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Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

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Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#21

Post by trhway »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #7

> After a few minutes of gloating about pharma bro Martin Shkreli “rotting at Fort Dix” for raising the price of Daraprim, a lifesaving HIV medicine, from $13 to $750, Laufer grew serious. “It’s been two years, but despite everything that’s happened, the price of Daraprim hasn’t changed,” he said. Shkreli went to jail for securities fraud- not raising the price of a drug. I think Shkreli was a convenient scapegoat fo…

while all that drama on the surface, the industry had coopted government's War on Drugs and pushed opiates (great thing when used as needed) into the opioid epidemics, and now they coopted government's War on Covid and has been pushing billions of doses of the vaccines (great thing when it works) which clearly fail to control the spread (and thus these vaccines have only limited use, i.e. only for the people who really need it (like high risk groups, etc.) - the situation pretty similar to opioids. And if one looks at those 3rd, 4th, ... boosters - sales tactic wise it looks eerily similar to the jacking up the "12hr" opioid dose approach as it simultaneously increases sales and creates addiction). I wonder if several years down the road we'll see vaccine trials/settlements similar to the opioids ones.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#22

Post by netizen-936824 »

tehjoker wrote: post #6

This is pretty interesting, but skimming the article I didn't see any mention of lab testing the purity and quantity of drugs produced. There's a lot of fiery talk but how do we know that the results are usable?

This is a very important step in the production of medications. We need to know that nothing went wrong with the synthesis and we aren't ingesting toxic and potentially fatal byproducts. Dosage can also be wrong if measuring an impure compound.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#24

Post by Xenoamorphous »

Due to the pandemic I’ve often thought about what the ideal model for vaccines and other drugs would be. I understand that there’s enormous costs for pharma companies to bring a new drug to the market, and I guess a lot of new drug prospects end up not going anywhere, but it’s hard to swallow that there’s drugs out there that are cheap to manufacture and are life saving (or life changing) for people that need them yet some/many of them can’t afford them.

What’s the best way to fix this? Direct government funding? Indirect one via subsidising the drugs for those who need it? Im

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#25

Post by mrxd »

> “If you're going to die and you're being denied the medicine that can save you, would you rather break the law and live, or be a good upstanding citizen and a corpse?”

It's obviously better to risk using DIY medicine than to die, and it sounds appealing—mutual aid, neighbors helping neighbors, saving lives with free medicine! But framing it this way significantly misrepresents the issue of for-profit medicine.

People mostly aren't dying because they can't afford life-saving medicine. They are selling their homes, emptying retirement accounts and their kids college funds, going into debt and going bankrupt to pay for life-saving medicine.

These guys have given people a new option. You don't have to go into debt—you could instead choose DIY medicines of dubious quality that could have costly medical consequences for you.

This isn't quite as appealing. It isn't some radical, utopian alternative. It's just how the system works today for poor people in so many areas of life: education, housing, food, medical care, etc. The rich can afford quality, while the poor have to make hard trade-offs and take risks to stretch their dollars.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#26

Post by trutannus »

hirundo wrote: post #8
trutannus wrote: post #2

My first thought was how dangerous this is. Then after thinking some more, I was left questioning how a developed country can mess up so badly that some people feel this is their only option.

> I was left questioning how a developed country can mess up so badly that some people feel this is their only option. Regulatory capture.

That and market failure.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#27

Post by kragen »

mrxd wrote: post #25

> “If you're going to die and you're being denied the medicine that can save you, would you rather break the law and live, or be a good upstanding citizen and a corpse?” It's obviously better to risk using DIY medicine than to die, and it sounds appealing—mutual aid, neighbors helping neighbors, saving lives with free medicine! But framing it this way significantly misrepresents the issue of for-profit medicine. Peop…

What if the DIY medicines weren't of dubious quality? What if they were higher quality than the ones that cost US$750 a dose? What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines, DIY or not, to find out what was in them, and the DIY stuff turned out to be purer and more precisely dosed? That's what happened with Linux versus, say, Solaris and Microsoft Windows, and it's what's happening now with programmable insulin pumps.

Also, medical consequences have to get pretty costly before they're more costly than selling your home and emptying your retirement account and your kids' college funds.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#28

Post by jjoonathan »

trhway wrote: post #21
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #7

> After a few minutes of gloating about pharma bro Martin Shkreli “rotting at Fort Dix” for raising the price of Daraprim, a lifesaving HIV medicine, from $13 to $750, Laufer grew serious. “It’s been two years, but despite everything that’s happened, the price of Daraprim hasn’t changed,” he said. Shkreli went to jail for securities fraud- not raising the price of a drug. I think Shkreli was a convenient scapegoat fo…

while all that drama on the surface, the industry had coopted government's War on Drugs and pushed opiates (great thing when used as needed) into the opioid epidemics, and now they coopted government's War on Covid and has been pushing billions of doses of the vaccines (great thing when it works) which clearly fail to control the spread (and thus these vaccines have only limited use, i.e. only for the people who real…

Pro-opiate and anti-vax? Niiiice!

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#29

Post by hhpindia »

jjoonathan wrote: post #28
trhway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while all that drama on the surface, the industry had coopted government's War on Drugs and pushed opiates (great thing when used as needed) into the opioid epidemics, and now they coopted government's War on Covid and has been pushing billions of doses of the vaccines (great thing when it works) which clearly fail to control the spread (and thus these vaccines have only limited use, i.e. only for the people who real…

Pro-opiate and anti-vax? Niiiice!

No post body was provided.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#30

Post by snakeboy »

trhway wrote: post #21
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #7

> After a few minutes of gloating about pharma bro Martin Shkreli “rotting at Fort Dix” for raising the price of Daraprim, a lifesaving HIV medicine, from $13 to $750, Laufer grew serious. “It’s been two years, but despite everything that’s happened, the price of Daraprim hasn’t changed,” he said. Shkreli went to jail for securities fraud- not raising the price of a drug. I think Shkreli was a convenient scapegoat fo…

while all that drama on the surface, the industry had coopted government's War on Drugs and pushed opiates (great thing when used as needed) into the opioid epidemics, and now they coopted government's War on Covid and has been pushing billions of doses of the vaccines (great thing when it works) which clearly fail to control the spread (and thus these vaccines have only limited use, i.e. only for the people who real…

Seems like they're pretty different cases, given how life-destroying opioid addiction is.

Pushing vaccines is mostly just profiting by adding another layer of bureaucracy and annoyance into daily life.

I'm not really more angry at pfizer than I am Booz Allen for wasting however many billions of my tax dollars.

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