Transcript

NPC: [00:00:03.52] [intro clip from Mass Cisteria, by Zimbru]

robi: [00:00:14.68] Welcome to a new episode of Lennox Radio. In today's episode, we will talk with Michael Laufer from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective about biohacking, about the right to repair our bodies, and how to produce DIY medicine with the tools developed by their collective. The voices that you will be hearing on the episode are myself, Robi and our guest. It's going to be a topic that is maybe not very familiar for those of us in the anarchist scene from this part of the world, but it's a very interesting and potentially something that we might want to explore. We hope you enjoyed the episode.

NPC: [00:01:01.18] [intro collage of sloth sounds]

robi: [00:01:22.74] It's so great to have you here. Thanks a lot for accepting our invitation.

mixael: [00:01:27.34] Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

robi: [00:01:29.38] Before we kick things off, would you say some things about yourself?

mixael: [00:01:33.86] Uh, my name is Michael Laufer, and I am the chief spokesperson for the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective. And we are an anarchist collective that works to medicine and medical devices, to people who need it but don't have it.

robi: [00:01:49.38] As you said. So you are a member of the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective. And let me just say what an awesome name that is. Really.

mixael: [00:01:57.10] Thank you.

robi: [00:01:59.05] Do you want to say a little bit more about you? What your activity is with the collective? And I think you do identify as part of the biohacking movement. Maybe just describe what biohacking is and, yeah, what are the principles of the movement.

mixael: [00:02:15.05] Sure. I mean, it's kind of unfortunate, but the movement has kind of failed and kind of died. The term biohacking has been appropriated by a lot of people who are trying to sell things and get people to sign on for programs that theoretically will let them live forever or be stronger or not exercise or whatever. And originally, the biohacking movement was taking the moral principles that came out of the original hacking movement and apply them to biology fairly broadly.

mixael: [00:02:52.73] And this kind of broke into two categories where You had people who were building cybernetic implants, where you had technology that was able to reside inside the human body and potentially interface with it. And then on the other side, you had people who were working with the cells and DNA and manipulating organisms specifically. And unfortunately, most of that has gone by the wayside. And when you see people who are talking about biohacking, these are people who are just selling you supplements or, you know, telling you that there's a better way to drink coffee that's a little more aggressive or want you to come to some expensive conference where they're going to be weird snacks and that's kind of it. And immortalists.

mixael: [00:03:41.35] But originally the idea and the way it was coined was the idea of improving quality of life and utilizing technology. And that's a pretty broad definition, but that's the definition that Lepht Anonym goves, who was the person who actually coined the term. A wonderful biohacker, who did a lot of the things that started the biohacking movement; did them first and did them without any help. Really, really amazing human being. So we were welcomed by the biohacking community, despite the fact that for a long time we were not doing anything cybernetic in nature. Nor were we doing anything that was manipulating DNA or cells in any specific way. Since then, we have done both of those, and it's exciting. But we do certainly believe that ethos of utilizing technology to improve quality of life. And that's sort of where modern medicine, and especially pharmaceutical medicine have taken its roots, even though it might not describe itself in the same way. I think that is the utility of modern medicine.

robi: [00:04:51.41] I saw this documentary like a week ago about this billionaire who is, uh, trying to live forever or something. And he invented this, uh, routine that includes also like supplements, and injections and stuff. But it's, like, takes a crazy amount of money. And he needs to dedicate his whole life to making that. And I guess that biohacking, the movement, is not that. It also has to do with, I guess, making things accessible.

mixael: [00:05:18.84] Yes, exactly. Yeah. And to see that I think it's not just antithetical to the original movement, but it's also pretty dumb. When you see somebody like that and think about the amount of resources that they consumed; what they've unfortunately made inaccessible to other people, so that they could perhaps stretch their life a little bit. And to see the amount of energy and time that goes into it. It's like you can't help but say, um, you're spending your life trying to get more life, but what are you doing with it? You're doing anything like meaningful? Or is it just this sort of circular logic of live so that I can live longer. Are you enjoying it? Are you doing anything to make it better for other people? Are you having a good time? Or sitting around and taking a zillion pills and injections and going in cryogenic chambers every day? Read a book! You know. I am a firm proponent of the notion that having more life in your years, rather than years in your life, is really can enrich things, but other people are just scared of death and think that they can buy their way out. And it'll be funny when they find out they're wrong.

robi: [00:06:35.74] So the main issue that you tackle, or that you engage with, with the collective, is that there are millions of people that die every year due to illnesses for which there are treatments or even cures. But they are just privatized, have intellectual property patents, and the companies just sell them at an unjustifiably, criminally high prices.

mixael: [00:07:00.84] Yeah, absolutely. And there are two tiers to this idea. There are two facets that I think are worth mentioning. The first one, as you point out, is that you've got these incredible pieces of pharmaceutical technology. You have things that can do anything between eradicating disease to at least managing it. Yes, you can actually cure something, to expunge it from the body. This is incredible and amazing to see the way that it works. Other times there are things where you know there's something that's not going away, but there's enough technology there that will at least be able to have a reasonable quality of life, despite being host to a disease of some sort or an ailment.

