I've seen a lot of excitement about that @404mediaco piece on #FourThievesvinegarCollective's instructions for home synthesis of patented pharmaceuticals, and I get that everyone's excited that it's all cool and cyberpunk but what I feel is missing from the fediverse discussion is any consideration of safety.
https://www.404media.co/right-to-repair-for-your-body-the-rise-of-diy-pirated-medicine/
1/n
There is a legitimate reason pharmaceuticals are made in highly controlled labs not just a profit driven one, and that is the need to ensure that the reagents and solvents are free of chemical contaminants and potential pathogens, that nothing toxic is going to leach out of the equipment into the solvent, that no toxic by-products are going to be formed, that the way it's formulated into a tablet or delivery method or whatever will ensure it's released at the correct rate.
2/n
It's like the argument for legalising and regulating recreational drugs, pure mdma at a known dose is incredibly safe but people die from ecstasy tablets all the time because the production process is illegal and uncontrolled and there's no safety testing.
3/n
People _will_ die doing this. And obviously people are already dying from lack of access to unaffordable drugs, and this will result in fewer people dying overall so in that sense it's a good thing and a harm reduction measure. But this isn't something we should be celebrating you know, this is something we should be horrified as a symptom of an economic system that puts lifesaving drugs out of peoples' reach for financial reasons.
4/n
@afewbugs I expect that the people celebrating this development broadly understand and agree that it's not a true solution, and that there are significant risks.
But people have been arguing for true solutions for many years now, to complete disinterest from those in power (formally or otherwise), so I can definitely understand people just focusing on the short-term solution and its positive implications here. For them, the conversations about the systemic issues have already been had.
@afewbugs (Relatedly, I think "working on concrete ways to collectively improve the safety of DIY medicine" is a more productive endeavour than "critizing people being hopeful", even if the criticism is nominally correct)