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The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

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Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#131

Post by chriscappuccio »

darawk wrote: post #125
endymi0n wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It‘s interesting to see how negative the comments are here, compared to the civil disobedience of SciHub — in fact it‘s much of the same thing. And while there is an argument to be made about how developing new medicine costs real money, the re-investment of profits into research is around 10%, we‘re talking about a deeply corrupt industry here. And while it‘s definitely still morally questionable to clone new drugs,…

> It‘s interesting to see how negative the comments are here, compared to the civil disobedience of SciHub — in fact it‘s much of the same thing. Those things are worlds apart, in my view. Pharmaceutical companies add serious value to the world. They expend enormous amounts of money researching and testing drugs, and then shepherding them through the obscenely expensive FDA approval process. Journal publishers like E…

Well said.

I'll go further and suggest that their clone of the EpiPen is ingenious, and entirely without moral concern. If the available commodity technology makes it this easy, we're stupid to not take advantage of it. It can't violate patents of the EpiPen since that's all expired.

With developmental drugs like cabotegravir, the patent question comes into play. But also, there is basically zero enforcement requested by these drug companies for the online distribution of unauthorized Chinese and Indian suppliers of thousands of pre-approval experimental drugs. Literally nobody cares.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#132

Post by chriscappuccio »

ethbro wrote: post #130
eezurr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a legitimate scenario. They were asking the drug dealer(s) to cut their heroin with the drug. Now an untrained individual is responsible for mixing in the proper dosage for their clients (for a drug that has not been proven to be safe/work, and maybe certain ratios dont dissolve quickly enough, or maybe smoking the heroin causes the drug to under go a molecular transformation from the heat), which is compl…

Well, we have fundamentally different moral valuations of situations then.

It's risky. That's what he's saying. Perhaps, very risky.

The DEA has been finding levamisole and phenacetin in cocaine. Levamisole in most cocaine these days!

Levamisole used long term destroys the immune system, like a chemical form of AIDS.

Being associated with cutting street drugs is disgusting.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#133

Post by refurb »

ceejayoz wrote: post #120
refurb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Giving away free drugs causes insurance premiums to rise? How does that work?

> What? Giving away free drugs causes insurance premiums to rise? How does that work? So, as an example, I'm on Stelara. It's $10,000/shot. Their patient assistance program will, without any consideration to income, pay up to $20,000/year of my copays/deductibles. Why? Because the marginal cost to them of producing the shot is probably $10, so by paying (for example) someone's $4k deductible (or even $13k, if I'm a f…

That’s different, that’s not free drug, that’s co-pay assistance.

Drug companies do give free drug and that doesn’t cause insurance premiums to go up.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#134

Post by refurb »

vzcx wrote: post #103
refurb wrote: post #93

As a former pharmaceutical chemist I’m calling bullshit. Could they have made a few grams of nalaxone? Sure it’s pretty simple. Did they make enough to make a difference? No. Did they make sufficiently pure drug so that people don’t get poisoned? Probably not. And did they make the AIDS drug? He’ll no. That synthesis is way more complicated than their mini lab can handle. It makes for good VICE articles, but these gu…

Is there some route to naloxone that I am not aware of that doesn't start from some opiate or opium alkaloid? The morphine total syntheses I've read were rather involved and low-yield. Perhaps progress made on the biosynthetic step through reticuline? That would be exciting.

Article covers that. They start with oxycodone. From that a reduction to hydromorphone and then methylation to nalaxone. Not easy chemistry, but only two steps.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#135

Post by Eric_WVGG »

klipt wrote: post #17
darawk wrote: post #12

> Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on a budget outside of institutional channels. Synthesized. Not developed. Synthesizing medicines is easy. Developing them is extremely difficult.

I can "render" a movie onto my harddrive from bittorrent in minutes. I don't know why Pixar has to spend so much time on their rendering! /s

Most of the replies to this comment don't seem to understand that "/s" indicates sarcasm.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#136

Post by PhasmaFelis »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #122
shub wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, on the off chance one flies into someone’s open mouth and the surprise triggers a swallowing reflex? I wouldn’t have a lot of sympathy for an adult who ate the homemade pills a guy threw at him and then suffered serious side effects.

