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Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

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Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#41

Post by LiquidSky »

notch656a wrote: post #36
nwiswell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines, DIY or not, to find out what was in them I can fairly confidently predict this will not happen like it did for software. Chemical analysis has been around a long time and remains difficult for experts to do accurately without context, let alone for a layman. Gas chromatography, for example, requires large and expensive machinery and some ide…

I'm not arguing with what you're saying, but GC/MS can be bought for like $100 a sample and it's conceivable a system can be invented where private auditors audit the output of an unregulated pharmaceutical manufacturer in such a way that the QC assurances to the consumer are as good or better as in our current system, with much lower regulatory costs.

>it's conceivable a system can be invented where private auditors audit the output of an unregulated pharmaceutical manufacturer in such a way that the QC assurances to the consumer are as good or better as in our current system, with much lower regulatory costs.

No, it's not. This is ideological libertarian nonsense. There's a reason pharma came to be regulated in the first place. All this will lead to are more injuries and death of consumers.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#42

Post by kragen »

nwiswell wrote: post #34
kragen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines, DIY or not, to find out what was in them I can fairly confidently predict this will not happen like it did for software. Chemical analysis has been around a long time and remains difficult for experts to do accurately without context, let alone for a layman. Gas chromatography, for example, requires large and expensive machinery and some ide…

Clearly making it happen will require a revolution in manufacturing, which may or may not already be underway, but making it happen for software required decades of continuous revolution in semiconductors and telecommunications.

Some kinds of analysis machinery, like GC, ICP, and DSC or DTA, are probably inherently fairly large; other kinds, like FT-IR, other kinds of spectrometry, TLC, HPLC, other kinds of liquid chromatography, XRF, XRD, and NMR, can be miniaturized and mass-produced. There hasn't been much pressure to do this because bio and chem labs don't care if their spectrophotometer costs US$0.12 or US$12000 or whether it weighs 100 mg or 100 kg; they need one to get their work done, they don't need it to be portable, and they aren't going to lose it because it stays in the lab. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Even Victorian-era-style reagent testing can be made quantitative in some cases!

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#43

Post by notch656a »

LiquidSky wrote: post #38
kragen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines Because, as a post below notes, this is a pure fantasy. At this point you're proposing actual magic. >Linux versus, say, Solaris and Microsoft Windows Your choice of operating system isn't going to severely harm or kill you. "Move fast and break things" is a problem when the "things" are people. >medical consequences have to get pretty costly…

Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate, where here the white market is a huge oligopoly with insane markups to pay off lobbyists / regulator / advertisers / the rich people who own the pharma companies. Sometimes the black market is even more expensive but in DIY it often isn't.

If it were me I'd just make it all in one go, hopefully enough to be set for life, huge pile of it whatever drug I need to stay alive. Create a homogeneous mixture, GC/MS the mixture for purity and then package it for long term storage.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#44

Post by mrxd »

kragen wrote: post #27
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…

92% of contributors to the Linux kernel are paid by companies: https://www.suse.com/suse-defines/definition/linux-contribut...

Most major OSS projects are controlled by a few companies who pay developers to work on them. They're more like industry consortiums than DIY anarchist collectives.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#45

Post by GuB-42 »

I remember a few years ago, someone made a suggestion, that, because a lot of these overpriced drugs are paid by insurance companies.

So why don't insurance companies contract an independent lab to make their own medicine instead of paying ridiculously high prices for out-of-patent medicine? Of course, it would be a proper lab, with certifications and quality control, not some guy's basement, so it would be expensive, but on the other hand, the alternative is also way too expensive.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#46

Post by LiquidSky »

notch656a wrote: post #43
LiquidSky wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines Because, as a post below notes, this is a pure fantasy. At this point you're proposing actual magic. >Linux versus, say, Solaris and Microsoft Windows Your choice of operating system isn't going to severely harm or kill you. "Move fast and break things" is a problem when the "things" are people. >medical consequences have to get pretty costly…

Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate, where here the white market is a huge oligopoly with insane markups to pay off lobbyists / regulator / advertisers / the rich people who own the pharma companies. Sometimes the black market is even more expensive but in DIY it often isn't. If it were me I'd just make it all in one go, hopefully enough to be set for life, huge pile of it whatever drug I need to…

>Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate,

No, it's classic libertarian fantasy bullshit. Medicines aren't toys, and we know exactly what happens when they're unregulated.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#47

Post by nwiswell »

kragen wrote: post #42
nwiswell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if everyone had an analysis machine that could analyze the medicines, DIY or not, to find out what was in them I can fairly confidently predict this will not happen like it did for software. Chemical analysis has been around a long time and remains difficult for experts to do accurately without context, let alone for a layman. Gas chromatography, for example, requires large and expensive machinery and some ide…

Clearly making it happen will require a revolution in manufacturing, which may or may not already be underway, but making it happen for software required decades of continuous revolution in semiconductors and telecommunications. Some kinds of analysis machinery, like GC, ICP, and DSC or DTA, are probably inherently fairly large; other kinds, like FT-IR, other kinds of spectrometry, TLC, HPLC, other kinds of liquid ch…

> Some kinds of analysis machinery, like GC, ICP, and DSC or DTA, are probably inherently fairly large; other kinds, like FT-IR, other kinds of spectrometry, TLC, HPLC, other kinds of liquid chromatography, XRF, XRD, and NMR, can be miniaturized and mass-produced

Many of the types of analysis listed here are elemental analysis only, which are useless for trying to identify pharmaceutical analytes or determine their concentration.

Out of all of these, microfluidic liquid chromatography is the least science fiction. There's plenty of literature about it but nobody really "has it working", and the reality is that it's not likely to ever have the same capability as benchtop HPLC.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#48

Post by waterhouse »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #15
ur-whale wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO the answer is some kind of regulation IMHO, the solution is actually less regulation. If any company could enter that market with being sued into the ground, you'd get top notch a quality product for a fraction of the price before you could finish spelling epinephrine.

The computer market is not particularly regulated, yet we still have international big tech monopolies stifling competition. I think the US simultaneously needs: • less regulation, to reduce barriers-to-entry • more regulation, to allow competition Normally, I'd be concerned about reduced regulations having safety implications, but the existing situation is already unsafe.

Patents are a big part of how the stifling is done. Getting rid of them, or at least cutting their term by a factor of 3-4, would help a great deal.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#49

Post by notch656a »

LiquidSky wrote: post #46
notch656a wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate, where here the white market is a huge oligopoly with insane markups to pay off lobbyists / regulator / advertisers / the rich people who own the pharma companies. Sometimes the black market is even more expensive but in DIY it often isn't. If it were me I'd just make it all in one go, hopefully enough to be set for life, huge pile of it whatever drug I need to…

>Meh it's the classic black market vs white market debate, No, it's classic libertarian fantasy bullshit. Medicines aren't toys, and we know exactly what happens when they're unregulated.

I wasn't aware that analytical instruments could measure your economic or political ideology.

Re: Anarchists making their own medicine (2018)

#50

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> People mostly aren't dying because they can't afford life-saving medicine.

No, people are definitely dying because they can't afford medicine. They're not taking things they need, they're cutting pills in half, they're diluting injections. When they finally die from some acute episode, what got them there is never recorded.

The amount of bullshit I have gone through to get albuterol inhalers (which cost $5 in civilized countries, but used to cost $20 in the US until a consortium of pharma lobbyists churned the patent and got the price up to $80.) I've met people in parking lots to buy out of date medicine in a crumpled brown paper bag. I guarantee that more than one person dies from this every single day, and none of them are recorded any differently than any other asthma death. Not being able to obtain this absurdly cheap to produce medicine that has been available for half a century has put me into intensive care for a week, causing years of medical debt when I was young. I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't been trying to manage without an inhaler.

Daraprim and emergency epinephrine seem like the same type of thing. To be honest, though, I prefer to Meet the Criminals Smuggling Their Own Medicine. For Albuterol, ordering inhalers from India was the real answer.

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