Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

@hailey In situations like these, I always think about how many people like to talk of the "social contract", and how that mysteriously only ever gets invoked to place obligations on individuals, and never on states or corporations (as evidenced here once again).

Like, people aren't outright pirating because cultural interests are supposed to be balanced by legal exceptions. And leaving aside whether that has ever actually been balanced, if publishers now decide to object to that balance... well.

@afewbugs I certainly agree on the end goal :) But yeah, I *would* also like to see that 'metaphorical' reduction from 4 to 2.

Regarding the analysis - it seems that the objective is to provide a toolkit for figuring out manufacturing procedures for a wide variety of drugs, but with the expectation that any one single user of said toolkit would only be manufacturing one or a few types of drugs (and so would repeatedly carry out the same process).

In that context, would it not be viable to extend the toolkit so that it can also determine drug-specific validation mechanisms with simple/affordable tests? As opposed to a universal(-ish) tool like a mass spectrometer. Or is that not something that can be automated/assisted to the same degree as the original biosynthesis calculations?

@afewbugs I mean "DIY" in a very broad sense, in the sense of "existing outside of the existing for-profit pharmaceutical system" - obviously there's only so much that a single individual can do, purely by constraints of time and money. But what is possible collectively?

There is probably a limit to how safe it can be made, purely because having permanent controllable infrastructure makes you a legal target for patent enforcement, and informal things are easier to get away with legally but harder to make safe. But I also doubt that there's no room for improvement at all compared to what we have now, with some collective work.

So yes, the safe options *should* be made more accessible, but I don't think it's an either/or. Fixing those systemic issues is likely going to take a very long time, and in the meantime, ideally the DIY processes would be made as safe as they can be within the constraints. But that will require expert input and collaboration to achieve.

(An additional complicating factor is that you'll find many people who believe the nominally 'proper' way to be a dead end, and that is why they prefer to focus on improving DIY processes. This sort of thing is why diversity of tactics and mutual support is important.)

@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)

@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.

@lina In my (limited) experience it's better than HN... but not anywhere near enough better for me to willingly spend my time there 😐