But if they start a large enough movement with enough people then someone somewhere is going to eventually cut a corner or make a mistake and get someone killed or made seriously ill. And what then? Service. 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? Prohibiting access to highly addictive narcotics? But I reject the emotionally charged language that people use to say there are no downsides. There is no need for an anarchist collective. For instance, the article is stating that opioids are needed to create Naloxone. MovieWeb: What started out as an inside joke amongst two self-proclaimed weirdos in Ft. Worth, Texas became something much more than they bargained for. Sure you could blame the black market, but the simpler solution would be to fix the original problem which caused the black market to exist. Since then, its … On this episode of The Vonu Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Michael Laufer, chief spokesman for the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective. If you have concerns with how this could hurt people, then the best solution would be to make sure that everyone has access to the care they need, rather then allocating care on the basis of how much they can afford. I'd invest even if the only yield is longer/better life rather than $. If someone took them they could have gotten seriously hurt. Actually, even if you just compare the money the medical system itself wastes on overtesting, instead of using it to help people with existing technology, you see that a lot of this clinical testing money is spend wrong. I was at his 2018 talk and the Vice article did an excellent job of summing it up. Nick Titus is a member of The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, an anarchist biohacking “Do-it-yourself biology” group founded in 2015 by Michael Laufer. They're investigating using books as a medium for growing GM mycelia that could devour the cellulose in the paper and produce precursors; these books could be mailed at media rates between biohackers in a postal P2P system they call "biotorrents" (they're also thinking of using CDs as petri dishes, taking advantage of standard mailers and packaging). Didn't know who he was at first, after one of the talks he approached me and asked me if I wanted to get a beer. Still not cheap, but let’s not pretend that these cost $300 and are not even available. Hence, he's strongly incentivized to choose the drugs that are the "safest" without considering whether going from .1% risk of headaches to .01% risk of headaches is worth $1,000/month to the patient. Take the Hep C cure, for instance. Audible Anarchist played no part in its production so can't comment on the veracity of the information, but it is hoped that some of its recommendations and advice could be useful during these trying times. Side-effect smoothening, and extreme risk aversion on the part of the FDA, insurance companies, and doctors. One is where are these immense sums going that they claim to spend on developing the drugs? The article is not about anarchism. The catalyst for Four Thieves Vinegar Collective was a trip Laufer took to El Salvador in 2008 when he was still in graduate school. I think it's pretty irresponsible to throw a handful of pills with nasty side effects into a crowd. I love their spirit, but their actual message here is just stupid and illiterate of basic economics. Even people completely lacking any morality can understand that. Postal Service & the right to VOTE." Listen to this episode from The Vonu Podcast on Spotify. On the other hand, I think we could do a better job at providing medicines to people who genuinely cannot pay, or cannot obtain it for some odd reason (like the company stopped making it). The Collective’s mission is to develop ways for individuals to manufacture their own medications – ‘This will save hundreds of thousands of lives’, Laufer has (modestly) claimed. Four Thieves is effectively just liberating information on how to manufacture certain medicines at home and developing the open source tools to make it happen. —Felipe Andres Coronel Yes Big Pharma does add incredible value to the world. The company that sells it charges something like $80,000 for it, which seems exorbitant to a lot of people. "Hackers" are still perfectly happy about their "successes" while they make six figure salaries helping the oligopoly. The password needing to be cracked is the one on the RAR file itself, not the site. This all must be factored into the balances of costs measured against the externalities it imposes on society. But one of the things he mentioned needing more open information about is the chemistry. Not developed. Well, they do employ quite a few people. It's honestly a modern marvel that they still exist. It feels awesome as a patient, but that's because I'm insulated from the enormous cost. If you think working at facebook is the pinnacle of human achievement, I respectfully request you consider where we are, and how many humans around you are suffering. Just getting a molecule to the point of Phase I trials is quite difficult, too. Another was patented in 1961 and approved by the FDA in 1971. There is no reason why Epipens cost $300 other than the fact the FDA has a huge backlog [1] and other regulatory constraints. There are always potential downsides; it is a dangerous way of thinking to be unable to see possible negativities and use that as certainty of a position. Yep, totally agree. The RAR file was posted on a “dark web” site. What's it called when people get so emotional about a