IMO, The test equipment required to analyze the results of the reactions is generally most cost prohibitive aspect of this type of 'research'. And this is where I have a problem with these guys: I don't see any plans available for building any of that. Building many of these devices is not out of reach for a skilled individual, and it makes more sense to me that this equipment should more readily accessible than a glorified Keurig machine for drugs. This kind of arrogance and lack of respect for the discipline required in organic chemistry is going to result is someone getting hurt.
Sometimes it included some cool detective work. In one case they were able to track the contamination down to post packaging. A component of the sticker glue diffused through the wall of the plastic bottle and contaminated the stuff contained therein.
So except for an excuse to tell this story my point is that maybe you can outsource the analysis. I admit I haven't checked if the labs accept samples from random people. In theory that should be possible.
Naaa. Same with prescription meds, open it up! Isn't that how we found a drug for a Parkinson's mouse model? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP]
Big brother's job is not to control and ban certain behavior. California thinks this way and aggressively enumerates every possible bad thing they can conceive of and making it illegal. As if slipping on a banana peel were illegal. It's borderline insane, like why not make getting sick illegal or being poor illegal, why not make changing lanes without a turn signal illegal. Ethically as long as the instructions say, "do this wrong and you'll die, it's a garage door spring" people will know. Or "take this medicine, but if you don't check your liver/kidney/clotting you may well die". In big bright red letters.
Don't make it impossible to do freely. Just make it impossible to do without reading and agreeing to the fact that you understand the big red letters. Understand the risks. Medicine is all about patient autonomy and this is the opposite.
Funny you should say that, the California Vehicle Code (CVC) Section 22108 requires drivers to signal for at least 100 feet before making a lane change or turn. The fine is $240.
I work today with someone who interned with Gilead. According to him, his NDA lasts until 2099 and covers "Anything and everything said, heard, seen, imagined or done" while under their employ that hasn't been made 100% public. His resume has just one line entry: "Intern, lab tech. Details NDA."
To me, the hacker mentality has, at its root, been about more about shortcutting red tape and discarding the guardrails the gov't put in place "for your own good". Often that comes hand in hand with rule breaking and illegal actions.
But since healthcare has been so fully co-opted by moneyed interests it is good to see things like this and "medical vacations" grow in popularity - not because they are great solutions but because they underline how thoroughly the current system has screwed the pooch and will hopefully lead to real change.
(She's dead now, as you might have guessed.)
As for "anecdotes" -- do you have any actual data? Neither do I.
And beyond the logistical challenges, I think it should be fair to say axiomatically that international travel is not an adequate solution to healthcare access.
https://www.fda.gov/patients/learn-about-expanded-access-and...
as for "travel could be infeasible" : I'd suggest you call up some clinic in Mexico and pretend to be terminal and unable to travel. See if they come up with some solution for you.
As for "access to healthcare" : have you heard of Right To Try? Google it.
BATFE form 4473 states the following:
> Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.
We have state police doing literal highway robberies and stealing cash from state legal businesses.
https://reason.com/2022/02/04/a-california-sheriff-remains-f...
(Note: I neither endorse nor condemn him or his actions)
> Marijuana IS pretty much legalized in the US.
"Pretty much" does a lot of work here given it's still Schedule I on federal level.
What is the intended message of this short story?
Well, this really is for the good of the vast majority of people. The problem is that this also applies to a minority of people, who have the skills to research thing and make educated decisions about things.
It's not a bad general rule, but maybe it should be overridable in certain circumstances, e.g. when you are experimenting on yourself.
They're taking a somewhat well-known cavity prevention and enamel remineralization treatment that has the unfortunate side effect of turning your teeth black and replicating steps from a study to avoid that.
One of several studies they link to: https://www.scielo.br/j/bdj/a/rHSG9jRQDdY7sCFZzpNXYXy/?lang=...
Haven’t watched video yet, besides being fun what is the use of this? I see in the defcon video a mention of hep c treatment which , last I heard was something 50,000 usd (looking it up ranges 23k-80k) so I guess that makes sense vs trying to make bathtub antibiotics and steroids.
Fun, I’m probably on another “list” now.
I'm waiting for the actual medication to hit the market but if the FDA approval takes a long time, I will make the med myself. The substance in the medication has been used orally for a long time with a good safety profile and it was discovered that it can help regenerate nerves.
