It's nice to have an expert's perspective, but he undermines himself a bit. He says this:
> The people who believe this stuff when they hear it will not be persuaded, because I'm obviously a Big Pharma Shill.
Pre-empting any counterpoint to his arguments by saying they'll unfairly dismiss him. A rather smug approach to the "little guy", but possibly warranted. But his previous post on the subject has this gem:
> What I'm getting at is that people like Four Thieves Vinegar are not developing drugs. They're trying to find cheap, easily replicable ways to make and distribute drugs that other people have already spent the time and money to develop. If the capitalists of the world hadn't ponied up the at-risk funding to find those drugs in the first place, there would be nothing for anarcho-hacker pharma collectives to do. Speaking for the Big Evil Pharma Industry, if I may, you Vinegar Thieves are living in our basement and subsisting on what we provide.
First of all: we've been hearing for over century the line about superhero-capitalist John Galts deserving to billionaires because they were the ones who "ponied up the at-risk funding", and it's extremely shaky, if not outright bullshit. Especially in the pharma industry, where X% of "discoveries" come straight from government funding, not private capital (with X being an endlessly argued number, but almost certainly above 50). Secondly: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective don't appear to be claiming any discoveries, so what exactly is he arguing here? Couldn't he levy the same complaint against every generic drug manufacturer, that they're "living in the basement" of the Big Smart Important Guys like him? These statements are pretty close to what you'd expect from a "Big Pharma Shill" that he's pre-emptively trying to immunize himself from being accused of.