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Sep. 5th, 2024 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelav"At DEF CON, Laufer begins his talk by explaining that, a few years ago, he had a mystery illness that caused him to lose his hair and shed layers of his skin. Ultimately, he had a tumor removed.
“I don't know who needs to hear this but I'm scared too all the time of losing the health that I have. I know what it feels like,” he says. “I know what it feels like to not know what's wrong with your body and to have to go shop for a stranger who has the authority to maybe or maybe not give you what you need. I know what it feels like to know what's wrong with your body and to know what you need and to be told you can't have it because the infrastructure has failed and it's not available.”
“This is wrong,” he says. “And I hope to show you all some tools so that it doesn’t ever have to happen again … most medications, you can make a better, cheaper version of, yourself, at home.”
(...)
After his talk, I told Laufer that I got the sense that he actually wanted to talk to [Gilead CEO], and didn’t just want to yell at him. “I would have been interested to hear more of his perspective, because I am of the general impression that most people in most situations do what they do because they think it’s the right thing,” Laufer told me. “When you find someone doing something you think is really wrong, they’re usually dealing with a different set of assumptions and logical structure than you are. It’s not that there’s no logic. Usually people have thought it through and their manner of thought is different than yours.”
“If the science [of Big Pharma] didn’t work, I wouldn’t care what they fucking charged,” Laufer said. “The point is the science works and people can’t get it. There’s often this ‘good guy, bad guy, black-and-white disconnect that happens in the rhetoric. And I’m like, ‘No, pharmaceutical science is amazing. That’s the whole point.”
Laufer’s point is that the research that goes into making a new drug is hard, but that actually producing some of these medications after they’ve been invented is sometimes easy and inexpensive. Charging astronomical prices to people who are dying is immoral, and Four Thieves seeks to normalize the idea of making some types of medicine yourself.
(...)
On the call, Laufer told me that, “for the first time, we are possibly at least within striking distance of our ultimate goal of being able to disband as an organization.”
“Our ultimate hope is to get to a point where we’re no longer necessary because the notion of DIY medicine, no matter anybody’s opinion of it is common enough that if it comes up in conversation, someone can say ‘Oh I’m just going to 3D print a replacement,’” he said. “Or, you know ‘there’s this migraine medication that I like, can’t get a prescription for, and it’s so expensive,’ and someone says ‘just try making that.’ I want to get to where that sort of exchange is common.”
- https://www.404media.co/right-to-repair-for-your-body-the-rise-of-diy-pirated-medicine/