Maybe I made all of this up to sound cool on the internet. If you know what I mean.
For example, Promethazine has been popular in the UK for a very long time (ingredient in UK Sominex), but its not approved in the U.S. as a sleep aid.
InHousePharmacy.vu/search.aspx?searchterm=promethazine
The FDA doesn't care where data comes from. Much of drug testing in the US is done overseas in CROs.
> but its not approved in the U.S. as a sleep aid.
Approval is not automatic just because another country did so. Someone needs to take responsibility and formally apply.
We already share critical intelligence with the Five Eyes countries; why not share medication safety/efficacy information with them too?
Russia lies. About everything. And culturally Russians have been immersed in a narrative that they're the absolute best in the world at everything, that all good ideas were originally Russian ideas (see how the narrative of LK-99 started getting modified before anything was verified).
So do they have processes or techniques not used in the West? Sure it's possible: but it's also far more likely that the reason we don't use them is that the actual investigation of their effectiveness can't reproduce the results.
Because no one looks up the clinical studies: they just repeat the fun narrative about big mysterious super-technology from behind the Iron Curtain. Which itself was essentially an invention of interest groups looking for funding in the West (i.e. there's was never a "missile gap" the US was going to lose).
Like as noted here: you remember the story, but not any actual specific drugs or processes? Why?
Or, passing a novel approach through FDA, who are previously not familiar with it, is so prohibitively expensive that nobody wants to invest in it. And since it already has prior art, it's probably also not patentable so you can't even get back the money after you get the approval. Unless such drug can make billions as generic - which is quite rare - there's no point in investing in it, even if it works.
I did not find the blog post anymore. But the blog linked to a pharmacy website that had tons of stuff available.
A few links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenazepam
https://nah.sen.es/vmfiles/vol9/NAHV9N2202155_68EN.pdf
https://cosmicnootropic.com/blog/popular-nootropics/
https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/psychiatry/news/archive/2020...
I think Russia was not on-par with NATO after it collapse, at least not in conventional warfare. They missed the electronic revolution in warfare (See US-IRAQ Gulf War I). But they are now back on par, possibly better. Their jamming, air defense and rockets are top-notch, possible better than NATOs. They can disrupt our GPS System, we can't disrupt theirs since it is much younger, speak better.
As a comparison: Germany had 3000 tanks during the cold war. Now they have 300, 200 operational. Russia looses so many tanks every month, and actually builds 100-200 new ones every month. Germany had ammunition for two days of warfare. After they gave some to Ukraine, they have ammunition for one day left.
Russia has been underestimated. They are back and their future looks pretty good, even with a dubious leader. They won their war:
Defeat of the West? Emmanuel Todd and the Russo-Ukrainian War https://www.thearticle.com/defeat-of-the-west-emmanuel-todd-...
They have energy, they are not overpopulated, they have fewer problems with immigration. In fact, they're even looking for immigrants: https://movingtorussia.ru/ru
In the US I can smell the recession and banks will go belly up very soon: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-big-u-s-banks-have-th...
In Germany too. Without Russian Energy their manufacturing heavy country will deindustrialize.
At the same time, Russia is actively trying to replace the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, together with BRICS+. If successful, this will have a tremendous impact on the US.
I am not a Putin troll, and I hope that I am wrong. But the future has the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns.
New production is 10 tanks a month at best, which is indeed how many Ukraine destroys sometimes in a day. The rest are refurbishments of rapidly declining USSR's stock without anything to replace it. I think it would be appropriate to call it Soviet Union's last stand.
> But they are now back on par, possibly better. Their jamming, air defense and rockets are top-notch, possible better than NATOs.
That is a wild stretch considering that Russian navy has run away from Crimea at the risk of getting sunk in entirety, Russian air force cannot come even within a hundred kilometers of Crimea without getting shot down, and ground forces are regularly hammered by drone and missile strikes, all while Ukraine has less of everything and is under severe restrictions what it can do with military aid provided to them. I cannot imagine any major NATO country in such a poor position that they cannot fly airplanes over the territory they hold. Claiming victory in such position - as you do - would be downright ridiculous.
The fact that this author chose to call their book The Defeat of the West, and that its main thesis is that this defeat is due to the “vaporisation of Protestantism" should give one serious pause.
Perhaps not the best source to turn to for a serious, impartial military analysis.
Fair point. But it is from Emmanuel Todd. Who the f. is Emmanuel Todd?