mixael: [00:07:48.11] And it's not accessible merely because of the pricing structure. Now, there are 2 or 3 different reasons why people don't have access to medicines. Typically, you see, again, pricing being one. Sometimes there's legality, which is a separate problem. And weird. Other times when you think about some of the least developed nations in the world, you've got this lack of infrastructure. Or combination of lack of infrastructure and price. And the other thing which you mentioned, which is so critical and so bizarre, is that the reason that this pricing structure often exists is because the medicines are covered under electoral property law. It's very, very strange to me, the idea that 'knowledge belongs to all of humanity' isn't universally accepted, except for perhaps the notion of greed. I guess people have this strange idea that because they thought of something first, they should benefit more.

mixael: [00:08:56.77] And I suppose that that might make sense in certain cases. If you're talking about, you know, next year's video game or some toy. But when you're talking about something that has the capacity to increase the quality of health and the quality of life of people who really need it. And then you hold it back and say, no, no, no, you can't have this unless you pay me because I thought of it first. That's was very strange to me. And I think it's criminal. It's really strange because if you put this in a different context and you say someone were dying and you knew how to save them. 'I'm not going to save you until you pay me'.

mixael: [00:09:46.31] Nobody would do that if you were walking down the street. You have an idea as to how somebody could be saved with, you know, drowning or about to be hit by a car. And yet, as a practice, this is done every day. Because constantly people are dying because they don't have access to the medications they need. And somehow this is an acceptable result of the form of the marketplace. So yeah, I find it pretty abhorrent morally. And we work to try and break down these barriers so that people can make these medicines themselves. And then all of this intermediary stuff can just go away.

robi: [00:10:21.43] Yeah, maybe we should maybe say some examples of this kind of very essential medicine.

mixael: [00:10:26.75] Oh, sure.

robi: [00:10:27.99] Just to have some examples here in mind. I guess one that comes to mind is this this guy Shkreli, which is kind of a cartoon villain type, but there's also other examples.

mixael: [00:10:36.95] Well, that was the first drug that we ever, um, produced and distributed. Martin Shkreli managed to purchase the rights to Daraprim. The chemical name for it is promethazine. And this is a very old drug that was originally designed for malaria and turned out to be a very strong antiparasitic that was used in the case of toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that is generally pretty well tolerated by humans. Lots of people have it, and it's just fine. But if your immune system is suppressed in any way, if you have advanced stages of HIV or cancer or if you're pregnant, it's very, very dangerous. And so the standard treatment is with promethazine. And previously it was available for about $13, $13.5 a pill. And you would take three on the first day and then you'd take it for, I don't know, a week and a half, maybe two weeks, and you'd be fine.

mixael: [00:11:42.92] And then he purchased it, and again in a very cartoonish way, overnight raised the price to $750 a pill. And this was met with pretty generalized outrage. And his justification was that most people get most of their medicines paid for by their insurance company, so it doesn't impact them personally. Which of course is not the case. And that he was going to utilize all of this extra cash to fund the research program to come up with a better, newer drug that would work better. And, um, he didn't manage that either. And it's, you know, again, it's a very simple molecule. It's very small. It doesn't have any stereochemistry. So it's fairly easy to make. If you think about $750 a pill and the first dose is, uh, triple or quadruple. I think we calculated the first doses around $3,000. If you're paying his price. Which is just amazing. And we produced a dose of that size for about $0.25.

robi: [00:12:52.98] That's awesome.

mixael: [00:12:54.22] You know, and it wasn't difficult. We've done a number of things in between that first one and recently. Sort of fast forward, our most recent one that we released was this summer at Defcon. We were talking about Sovaldi, which is this new technology. It's a very powerful antiviral targeted toward hepatitis C, which actually allows people to take a fixed course of treatment and cure hepatitis C, which previously was not possible. It came out, I don't know, nine years ago, roughly. So right around the time that Four Thieves became a public group. And, um, we've been looking at it for some time, and it's nice that we finally cracked it. So that one was exciting, too. Yeah. And we've done a number of things in between. Typically, you know, we've been trying to look at HIV, hepatitis C, abortion, drug overdose and things that are related. We've done a number of side quests, sort of, but those are the main four things that we tend to focus on.

robi: [00:13:53.41] I think I read that recently, they also developed a cure for sickle cell disease, and it's like 1 million or $2 million. But I don't know if it's one drug or it's some kind of treatment.

mixael: [00:14:06.09] Yeah. So I think I saw that in the news as well. That is I believe, a gene therapy. And we've looked into hijacking gene therapies as well. It's much more difficult just in general. But sometimes, um, gene therapies are even more difficult than just... Well, you're working with genes. But difficult on top of that because sometimes they have to be custom made for the patient in question. You need to get a sample of their DNA and then you need to custom roll it. Things like immunotherapies for certain types of cancer are made for, you know, custom for each person.