cause they just start acting irrationally and doing more harm than good? I was there too. It's not like he's throwing handfuls of homemade Ritalin. It's irresponsible because they're dangerous. Capitalism has given us the most prosperous, longest living, most peaceful grouping of people in the history of mankind. With the Microlab and the right chemicals, you can synthesize a variety of lifesaving drugs. designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated But I have seen enough of these sort of initiative over the years to be skeptical. They provide absolutely nothing of value to the world. The tribe enjoys sovereign immunity and this will protect it in disputes against generic makers. Anyone who gets excited about it have missed the joke. Not easy chemistry, but only two steps. Think of the instagram likes! That’s different, that’s not free drug, that’s co-pay assistance. Texts that promote adrenochrome as a psychoactive are fiction and humor. It's been two years since the epipencil and Four Thieves has been been busy. If that is not the case, I mostly retract my criticism of them. Maybe that commenter is using the same logic that distributing guns to anybody is fine, misusing guns is a personal failing. The 109 price seems like the market responding to the 30 $ diy epipen hack released 2 years ago. Expected future returns are already priced into stock of incumbents. How many unprosecuted crimes have been allowed in the course of war? But as soon as you do that all the edgy rhetoric and potential goes out the window in favor of liability and reality. Perhaps progress made on the biosynthetic step through reticuline? Because it "had to be done"? stage 4 cancer. sites. What OP is saying is that movies are already copyable and yet blockbusters are still being made. According to Laufer, some Four Thieves affiliates began partnering with heroin dealers to cut their product with the cabotegravir. > 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. These drugs have side effects. An adult who swallows random pills a stranger threw at them, not so much. Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is a member of Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them. Their breakeven price on that drug is definitely in the tens of thousands per dose, before you get to any profit. I wanted to like this article but when I read this it made me think either reading journalist didn’t check his facts or is more invested in the narrative than reality. Synthesizing medicines is easy. 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. cf: “A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudophedrine from N-Methylamphetamine”, https://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf. 1: https://www.cvs.com/content/epipen-alternative. The idea that prescription pills are expensive and precious is the scam that he's fighting. Well, on the one hand, everyone on earth will have cheap, timely access to every medicine that currently exists. The first time I encountered Michael Laufer, he was throwing thousands of dollars worth of homemade medicine into a packed audience at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), a biennial conference in New York City. These are just two simple examples of this type of abuse. I guess you’re being downvoted because it’s not “tens of billions of dollars” at all! So instead, society foots the bill for taking care of you. It's important to realize that a lot of at-risk populations that would most benefit from medication are often the most economically disadvantaged, and that our current healthcare system often excludes them from the help they need. 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. Our forum rules are detailed in the Community Guidelines. And while it‘s definitely still morally questionable to clone new drugs, the case is much more clear cut for substances like epinepherine or insulin, for which the patents have long expired. 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. RoI may go beyond financial measures for some of us. Or maybe you want a Chihuahua, which is one of the smallest breeds and also the longest living major breed at around 17… READ THE REST. Returns comparable. See my sibling comment. In response, the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, a biohacker group, released online instructions on how to make a DIY version of it from off-the-shelf materials. It's saying you can only get access to the file through a password-protected website on the dark web. I saw one of Michael's talks. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-dr... Tell that to 100 years of American drug policies. It is all fake. Journal publishers like Elsevier do not fund research. The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is an anarchist healthcare group founded in 2015. Didn't Shkreli make Daraprim available for free to anyone who couldn't afford it? Are. in the face of immorality, morality stand supreme. Your not getting rid of a monopoly on the IP, you are compelling people to give up there property to prevent a worse evil. It's easy to play: Just make & mail your original postcard creations (you can also recycle… READ THE REST, Even for home theater nerds, it's easy to get washed away in a sea of techno-jargon, special proprietary systems, and other labels and specs that can turn into a sea of audiophile white noise. Michaels first HOPE talk in 2016 is really worth watching -. The article told the story slightly misworded. If pharma geniuses couldn't make a fortune in pharma, would they