"Todd attracted attention in 1976 when, at age 25, he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates: La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique (The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere)."
That's what happens when people get lucky early in their careers. Sadly, it tends to go to their head.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
We don’t have to like that outcome to see that it’s inevitable and has been from the very start.
One entirely possible outcome I haven’t seen discussed much is Poland turning on the Ukrainian rump state once Russia finishes annexing the ethnic Russian east.
We don’t have to like that outcome to see that it’s inevitable and has been from the very start.
It's not at all inevitable. Russia has lost many of its optional wars of aggression and foreign intervention, in the past.
Putin will also be dead or starting to lose his marbles in a few years, and Russia's overall prospects for stability (even if there were no war at all) do not look particularly good after that.
I would happily take the other side of this bet.
If we had FDA for elements, then we wouldn't because FDA for elements wouldn't approve it. That's the point of the analogy.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/an-iron-curtain-has-de...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal
US FDA however was skeptical of the safety of the drug and never approved it for sale in US.
The US has to be sure it’s completely safe. Or that it will make enough money to outweigh the lawsuits later…
That doesn't make sense to me, who does US refer to in this case?
The manufacturer is the one that would be sued and they generally only want to expediate process.
FDA is one that aproves/denies application. They wouldn't get sued for using data from other countries (or at least no more that they already are).
Of the four countries that aren't the US, I'm sure that all have regulatory safety standards that would satisfy the safety and efficacy expectations of the American public.
I'm not a biologist or chemist, so I don't know enough to judge if the method listed here is completely safe, but even a cursory google shows cause to be concerned: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17435390.2018.1...
Remember, you're putting these substances in your body. Make damned sure you trust the person you got them from. Like, "I would trust you to raise my child in the event of my death" levels of trust.
Do most people feel this way about formalized medical practitioners today?
When advocating for herself, the male doctors either a) seemed to believe she was making it up and attributed it literally to her monthly cycle, or b) suggested it was anxiety.
I'm sort of in the camp that doctors absolutely poopoo women's problems.
It's not 100% effective, but I do trust my PCP more than a guy in Midtown selling PCP.
This article blew her mind.
I vaguely recall (from, er, Sherlock Holmes) that old school analytic chemistry could figure out what an unknown chemical with cheap reactions and tests, but does anyone even know how to do that any more? Is it automatable?
I advise anyone interested in pharmaceuticals to read The Old Vegetable Neurotics: Hemlock, Opium, Belladonna and Henbane, Their Physiological Action and Therapeutical Use Alone and in Combination, from the 1860s, I think. If you read between the lines, it is the story of a doctor who is immensely frustrated with the impurities of some common medicines, not knowing what you were getting, was this the actual chemical doing the job, and so forth. He proceeds to examine each part of the plant (leaves, stems, roots, flowers, and so on) to see which gives the best concentration. He then works at extracting exactly what he wants, very carefully. Then he tests tiny amounts of various rodents, then his dog, then himself, working to determine an appropriate dosage.
It's quite impressive and hardcore. You can feel this man's annoyance at the state of things and his passion to declare, "I'd rather just find this out now instead of waiting for everyone to keep fiddling about." With a small room and some glassware you could also do this. Now, it wouldn't be simple, and to be honest the various units used are a hot mess, but the basic principles are there.
Now, automatable is a matter of degree. Real chemists have whole flowcharts of "do this, do that next, now this other thing" to detect the presence of a particular sought-for thing, but that does not prove a negative, you do not know what else might be present. That's the real rub and why the focus of so much chemistry is on extraction and purification.
There's been multiple recent studies linking higher fluoride amount with reduced intelligence in children. How is that different?
How is it connected?
Also I'd be interested in you're citation for the fluoride assertion, the last I remember that was a conspiracy theory and the actual published research was mixed and inconclusive?
That's true, but when doing the risk analysis for individual decisions, it helps to have actual data to make that analysis. The website says it's safe without justification to say why it's safe, how it's similar to known-safe mechanism, etc.. "Trust me bro it's safe" is not exactly confidence inducing.
> Also I'd be interested in you're citation for the fluoride assertion, the last I remember that was a conspiracy theory and the actual published research was mixed and inconclusive?
There's this recent report. This is for countries where children received fluoride exposure amounts higher than 1.5 mg fluoride/L of drinking water which is higher than what you'd get in the US.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...
