Re: [DIYbio] civil disobedience and diybio

Not a direct comparison though; drugs that cost XX,000 per month are
paid for by medical insurance, or not at all. So the individual
receiving the overpriced treatment is paying a lot of money, but
probably nowhere near enough to pay postdocs to make their own drugs
more cheaply.

The drugs wouldn't even *be* that expensive if it weren't for the
expectation that patients all have insurance, and privatised insurance
that can't legislate for fair pricing, besides. There is talk over
here, for example, that we should be forcing drug companies who take
advantage of our tax haven to provide drugs to Ireland at a fair price;
at the moment, they charge us *extra*, and it's dragging down our
healthcare system.

Will there be basement biotech labs providing stuff people want/need
at a price they can afford? Certainly; there are basement organic
chemistry labs all over the world providing people with fairly pure (if
still frequently dangerous) recreational drugs. The question is what
those biotech labs will provide that the market demands.

I'm not convinced it'll be anti-ageing drugs for a long time yet,
because for now most people who worry about ageing are simply unaware
of the technology, and have no trigger to google around for anti-ageing
treatments as it is seen as inevitable.

By contrast, patients of cancers and other progressive diseases
increasingly join patient peer groups and forums where they discuss
speculative treatments, providing a way to inform one another of
options that may be illegal or (more likely) unaffordable in their
area. They're the likely candidates for early dark-lab therapies, if
you ask me.

On Mon, 27 May 2013 17:57:02 -0500
Bryan Bishop <kanzure@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Reason <reason@fightaging.org> wrote:
>
> > Unlike recreational drugs, it is clear that the costs and the
> > benefits for manufacturing your own medicine are not yet at the
> > point of spurring people to action at the level of small chemistry
> > or biotech laboratories. The knowledge is still too specialized,
> > the complexity of the work too great, and the benefits too narrow.
> > This will change, however, and think it will largely change on the
> > benefit side of the equation. For example, consider
> >
>
> I am not so sure it will change. Individuals with rare blood diseases
> spend a fortune to get their medication, and yet I haven't heard of
> them popping their head around these parts (ever). By comparison,
> replicating an antibody production setup is pretty easy compared to
> the other projects that are sometimes discussed. So how expensive
> does it have to be before people wonder if they can just solve their
> own problems without spending $10,000/mo on a drug?
>
> Is it supposed to happen at $20,000/mo for a drug? Because those
> already exist too, and they aren't here either... even though it
> would be relatively simple (and much cheaper) to snatch up some
> cheapo postdocs or diybio enthusiasts to implement those projects.
>
> - Bryan
> http://heybryan.org/
> 1 512 203 0507
>

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