerned with the "oops, poison" aspect of manufacturing drugs. Or ethics driven testing of drugs for safety and efficacy. Seems like a great way to fk up and kill people. Also, they say compounding pharmacies are illegal, but they're not. Not in the US or Germany. There's one down the street from me and my neighbor was a compounding pharmacist.
Or, as with Thalidomide, the formulation pathway also happens to make a 'left-handed' version of a drug which turns works great, but the opposite chirality causes horrible birth defects (as in kids with brain damage or deformed hands & feet basically attached to shoulders and hips, and more). [0] And this was with production and testing by major pharm companies.
I'd be all over home production or brew-kits for users or compounding pharmacists to save lives or quality of life. But damn, the more complex synthesis pathways have potential for insanely serious 'bugs', and the consequences aren't just a software crash, they can be life-altering or life-ending. With fully informed consent, still works for me.
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#83A 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 c…
Contacts for reliable contract synthesis labs in China are kind of a closely held secret. Before the 2017 “general ban” on psychoactive substances in the UK there was a thriving industry where “entrepreneurs” with the contacts for such labs would hire chemists to find them a new candidate analogue/derivative of say, a stimulant or hallucinogen or whatever, knock together a synthesis route, see if it works, and then h…
Maybe Hamiltons Pharmacopeia?
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone claims that X is "always"(!) the case, then giving just one example where X is not the case counts as a refutation. The statement that the GP quoted is just obviously false and there is nothing "bad faith" about pointing that out.
The question if there is such a thing as “truth” (an universally true statement) is probably the hardest philosophical problem in humanities history- of course that is not what we were discussing and for that reason your argument here is also in bad faith
I don't see why the nature of truth is relevant here, unless you are claiming that we can't make deductive arguments about anything ever (I never used the word "truth" in my comment anyway). Also, constant accusations of "bad faith", i.e. dishonesty, are poor debate etiquette and just give the impression that you have no point to make on the object level.
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#85Anybody interested in taking drugs they’ve cooked up should familiarize themselves with MPTP/MPP+
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#86> We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique tools are always better than something factory made. A guitar, a wood chisel, a chef's knife, a built racing engine, a firearm, a suit, a pair of shoes. Given that this is so well-known, and so universally understood, it's peculiar at best that this is not seen by most people when it comes to medicine. It is however also true.
I have seen this sentiment expressed, but I have yet to see any real evidence for it. A factory can ensure precision and consistency at a level that those hand crafting things never could. For all of the things listed, I would rather have factory made versions since I know they are likely made precisely to a specification and deviations from that specification likely make things worse, rather than better.
If that claim about hand made items being better were true, there would be a market for hand made CPUs, yet there is none, since hand made objects can not reach that level of precision. That is a major reason why society transitioned to factories for production in the first place.
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#87This could get super interesting with my country’s political situation. I could see two particular groups getting into med production: - Pregnant women who need abortion medication - Trans people who need hormones With finasteride and puberty blockers/HRT being criminalized, a lot of people in the above categories are turning to black market / DIY solutions.
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Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#88A 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 c…
Contacts for reliable contract synthesis labs in China are kind of a closely held secret. Before the 2017 “general ban” on psychoactive substances in the UK there was a thriving industry where “entrepreneurs” with the contacts for such labs would hire chemists to find them a new candidate analogue/derivative of say, a stimulant or hallucinogen or whatever, knock together a synthesis route, see if it works, and then h…
Perhaps NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/916890880/we-are-shipping-to-... ('We Are Shipping To The U.S.': Inside China's Online Synthetic Drug Networks, 2020)
Perhaps NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/world/asia/in-china-illeg... (In China, Illegal Drugs Are Sold Online in an Unbridled Market, 2015)
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#89> We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique tools are always better than something factory made. A guitar, a wood chisel, a chef's knife, a built racing engine, a firearm, a suit, a pair of shoes. Given that this is so well-known, and so universally understood, it's peculiar at best that this is not seen by most people when it comes to medicine. It is however also true. I have seen this sentiment…
In regards to objects like the guitar listed in the quote, there is a draw to how a hand-crafted item can be _unique_ due to slight imperfections. This can range from just slight imperfections in the wood to things such as believing your guitar has a unique sound.
Sure the factory guitar may sound "perfect", but the only guitar that sounds like this handmade guitar is this handmade guitar.
Re: BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective [video]
#90> 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.
I don't think this analogy resonates particularly well with the drug manufacturing process. I would think in general the bulk of the expense of a drug comes from its R&D, not manufacture. The cost of manufacture probably varies wildly (with the most expensive being bespoke treatments), but as the talk shows, there have been many examples where a (relatively) simple-to-manufacture drug is kept from those who need it d…
> Will most drugs be easy to make at home? Probably not, but enough probably can be that I wouldn't dismiss the idea because of some rhetorical overreach.
Ever watch a non-chef bake a cake? If you have, that experience should give you great concern about people playing with drug recipes.
In addition, most drugs do not have a "nice" synthesis that doesn't leave a whole bunch of glop in the afterproducts. Distilling alcohol is about as easy as it gets and yet people wind up poisoned from homemade hooch all the time.