Most of the studies that show lower IQ are in Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Mexico where those levels can be reached.
Example of studies:
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18695947/
I'd be hesitant to put anything mixed in a DIY device with off the shelf peristaltic pumps into my body without some additional analysis.
If something like automated analysis was a possibility, then maybe this would be more alluring.
Purification and analysis? That's the hard part.
Not getting screwed by additives, coatings or contamination? Thats what the big bucks in lab gear cost (i.e. a metered dispensing pump comes with a list of every element which touches the dispensed fluid).
But, I hear FCC is orders of magnitude more effective, eg, so maybe a portable massspec is where its going to be?
https://news.mit.edu/2024/researchers-3d-print-key-component...
(
>This work was supported by Empiriko Corporation.
Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass that you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal…"
This is basically what was going through my mind while browsing this website ;)
Medicine mostly makes sense with broken bones and physical surgeries.
Don't even get me started on dentistry.
For years, I struggled with severe dental issues, leading to advanced gum disease. Dentists told me I’d eventually need tooth extractions or major gum surgery. I’ve always hated going to the dentist.
Two years ago, I decided to take control of my own dental care. I bought a dental scaler kit online and started removing plaque from the backs of my teeth. I learned the proper technique by watching YouTube videos and now do this about once a week. The results have been incredible—my teeth are spotless, I have no gum bleeding, and I haven’t had any cavities. I still go in once a year for a professional cleaning of harder-to-reach areas like my molars.
If you google whether you can do this, the internet is full of large WARNING YOU CANNOT SCRAPE PLAQUE OFF YOUR TEETH. Every single website is full of dentists screaming that you cant clean your own mouth. This is clearly bullshit, you can actually just scrape it off from the comfort of your own home. There's clearly some risk, but if youre an intelligent adult, you can do it.
I wonder why dentists don’t tell everybody to get a waterpik first before any other treatments.
I mostly agree with this. Most doctors are just reading off the Epic professional version of WebMD for most symptoms/conditions. It's especially important to do your own research and be your own advocate for any serious conditions so that you can ask the right questions, which sometimes snaps them out of the scripted response and consider other possibilities or concerns.
Anyone else go on ToTSE?
something something Bad Ideas forum.
At the same time, all my local vending machines were dispensing with the old tubular locks - they all went to funky keyless remotes to unlock machines.
Maybe I'm making a fuss over nothing, but it just stood out to me.
You may have a "right to repair" something you bought. You didn't buy your body.
Drug safety is an old, old issue. We can argue about how it's applied without dragging in popular phrases that don't apply.
So what? You're still responsible for it - its nourishment and maintenance. I agree 'right to repair' seems a little off, but its a subset of 'right of self-determination', i.e. basic liberty, which from the outside looking in is preached about a lot but not very practiced in the US.
All of these questions make sense for right to repair, and are mostly nonsensical in this case, since drug companies don’t manufacture bodies.
I’d note that in most of the world you would just go buy the antibiotics directly from a pharmacy for almost nothing.
Now - I’m not saying self medicating with antibiotics is either good for you or the world, I’m saying at least in the US, you don’t have that right.
Can you name an over the counter antibiotic that successfully treats a staph infection? or strep throat? or sinus infection?
He is also ignoring the reasons that we have ended up with this system. Some of them are kind of dumb, but some of them are about valid problems. That's very different than what "right to repair" is fighting, which is mostly about exploitative companies trying to maximize revenue at the expense of their customers.
[Edit: misunderstood who replied; correcting pronouns]
why though lol, do you hate sick people? or just have no empathy for people in general?
who cares about technicality and semantics and whois using whos catch phrase better... we should be discussing an issue far more important, like so much more important its funny to even compare. then being able to switch your iphone battery out.
As I said pretty clearly I’m not saying this is right for the individual of the world, but a right to repair yourself would allow open access to medication at the lowest prices an open market can bear and medical knowledge offered a broadly accessible way for most conditions not absolutely requiring a specialist, like most surgeries or complex interventions. The amount residual is probably a lot larger than you would believe. In fact almost all medical services are routine and don’t require a specialist of any sort, not even a PA. Again, I’m framing the concept of right to repair your own body not taking a stance on whether it’s a good idea or not.
Id note in closing that in a discussion of the definition of right to repair, it’s an odd question to pose “is this a definition game?” Yes - that is the topic!
