There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine

Sharing because I found this very interesting.

The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has a DIY design for a home lab you can set up to reproduce expensive medication for dirt cheap, producing medication like that used to cure Hepatitis C, along with software they developed that can be used to create chemical compounds out of common household materials.

Sterile_Technique ,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

…well, this is a good way to shine the spotlight on a massive problem. I’d be pretty hesitant to take DIY meds unless it was life-critical and my only option (which… lots of don’t have that option, and just die after hitting the health paygate…). The value here is its potential to slap some sense into the US and get our broken-as-fuck healthcare system caught up with the rest of the world so people don’t need moonshine insulin or w/e in the first place.

That this conversation is even taking place is testament to how horrible our current system is.

catch22 ,
@catch22@programming.dev avatar

By far one of the most interesting articles I’ve seen on Lemmy so far, thanks for the link

LadyAutumn ,
@LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

They have released a guide on making a CLR (basically several different pieces of lab equipment controlled to automate some of the process) and software to run on it to assist in the process of making the medications. Specifically to try and improve consistency of the medications produced.

It’s a really great cause. Worth reading the article. If someone had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars cost to access life-saving medication, and they couldn’t afford it, something like this could legitimately save their life.

BartyDeCanter ,

This seems both awesome and dangerous. The two analogies that come to mind are home canning and home brewing. They’re both generally safe and easy. But every so often someone gives their family botulism.

LadyAutumn , (edited )
@LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

True. A lot of drugs you can perform tests on. But there is an inherent risk. I don’t think making medicine at home is going to be many people’s first choice. I think the people most likely to pursue this are those for whom obtaining medication other ways is not possible. When the government makes it impossible for someone to obtain health care, either due to literally making it illegal or by allowing it to become completely unaffordable for working class people, then they have to resort to other options.

With patience and diligent work it is possible to make many medications with (by comparison) significantly cheaper resources. And if someone were to do this, presumably, there are others who also have similar needs for the medications being produced. Which is how community medicine networks are formed. DIY Hormone replacement medications for trans people living in places where it’s illegal for them to access medication, or otherwise extremely difficult often access medicines made through networks like that.

This isn’t really a new thing, but the ease of access certainly is.

thatKamGuy ,

While this is definitely an interesting proposition, for most people in the US wouldn’t something like Mark Cuban’s CostPlus drugs website be a more reasonable solution?

Jimmycakes ,

They don’t have everything and especially rare mega expensive stuff that’s not widely generic options

ArchRecord OP ,

They could do that, but the drugs are still much too expensive comparatively, and it doesn’t include many drugs, especially the ones that are the most absurdly priced.

For instance, after looking through various articles on him and scraping together some of the data, out of the medications referenced as being some that he’s made:

Misoprostol (Abortion Medication) - $14.90 on CPG - $0.89 via MicroLab

Sovaldi (Cures Hepatitis C) - Not available on CPG (normally $84,000) - $70 via MicroLab

Kalydeco (Treats Cystic Fibrosis) - Not available on CPG (Normally ~$500/day) - $10/day via MicroLab

Daraprim (Treats Parasitic Diseases & Some AIDS Patients) - $2443/30 pills on CPG - $80/30 Pills via MicroLab

Epinephrine (Treats Allergic Reactions, AKA epipen) - Not available on CPG (Normally $650-$750) - Initially $30 via MicroLab ($3/reload after)

The pharmaceutical industry is so screwed up, and these prices only show it more clearly.

RangerJosie ,

Piracy is how you got Netflix.

This is how we’ll change the pharmaceutical industry. They’ll overreact and Streisand Effect this and it’ll blow up. Become normalized. The open source tech will improve.

This is a good thing. Period.

Mojave ,

Pirating movies and games can’t kill you

Home brewing seizure medication can

RangerJosie , (edited )

This is America dude. Human life costs $7.25 an hour here. We can’t even do anything to keep children safe from their number 1 killer here.

Nobody cares. Those who do care are completely powerless to change anything.

Yes. Mistakes will happen. People will die. People die every day right now. Many of them because they can’t afford life saving medicine. I’d happily take a risk on this before I’d saddle my family with $50,000 a month for medicine that you can get in Canada or Mexico for $50.

shortwavesurfer ,

This is fantastic. If you know what the problem is, because you’ve been diagnosed or whatever, and you know what medicine will do it, and you are capable of making it, I see no issue at all with this. You don’t need a PhD in computer science to browse the internet.

surewhynotlem ,

You’ve gone to a malicious website. Now you’ve died.

See, the risks of surfing the web incorrectly are slightly different than the risks of creating medicine incorrectly.

krelvar ,

When a person has nothing left to lose they will take chances that otherwise they wouldn’t. If we weren’t living in a corporatocracy, perhaps there’d be no demand for this sort of thing, but we do and there is.

cm0002 ,

You wouldn’t download a car life saving medicine!

bl_r ,

I fucking love pirate medicine. Fuck the US healthcare system, what good is having the “best healthcare in the world” if you can’t even afford mediocre healthcare?

ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

If it was the best healthcare in the world, we’d have the best outcomes and we don’t even have that for rich people. We have a (non-metric) shit ton of world class research universities and highly respected agencies like the FDA and NHS but Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, can’t even get the mental health services he obviously needs.

I’d obviously rather go to an American hospital than a hospital in most of the world but spending a lot to cover up a shitty system isn’t as good as a functioning system.

bl_r ,

but Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, can’t even get the mental health services he obviously needs

Lmfao

I’d rather get healthcare at all. I’ve been too poor to afford any medical care at points in my life, I’d settle for even some low quality care as opposed to none at all and hoping that this new weird pain either is insignificant and goes away without issue, or it gently takes me out in the night.

I’m excited to see where pirate medicine goes. I’ve met a trans woman who told me that her DIY HRT was life changing in the best possible way, and I can only dream of what would happen if people started making their own Insulin or T or whatever

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Here’s a fun thought, the drug you make fails but doesn’t kill you.

Instead you now have another life long ailment that cause pain/degradation of daily life.

Sounds like a great idea.

AbouBenAdhem ,

And that’s different from the commercial pharmaceutical industry how?

ArchRecord OP ,

As opposed to dying from the disease you already have because the traditional pharmaceutical industry makes the drugs you need out of your price range?

It won’t be a life long ailment for long if you’re going to die from a lack of care soon anyways.

etchinghillside ,

With the same risk to blindness as moonshine?

HungryJerboa ,

If you’re going to die because you can’t afford it, then does the risk really matter?

thefartographer ,

And when you do die, you won’t see it coming!

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

https://media.tenor.com/gJNkVOBJAJQAAAAM/earlycuyler-squidbillies.gif

katja ,

I you make your own, there is no risk for blindness. Blindness comes from methanol, not ethanol. If you use a yeast based process to produce the alcohol and then distill it, there is no way to accidentally produce methanol in that process. The cases where people get blind or die from moonshine stems from when the feds replaced moonshine with methanol to be able to make that claim and disrupt the business of organized crime during the prohibition. There are still cases now and then where people try to make drinkable alcohol from some industrial base and don’t know how to.

TLDR: Don’t buy, make.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •