pharmacists solely being distributors of pre-ordained medication has no detrimental effects on humans. 🫠 the US is great to its people, and has very good healthcare practices!! (livestream is on the 27th and i am excite, but not involved at all)
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/ASBXWW/
stream link for those interested:
https://streaming.media.ccc.de/38c3
EDIT: my lack of capitalization and poor word choice has confused people. this event is about making legal, tested for efficacy medication only. pharmacists are good. doctors are good. the cost of medication and other hurdles that prevent people from having access to medication are not.
EDIT 2: i looked into the 4 Theives Vinegar Collective (breifly, just on wikipedia) and i did not realize that they made the EpiPencil, which is an open-source device that injects a mesured dose of epinephrine (a medication that can be bought from a trusted and legal distributor). that’s awesome stuff, but it’s less awesome that they now want to share chemistry knowlege that they don’t necissarily have a full understanding of, and push automated synthesis for people who also don’t have the foundational knowledge to ensure safety. not really great. i guess that’s what happens when healthcare is entirely for-profit, and inaccessable to so many people.
Lmao, we have “don’t drink this” labels on bleach. But sure, this is a good idea
YOU are telling ME (a very smart person btw) what to do 😡
-consumes a whole bottle of chlorine bleach in protest of the implication of being told what to do-
They make business cards dosed for an abortion and have shared the instructions online. Look up miso card
i actually just learned that today… i am realizing i misunderstood the main purpose (probably) of the group. they are very focused on bodily autonamy, and pushing the boundaries of what’s allowed, as far as information sharing goes.
the lead guy also was suggesting heroin dealers lace their product with medication to prevent the spread of hepatitis, which sounds good, but doing so could result in an even more deadly super strain of the infection. he could have suggested wholly against sharing injection equipment, or emphasized the importance of “safe injection” sites that are staffed by medical personel, to help titrate the dose and safely end their addiction. at least he’s not telling people to synthesize suboxone at home, but ugh.
i don’t necissarily trust the information the they’re spreading, due to that and other factors, such as the lack of medical/synthesis knowledge outside of clandestine MDMA production. i do see that they do this more as “keep this stuff legal” measure, but a lot of their decisions seem reckless. maybe to further their cause/point? idk, it’s a mess.
Yeah i only looked at it briefly the other day when it came up. I like the idea behind it but can’t comment on the science/chemistry so am overall hesitant to trust it. The miso cards seemed relatively simple to make and use though, and i believe without risk of overdose at the dosing used. Given the US politics going to start cracking down on abortions, i think the miso cards are a good idea. Id need to look more into the other things though before trusting the group overall.
You better fix this. Start with the first sentence. For most of history, people died young and nobody knew why. And it was horrible shit.
i didn’t write the part that is an image, it’s a screenshot. i don’t disagree with you, in that “decisions for your own body” is not something that has always historically, or before written history, been a given at all. it definitely should not be taken for granted, and had/has to be defended and fought for, much like labor rights.
but also, you could try a better communication method than “you better -insert demand here-” statements. it’s not condusive to a conversation, and seems more like a threat over a post on the interet upsetting you.
Is that the plot of the new Resident Evil game?
“Despite the fact that for most of human history bodily autonomy […] was the norm”
LOL
I my be in favor of taking control of ones own life (including medicine) but is just not true that handcrafted things are always better, a shitty artisan will make worse products than a good factory.
That must assume the factory to be managed with integrity. Pharmaceuticals are usually held to a high standard. Chemistry in general is done best in larger batches with tightly controlled processes. But that also doesn’t mean a skilled chemist can’t make a perfectly fine batch with a good setup.
4Thieves is good stuff though. Consider their epipen. They cut the cost by a factor of something like 1/30th of market. They still sourced the epinephrine from a commercial company tho.
luigis glock jammed because parts of it were 3d-printed for example
fair enough. i don’t think educating shitty artisans to help them hone their skill is a bad thing tho, as long as safety and harm reduction are practiced (in the case of medicine especially)
Info is almost never a bad thing* and chemistry should absolutely be available and legal to everyone. Medicine (such as masculinizing and feminising HRT) should not be illegal to produce at home, the only drugs that might make any sense to ban personal production of are (in my opinion) literal bioweapons and chemical weapons (sarin nerve gas anyone).
*(I have yet to see a good example of it being bad, but others claim some info is bad)
info hazards (like production methods for sarin) are definitely real, and not always directly chemistry related. i.e. instructions on how to make a thermonuclear weapons, or get away with human rights violations with the right paperwork.
the concept of hazardous information is somewhat new to me, and i genuinely lost some sleep when i learned “information wants to be free,” is always true, but not always great.
but yes, i agree that info on chemistry, the availabilty of equipment, and legality of practicing it should be something to protect. all three have been in decline (at least in the US) for a while.
the problem with the legality to practice complex things is that humans are horrible at estimating risk, and overestimating our ability… it’s really easy to fuck up synthesis of a lot of things, and can be pretty hard to detect - for example, when people try to distil alcohol and get methanol (10ml causes permanent blindness, 30ml is lethal[1])
when you’re talking about medications, these are compounds that are specifically designed to be absorbed by your body, and dose is incredibly important - slightly less or more of a reaction and the strength changes and it’s lethal
medicine is hard, and dangerous. holding it to a high standard isn’t a bad thing
skydiving and motocross are very dangerous as well, and MMA/boxxing/other sports can result in severe injury or even death.
that said, syntheasis of any consumables lands in the “very dangerous” category somewhere, and the graphical-curve-related effect you described is very real in every field, and does often lead to harm.
legality of info that can (and is intended to) save/vastly improve lives, but also can destroy/end them if mishandled isn’t a right i would like to see disappear. the intent to help/harm difference is the key.
these guys seem to want to help, but also suggest some not-so-safe methods and applicationals. idk if lack of credibility is a part of their mission, but it almost feels like it’s intentional, which i am unsure how i feel about, as it muddies the waters on intent.
but really, them not mentioning waste management, or other key components of safety isn’t great, and might feed into over-confidence that can lead to people getting hurt. plus, the hot-takes on infection prevention almost verifies their lack of understanding of medicine/the human body.
that’s one load bearing ‘as long as’
especially when the difference between fine and lethal isn’t readily apparent, and practice implies a lot of not fine attempts
I think the problem in this case isn’t regulation, but that the regulation’s being managed by knobheads. I do agree that said regulations must be fair and allow anyone who genuinely needs access to have safe and controlled access, that they should work for the benefit of the people and not the interests of shareholders/lobbyists/string-pullers, yes.
I don’t think it’d be a good idea to allow everyone unrestricted access to every medicine under the sun willy-nilly. One such example would be antibiotics, which, while very effective when used appropriately, have been demonstrated to suffer massively from diminishing returns over time. Allowing people to self-medicate with such a substance would just lead to both increases in infections, as well as chemical damage to one’s organism.
the constituents’ best interest unfortunately doesn’t make the senate/congress any money. it would be nice if they had priorites outside making easy money by bending to every corporate lobby.
unrestricted access would be a nightmare. Mexico’s strategy of allowing trained pharmacists to dispense basic meds (like a z-pac) seems like a happy medium. seeing a doctor for stuff like that can be expensive and time consuming, and like an excuse for insurance companies to profit.
That’s my main problem, that we’re not doing much which is in the interest of people, we’re mostly just slapping rational-sounding labels on different forms of greed-driven practices. I agree that we need to rethink pretty much everything about medical regulations, if not to change, then to at least ensure that what’s there is uncorrupted.
That may be a potential solution, yes! Would most likely require bringing changes to the educational system as well (I’m just assuming, I have no first-hand experience with either studying, or practicing in this domain, but a more robust educational system would solve a lot of problems from the get go) in order to ensure that pharmacists have all the resources possible at their disposal. Or maybe it’s just down to perception, one of those “having a custodial job is shameful” preconceptions, like “pharmacists are less reliable than doctors in establishing prescriptions because a doctor’s a doctor…” Still working on identifying my biases, I apologise.
Of course, my ideal would be that every single person on this planet have free access to medical care whenever and for whatever reason, so seeing a doctor wouldn’t put half of somebody’s family tree in debt for a sprained ankle…
i haven’t had the education to be a pharmacist, but conversations with a few of them has made pretty annoyed for them. there is way more training already than one would expect, but they are doomed to almost exclusively count pills and read off the occasional warning label, essentially. medication interactions, conditions affecting efficacy of specifc meds, and many other factors get offloaded to already overworked doctors. at least the insurers get paid twice, from the doctor visit, and the pharmacy… 🙃
What a mess… Thank you for shining some light on this, really haven’t had much contact with pharmacology! Yeah, I’ve no doubt they could handle all aspects around medication just fine now that I think about it… I imagine they must know more stuff about chems than even the doctors in many cases.
the last bit is almost true, but mainly due to specialization, not training, since they go through the same coursework as each other involving medication. a primary care doctor has to have tons of base knowlege on almost every condition, infection, etc, so the education on chemicals to treat them with gets partly lost to the more relevant-to-role info. i am terrible with names, so even remembering all the preferred specialists to refer patients to would be taking up an unreasonable amount of brain storage space tbh.
I think the problem in this case isn’t the regulation, but that the regulation’s being managed by knobheads
this is definitely a take. have you ever heard of GMP? these rules were written in blood
If you’re referring to Good Manufacturing Practice, yes, although I didn’t dive too much into it. And based on what I know of it, I’m not sure I get your point.
If it’s not that, then I’m completely in the weeds on this.
they definitely don’t do anything close to GMP
Oh, agreed! I was referring more to the concept of regulation as a generic denominator, I completely agree that we’ll need to establish and maintain far better regulations and standards than we have so far!
That’s why I see this as a “knobheads being in charge” problem, they pretty much dictate everything related to regulations. In my view, replacing them with people who actually have the interest of the people at heart would cut straight at the root of the problem.
the regulations you’re looking for is single payer nationalized healthare and has nothing to do with whatever compliance crimes they’re doing. GMP is fine as it is
I think you’re posting in the wrong neighborhood, RFK Jr.
Are you addressing the man or the worm?
These guys aren’t about alternative medicine, they’re about DIY manufacturing actual medicine to get around inflated prices.
That’s a mighty fine line to walk 🧐
neither have any meaningful quality control, this would get people killed if it wasn’t juicero for chemistry that it is
Sure, but if the alternative is not getting the medicine…
Well, there’s actually a third point on your scale, which is “The opposite of medicine.”
If you take something for pain management and it kills you, is that better than not having the pain meds at all? For some people that’s a complicated question; chronic pain can absolutely make someone wish they were dead. So maybe someone is desperate enough to try this in spite of the risks. But they should at least know those risks, right?
they’ve made juicero of backyard chemistry. everything you can do with that bullshit jar strapped to arduino you can do with hotplate and standard glassware - and cheaper - and even more because their setup doesn’t allow you to run reflux sanely among others. putting procedures as a set of instructions for said arduino is no substitute for actual expertise. iirc their procedure for naloxone can fail in such a way that another pharmaceutical of opposite activity can be made (oxymorphone). there’s zero analysis or quality control that would catch this. they’re trying to generate synthesis pathways with ai. laufer has no actual training in chemistry, his degree is in maths and i suspect heavy case of engineer syndrome
there’s also little consideration, if any, about purification and waste management. do you feel lucky?
that sounds… questionable, almost at best. i will still probably tune in, but i’m now prepared to be kind of horrified honestly. i’m not sure someone with a math degree and no chemistry experience is the best source for this kind of information, especially when the substances being produced are meant to be consumed.
even with a chemistry degree, it’s very common for professionals to overestimate others ability to comprehend their field, and for beginners to overestimate their ability
when it comes to synthesising drugs, that’s a recipe for disaster
good thing these guys seem in love with automating the process… 🙃
leaving most of the brain-thinkie parts up to an arduino totally solves the “this might kill someone” factor. no-knowledge synthesis is the future! (/s for anyone wanting to toss reagents in a jar, and hope robots are infallable)
really tho, mistakes that make fries taste bad, or twist an ankle don’t have shit on barely messing up a step in a synthesis that is to be consumed. it is like their reckless abandon is also intended to be a part of their cause, which makes things more confusing, and raises even more ethical questions.
If that’s what they stand for then the imagine is completely mistaken. DIY medicine manufacturing is perfectly legal unless you’re selling it or it’s a controlled substance.
pharmacists are trained extensively about every class of FDA approved medicine, but doctors (primarily PCPs) are given insanely huge caseloads of “Becky-Sue needs antibiotics” type cases. i think you misunderstood what the talk/stream is about tbh.
manufacturing meds that are known to help and tested as such isn’t exactly new, groundbreaking stuff. i don’t think these guys are going to be pushing for scam-of-the-week alternative medicine lol
The image says the Guv’ment has made what they do illegal.
Manufacturing medicine for yourself is not illegal. Hell, giving it away is not illegal, unless your negligence causes harm or if you make a claim that your product is identical to a prescription drug.
Selling it is illegal. Manufacturing dangerous controlled substances is illegal.
i guess i’ll let the FDA and DEA (the lovely agency that largely gets to decide what substances on the “controlled substances” list, then also enforce the laws around those substances) decide what’s safe for myself personally, and everyone else 🤷
to learn about the talk, feel free to click the first link, if you like. it isn’t really going to be about laws or “Guv’ment,” i don’t think. first paragraph (in screenshot) is an attention grabber tho, and i guess it rubs some people the wrong way.
Out of curiosity, which controlled substance is it that you want to manufacture?
🤔 i don’t remember mentioning a desire to create, manifest through demonic portal, synthesize, or extract anything not allowed by law. it seems more than a little presumptious to assume i have the want/need to accompish that. the aforementioned live event is not about anything on the CSA, but you did mention “controlled substances,” which admittedly triggers me. i suppose you’re a fan of the “war on drugs.” you do you, i guess.
since we are asking random questions…
what educational materials or ideas do you desire it to be illegal to diseminate? just curious
If you’re not breaking the law then you’re not “criminalized” and not a “bioterrorist”. The post explicitly says they are that and your response to my former comment was that the FDA and DEA don’t allow you to decide for yourself. What is it you think they aren’t allowing you to do? Tell me.
i mentioned that they “decide what’s safe,” which you seem to agree with whole-heartedly…
i also didn’t claim that i, personally, am a “bioterrorist,” and the info about the talk doesn’t claim any person themselves is “criminalized.”
do you always jump into talking with people with this many assumptions and misconceptions? it is confusing tbh, and i am unsure if you’re just trolling, or enjoy arguing for no reason.
Ever if they’re not scammers, there will be many like them that are. Many people will not know the difference (see ivermectin, homeopathy, the supplements industry, gerson therapy). I get that this is a desperate measure for people in desperate situations, but that’s exactly the kind of mark a scammer wants. I hope they do some good, but I also expect tragedies and lots of them.
