onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Post a transcript, if you would. Don't have Lucy write it even if she does get the spirit of the thing.
J
Wasp Removal
- Thread starter Berzerker
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
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This may not be quite on-topic, but seems like it would be interesting to other people in this thread.
Anarchists making their own medicine
Anarchists making their own medicine
Berzerker
Deity
the only way this thread could get over 100 posts is by going off topic 
That's really cool! I followed a chemist on Youtube who was going through the steps of making Daraprim, but coming up with a way for anyone to synthesize it fairly easily is quite impressive. To say nothing of getting heroin dealers to cut their drug with a promising new antiretroviral!
I hope a black/gray market in overpriced pharmaceuticals has set itself up more generally. There are plenty of drugs that are fairly easy to make and sell for a small fraction of the price that they cost through "official" channels here. Importing low-priced generics from India or other countries, with or without a prescription, is already pretty easy of course. But too many people are unaware of that, and rare/orphan drugs are often controlled by a single company anyway. Still, if I had a need for an overpriced pharmaceutical and no insurance, the first thing I would do is shop around in online gray market channels for the drug.
On the clearly legal side of the market, I'm reminded of L-methylfolate aka Deplin. A significant number of depressives, including me, have a defective enzyme for converting folic acid into methylfolate. Supplementing with L-methylfolate can have a significant antidepressant effect.
Deplin, which is just methylfolate sold as an antidepressant through a pharma company, is something like $150/month. However, the exact same chemical can be purchased as a supplement for less than 20% of that price on Amazon. It's kind of insane that insurers would pay five times what they actually need to, rather than just coming up with a way to cover the cost of the supplement and making the consumer buy that, but these things don't make sense.
The way I know I have the defective gene for that enzyme (two copies in fact - no functional gene) is through 23andme. If I'd had that genetic test done through the medical system, it'd be at least hundreds of dollars. Through 23andme, you get the equivalent of thousands of such tests for $199. Granted there's always the risk that they're selling your genetic data, or that law enforcement will get ahold of it, or that they'll screw up their security and someone will steal it, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for being able to sidestep the medical system and find out things about myself directly, cutting out all the medical/pharma middlemen.
In general it's possible, even easy, to bypass the medical system for a number of medical needs. Americans should do that whenever they find it expedient.
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