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‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine (www.404media.co)

submitted 2 months ago by ArchRecord@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Sharing because I found this very interesting.

The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has a DIY design for a home lab you can set up to reproduce expensive medication for dirt cheap, producing medication like that used to cure Hepatitis C, along with software they developed that can be used to create chemical compounds out of common household materials.

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[–] oce@jlai.lu 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Ok, so we should be able to control the prices for drugs where the research has been publicly funded. But how do we avoid losing the private investors who contributed?

[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

well, according to the congressional budget office,

In 2023, federal subsidies for health insurance are estimated to be $1.8 trillion

and this report by research america shows that the private sector spent around $150 billion on “research and development” in 2019.

it’s no secret that the private healthcare industry jacks up the prices of things to increase profits. so, some napkin math makes me think it’s not that far-fetched to think that we can save more than $150 billion in healthcare subsidies if we stop privatized healthcare and dramatically lower the costs of medical care. we could then put that $150 billion back into research, without needing to appease the private sector at all.

[–] noli@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Medicine still works in europe and is also being developed in europe. Maybe look at how the EU/european countries do it? A lot of it is having regulations. The free market isn't free if the choice between getting the product or not is the difference between life and death.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 1 points 2 months ago

I am from EU, especially one of those countries with free health care. I believe we have a mix of public research, private research (ex: Sanofi, Servier), expensive proprietary drugs and government controlled public domain generic drugs. But there was an alert recently on drug making sovereignty because no company is interested in making those less profitable generic drugs in France, so they are outsourced to cheaper countries and there's a risk of penury.