I'm surprised I have to argue about whether it's irresponsible to throw dangerous things into a crowd. It's irresponsible because they're dangerous. He can't be sure what will happen with pills that people accidentally carry out on their shoes or clothing. Any pills that don't get cleaned up from the venue could be eaten by children or animals at a later date. We're talking about a drug that we don't even let sick pe…

> if you don't have sympathy for an adult who eats homemade pills and suffers from it, then you're pretty much arguing that this whole plan is irresponsible from the start.

I have plenty of sympathy for an adult who is forced to take homemade pills to save their life. An adult who swallows random pills a stranger threw at them, not so much.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#137

Post by PhasmaFelis »

spaceflunky wrote: post #102
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a stunt, but I don't see it as being particularly irresponsible. Daraprim's use is quite narrow and its side effects are pretty unpleasant; nobody's going to abuse it. It's not like he's throwing handfuls of homemade Ritalin.

If a stunt, then why throw away and waste potentially useful medicine like that? I understand the point he's trying to make, but the way he goes about it underlines his childish view of everything.

> If a stunt, then why throw away and waste potentially useful medicine like that?

It reinforces the point that this stuff is, in fact, extremely cheap and easy to make. The idea that prescription pills are expensive and precious is the scam that he's fighting.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#138

Post by lovich »

wavefunction wrote: post #92
malkia wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If stealing movies helped people survived, given financial difficulties, then they'll do it. Survival beats "no-steal" laws.

in the face of immorality, morality stand supreme

Would you wait to die instead of stealing something to save yourself?

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#139

Post by shub »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #122
shub wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, on the off chance one flies into someone’s open mouth and the surprise triggers a swallowing reflex? I wouldn’t have a lot of sympathy for an adult who ate the homemade pills a guy threw at him and then suffered serious side effects.

I'm surprised I have to argue about whether it's irresponsible to throw dangerous things into a crowd. It's irresponsible because they're dangerous. He can't be sure what will happen with pills that people accidentally carry out on their shoes or clothing. Any pills that don't get cleaned up from the venue could be eaten by children or animals at a later date. We're talking about a drug that we don't even let sick pe…

You're really stretching to find negative consequences there.

Re: The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

#140

Post by markoman »

darawk wrote: post #125
endymi0n wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It‘s interesting to see how negative the comments are here, compared to the civil disobedience of SciHub — in fact it‘s much of the same thing. And while there is an argument to be made about how developing new medicine costs real money, the re-investment of profits into research is around 10%, we‘re talking about a deeply corrupt industry here. And while it‘s definitely still morally questionable to clone new drugs,…

> It‘s interesting to see how negative the comments are here, compared to the civil disobedience of SciHub — in fact it‘s much of the same thing. Those things are worlds apart, in my view. Pharmaceutical companies add serious value to the world. They expend enormous amounts of money researching and testing drugs, and then shepherding them through the obscenely expensive FDA approval process. Journal publishers like E…

Yes Big Pharma does add incredible value to the world. That is indisputable, and the drugs we have today are incredible. There are a few big questions, about the net value they provide to civilization, however.

One is where are these immense sums going that they claim to spend on developing the drugs? I can understand that many prototypical drugs don't make it to market, most likely being found to be either unsafe or ineffective by FDA trials and other strictures that are the envy of and model of the rest of the world in terms of providing value to public health. I simply do not trust the accounting that makes up these amounts claimed spent on developing many of these medicines.

Scientists and engineers are not costing these companies millions each, yet its claimed that the current cost of bringing a drug to market is almost $3 billion. There simply must be synergies in drug development that are going unreported. Are development costs going to building research centers that will be used for later drugs? Further, what is being done to reduce the costs of developing these life-saving drugs (without allowing drug risk to rise) and is this even discussed or attempted by Big Pharma?

A second question regarding their net value is how they keep costs high and maximize their take by gaming the patent system in a number of ways to avoid losing sales to generics. AstraZeneca, in 2002 altered the molecule of an existing drug (prilosec) just enough to qualify for a new drug patent (Nexium). Another more recent example was how Allergan transferred their patent rights in Restasis to a New York indian tribe (St. Regis Mohawk) and licensed it back from them , all purely as a ploy. The tribe enjoys sovereign immunity and this will protect it in disputes against generic makers. These are just two simple examples of this type of abuse.

So, I'm less than sympathetic to Big Pharma's plight when the public's growing desperation for affordable medical care leads them to infringe on these patents.

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