work for the government on the Federal wage scale, or would they go to coding bootcamp (which they could easily thrive at, based on the biochem->coding converts I know) and go work for Facebook? Free medicine for everyone. That is indisputable, and the drugs we have today are incredible. From a moral standpoint it's an imperative to enact theft to prevent murder. They can go start a non-profit one right now. An interesting approach to the criminal lack of healthcare to vulnerable populations in the US (and potentially other places with third world health systems). Giving away free drugs causes insurance premiums to rise? 22 likes. They were asking the drug dealer(s) to cut their heroin with the drug. Whether it is used amongst biomedical researchers, or more recently, the general public (as a result of groups such as the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective), the presence of 3D printed customized labware and reaction vessels has … And in fact, this is sort of the essence of the problem with pharma, right here. That would be exciting. More $ - not terribly important beyond a threshold. Pfizer has to develop the medicine before you can synthesize it. Agree, although I was specifically here arguing against the notion that they are comparable to academic journals. I have plenty of sympathy for an adult who is forced to take homemade pills to save their life. But bugs…well, bugs don't really give you much choice, do they? There's reasons to be skeptical of the results it would produce IMO, but it's definitely a legitimate proposal. > 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. As for the DEA, none of the pharmaceuticals produced by the collective are controlled substance, so their possession is only subject to local laws about prescription medicines. He went due to securities fraud but one could argue that, if it weren't due to the drug price thing, he could have flown under the radar, since the investors didn't lose any money. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising He edited his post. It cannot be used for all the same purposes as the vinegar … Home pharma manufacturing is not without risks — you could easily end up making poison instead of medicine. Now what? If a person has a disease and prescription for the drug to treat that disease, they shouldn't run into any legal issues if they were to manufacture their own medicine. Just look at every other diy initiative to date that hasn't affected big companies in the slightest. I know they are already taking heroin, but these are still people and not your lab rats. I'm certainly not going to invest in it, are you? But how much did it cost them to develop that drug? If ever there was a time to “do good” with that enormous pile of capital and connections y’all have— this might be it. Exactly what I would also say as pro capitalist but anti patent. Strict regulations around the development and testing of drugs exist because no human is capable of evaluating efficacy for themselves, absent stringently controlled testing processes. 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. This sort of reminds me of the ability to 3D print guns. I'm surprised I have to argue about whether it's irresponsible to throw dangerous things into a crowd. And did they make the AIDS drug? You have two drugs, prilosec and nexium that are nearly identical. Why? I know nothing about chemistry/medicine, but this seems stupidly dangerous. Boing Boing is published under a Creative Commons More like $574 billion dollars in FY2016. In America we’ll have to make it part of the department of defense in order to get it funded. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx1-X9wpUk4. But at least they try to do something. A lot of drugs have a relatively niche market. So, as an example, I'm on Stelara. In the case of movies, sure, i'll pay for netflix because it's more convenient than torrenting, because Netflix costs $10. Major pharmaceutical companies spend significantly more on marketing than on R&D, so it'd be a net win for the taxpayer if they just paid for drug development directly. During the 11th HOPE conference in 2016, the Four Thieves Vinegar Collection went public and debuted the first generation of the Apothecary Microlab and EpiPencil. You're totally right that that pharmaceutical company did that. You think that is ethical? But look at their PE multiples and their margins. But he's also a deeply empathetic and passionate person who's giving his best effort to make the world a better place. Someone has to buy the lab equipment and pay the scientists. What will the effects be if we reduce that profit motive? because some people want to save lives, rather then enslaving them. You're right, they are doing something a bit novel, which is cool from a technical/hacker perspective. Any pills that don't get cleaned up from the venue could be eaten by children or animals at a later date. Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine, Slack is back: "J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius" trailer drops, Celebrity Storytime: Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal to host online event benefiting Children's Fairyland, Postcards for Democracy: Mark Mothersbaugh and Beatie Wolfe challenge you to make mail art, These speakers bring Dolby Atmos theater tech right into your home theater for $100, Enjoy the outdoors this summer with these insect and mosquito repellents, This dog DNA test will tell you more about your best friend than you ever realized. >After Four Thieves synthesized cabotegravir, it was just a matter of convincing at-risk populations to use it. >Although the initial clinical results with cabotegravir were extremely promising, Four Thieves grew impatient with waiting for it to become commercially available. Why don't single-payer healthcare systems (the ones who are already enlightened, compared to the backward USA, right?) Is there some route to naloxone that I am not aware of that doesn't start from some opiate or opium alkaloid? Or you can start a pharma company. Well if we could just rich people to find their projects. A large proportion of pharmaceutical development is funded (directly or indirectly) by public funds. Those things are worlds apart, in my view. If you want your medicine quality to go from hollywood blockbuster to home movie, I guess that's viable :). I simply do not trust the accounting that makes up these amounts claimed spent on developing many of these medicines. How does that work? Open-source pharmaceuticals from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective [2:13] The bubonic origins of Four Thieves Vinegar [2:47] The secretive members of the collective [4:27] Math, high energy physics, & birth control [6:29] Dr. Michael Laufer, self-teaching, & scientific papers [9:19] A $30 alternative to the $300+ EpiPen [10:21] "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? "If you accept that axiomatically, then by the same logic when you withhold access to lifesaving medication that's murder. of In general, we talk about how vonuans can become invulnerable to the fascist coercion of Big Pharma, but more specifically: He gives us his background and what led him to crypto-anarchism Reverend Ivan Stang (Douglass St. Clair Smith) and Dr. Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox) had no idea what would happen when they decided to turn their… READ THE REST, Children's Fairyland is the circa 1950 storybook theme park in Oakland, California where… Walt Disney took inspiration from to build Disneyland; Frank Oz got his start as a puppeteer; It's also where Blindspotting creators Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal will host an online event called Celebrity Storytime this Saturday, September 26 at 6:30 p.m. Rafael,… READ THE REST, Visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh and Beatie Wolfe have a request: Please send hand-decorated postcards STAT. These people are going to kill somebody. In reality it seldom makes sense to do it yourself. I am fairly against IP laws as well without being capitalist. Jump to: General, Art, Business, Computing, Medicine, Miscellaneous, Religion, Science, Slang, Sports, Tech, Phrases We found one dictionary that includes the word four thieves vinegar collective: General (1 matching dictionary). What is Medicaid? I understand the point he's trying to make, but the way he goes about it underlines his childish view of everything. Longer/better life - yeah, that's important no matter how much money I have. As a former pharmaceutical chemist I’m calling bullshit. My anti patent point just means not letting the government enforce IP rights. I hate to be negative. ", "The rhetoric that is espoused by people who defend intellectual property law is that this is theft," Laufer told me. When last we met the Four Thieves Vinegar collective — a group of anarchist scientists who combine free/open chemistry with open source hardware in response to shkrelic gouging by pharma companies — they were announcing the epipencil, a $30 DIY alternative to the Epipen, Mylan's poster-child for price-gouging and profiteering on human misery. Heavy advertising to doctors, who are not paying for the drugs themselves, and therefore are not incentivized to compare on cost. I would very much like to be wrong though. Yes, please, and Praise "Bob"! Now, a collective of doctors called Four Thieves Vinegar is offering a free online guide on how to make an “EpiPencil” for just $30—5% of the price Mylan charges for its patented pens. Obviously, lab-grade medication is less risky than stuff that's been produced in a mason jar, but when the choice is between having access to life-saving medical equipment or not, the choice is pretty clear. Presumably for "safety" reasons, but it's not hard to imagine that "safety" isn't the whole story. Daraprim's use is quite narrow and its side effects are pretty unpleasant; nobody's going to abuse it. The future of humanity depends on it. Publication date 2016-09-17 Usage CC0 1.0 Universal Topics Health, DIY, EpiPen, EpiPencil Language English. > Yes Big Pharma does add incredible value to the world. Pharma ends up poaching work developed at Universities. Did they make enough to make a difference? Are you comfortable with telling a heroin user using dirty needles that "We can't allow you access to HIV retardants because we can't guarantee your safety"? Concern for the public is valid, but it's a slippery slope that freedom often gets pushed down. They probabally haven't been tested for impurities. Otherwise, there's just no downside to Pascal's Wager, and we all must believe in God. > you could blame the black market, but the simpler solution would be to fix the original problem which caused the black market to exist. They expend enormous amounts of money researching and testing drugs, and then shepherding them through the obscenely expensive FDA approval process. This is a complex question that I think requires a nuanced answer that takes into account both our moral responsibility to take care of the sick but also recognizes the incentives innate to human nature.