The whole notion of "repair" in relation to bodies doesn't make much sense. Bodies self-repair. All medicine is just aiding them in that.
And if you're not saying this is right for the individual or the world, I don't understand why either of us should waste further time on what appears to be just a game, the part of "definition game" you somehow managed to ignore even while quoting it.
Your body is something that belongs to you, you technically manufacture, yet you are legally forbidden from applying known and often the most effective remedies to your own body if you don’t engage with a giant government-sanctioned system that can charge you whatever they want.
To top it all off, the rules are not even consistent and are motivated by reasons other than what is best for the patient.
For example, taking more than the maximum dose of Tylenol at can cause long-term or permanent liver damage. This is still available over the counter with no restrictions whatsoever.
On the other side, we can see that the DEA was created to enforce drug policy (or rather racism and classism via drug policy) which has the effect of making access difficult for many people who are prescribed scheduled substances. Yet we have a opiate crisis that managed to appear within this draconian regulatory environment.
Then we have situations like the FDA which been aware of the dangers of high sugar in diets, but the sugar industry’s dollars into “studies” managed to convince them that “dietary fat” is the problem.
The “for your own good” argument only works if they actually acted for our best interests, but time and time again, it’s shown to us that this is just a big game in which we have no say in, yet we are all subjected to.
We should have the right, as an informed human, to independently decide what we want to do to or put into our body, just as we should have the right to choose what we wish to do with our possessions.
That is never the case. Humans are very risk averse and risk of broken product is infinitely smaller than risk of screwing up with your health.
That's how we ended up with the straightjacket system. Rachet goes only one way, there is a crisis (e.g. thalidomide in 70s, snake oil salesmen and so on), we rachet it up to ensure confidence.
The consequences of a single case of problem have a decade long consequences. E.g. baby formula was contamined in China (wiki "2008 Chinese milk scandal"), 300k were sick, six children died. Baby formula is not trusted even a decade and half later and imported stuff is used.
This isn't important to the point, but for the sake of argument; lets say society is the manufacturer.
> How is the manufacturer preventing repair?
Local legal regulatory groups that deem some method of fixing (treating) some defect (health condition) too dangerous to allow.
> What design decisions artificially limit repair to parties other than the manufacturer?
Company (local agency) wont allow my neighborhood repair shop to buy (or make) replacement screens (medications) or batteries (contact lenses).
> How does the manufacturer use existing regulation (eg DMCA or copyright) to prevent repair or access to information necessary for repair.
Existing is a stretch considering the age of the DMCA. But drug scheduling in the US is an equivalent and equally nonsensical application of logic for example.
> All of these questions make sense for right to repair,
I know how to fix it, but because of laws and regulations and decisions outside my control, I'm unable to apply that knowledge.
> and are mostly nonsensical in this case, since drug companies don’t manufacture bodies.
The DMCA is your own example, and it's a law built and advocated to enable control, and reduce supply artificially.
There's definitely a point to be made and a discussion to be had about the origins for control over health and medical issues. I think permitting the sale of snake oil is harmful to society, and we should prevent it so people don't have to become experts in human biology to not get conned. But treating chronic health conditions shouldn't be as hard as it is.
The core of right to repair, is you shouldn't be allowed to prevent me from, or make it and possibly difficult for me to improve something I own and control. I think saying I own and control my body and health is a fair assertion, so the same argument applies; it's wrong to make accessing repair options for my health as hard as it is if I'm willing to try to fix it.
I'd say the same concepts behind right to repair apply more so to the body because I can't just replace it.
This movement is not about filling capsules with powdered ginger to treat something that it’s unable to. The goal is to synthesize molecules that have been studied and that we know work as a replacement for having to pay a doctor to get permission to buy them.
A parallel that comes to mind is "accredited investors". These are people that have chosen to opt out of the guardrails and been allowed to by fulfilling certain criteria. Maybe something like that would make sense for medicine.
I don't believe in the conspiracies you listed, but I absolutely believe there are plenty of conspiracies in plain sight (AMA restricting the number of doctors and fighting against single payer, the FDA being in bed with big pharma, etc).
We all should have the right to control our own bodies (which extends to recreational chemicals). For those compounds that are not yet vetted, we should have the right to make informed choices.
The real "right to repair your body" necessarily involves a socialized healthcare system, like in the rest of the West.