robi: [00:14:45.27] Yeah. I just want to give one example. It's not a life saving drug. But pain management is also like improves quality of life. And it's not the same because it's not patented. But it's like this example of ibuprofen. Uh, because you used to be able to buy here in Romania ibuprofen or .... Just ibuprofen. And it was like one $1, €1, the cost. An now now the main kind of ibuprofen based, uh, painkiller is, uh, Nurofen, which is like the cost is ten times higher. And of course, they do some, you know, stuff. It acts easier, it's easier to absorb, whatever. But you are paying only for the delivery mechanism. And that's not ten times higher than the base substance. Because the active substance is like €1 or less. It costs less to produce.

mixael: [00:15:35.77] Yeah, it's fascinating to see that these sorts of strategies are used so often. Because one of the things that we are most well known for was when the EpiPen price got jacked up. We went and found another way to do that. And the interesting thing was, as we were looking at it like, okay, epinephrine, adrenaline is not a patented molecule. The notion of injecting it isn't controlled. Like, where was the control? Why was it that there was this bizarre, hugely inflated price. And again it went up overnight by orders of magnitude. What was happening here? And again, this is just pricing structure inside of a company that they decided. And the only thing that they had that was actually under patent was the plastic housing with a spring that did the injection. Which is like ridiculous. You know.

mixael: [00:16:30.93] A lot of people pointed out that you can just as easily carry around a vial of adrenaline and a syringe and a needle, and just give yourself an injection when you need it. Now, again, that might be a little tricky if you're trying to do it on somebody else or if you're in a panic. But an autoinjector is just a convenience. And there are other auto injectors out there. And so we found one that was off the shelf and said, hey, use this auto injector that costs $30 instead of, you know, $800. And you can reload it and it's safe and it's testable and it works better. And again, after doing this over and over again, this is an incredible realization to get to a point where you notice that for most medications, and plenty of medical devices, you can make your own versions at home and they're purer and safer. It's so counterintuitive. And yet we've managed to see this happen over and over and over again.

robi: [00:17:28.20] I guess at this point, our audience is going to be very curious and amazed how you actually are producing these drugs, these medicines. I saw your talk, i think you referenced that talk, at Defcon last year. It's on YouTube. I invite people to watch it. It's awesome. And there you do a demonstration of the process. Let me just try to give a two line summary and then you can explain it in more detail.

mixael: [00:17:53.58] Sure.

robi: [00:17:54.06] So as I understand it, so there's two components to it. There's this platform ChemHacktice that you have. So you need to find a drug that you want, the active substance. And you input it as a formula into the platform. And the platform does two things. It searches the literature and finds the reaction that produces that drug, and gives you the precursors to it. And it also gives you what steps you need to perform to produce it. And then you have a micro lab, which is basically a setup that mixes and heats and cools a solution. And the micro lab is able to inject the right quantity of substance and keep the temperature as much as you need. But this is basically it. This is the whole thing. It's amazing. Is that a good summary?

mixael: [00:18:41.69] Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. So ChemHacktice will actually do a little bit more than just search the literature. It will also go through and find sort of combinations of reactions in the literature. So this is something that hasn't been documented. It will look for related reactions and it'll connect the dots for you. And so this will, you know, cut down on your research by months, instead of needing a whole bunch of very insightful, hard working chemists to, you know, work for months. This is something that, you know, somebody who just has a, you know, competence with chemistry could pull off in a weekend. It's a very powerful tool. There are several other modules there. If it doesn't find anything. It can also hypothesize, which is pretty amazing. But yeah, it can dig through and it can help you find ways to do the reaction and to work it backwards.

mixael: [00:19:31.75] And then there's this sort of the translation mechanism, which is the recipe press. Which allows you to take the output from that and write down essentially a procedure that the micro lab can... The micro lab is automated in its chemistry. This is very powerful because again, when you're looking at chemistry, the thing that's difficult for humans is often very easy for a machine. The making sure that something stays at the right temperature for a very long time, stirring, keeping an eye on things. This are very good things for a machine to be able to do.

mixael: [00:20:06.75] And then it will occasionally prompt the user to say, hey, you know, is everything still going okay? Is the solution clear? Can you check? And then there are branching processes where if it needs to be stirred for longer, or if the reaction isn't working, it can prompt the user to determine if that's happening. And then corrections can be made. And so yeah, the idea is that we decide that there's a particular drug that you want. You look at that molecule and then you can feed it into ChemHacktica, put something that you get out of there into the recipe press, take that and then push it out to the micro lab and eventually make your drugs.

robi: [00:20:44.45] Yeah. And also you're not selling this. It's open source and you have it on the site. And people can just buy the components and assemble the micro lab. And also buy the precursors. Right?

mixael: [00:20:54.77] Yeah, that's a key component. We never sell anything. We've never sold anything. We will never sell anything. In fact, even on our website, if you go to our merch page, it's just instructions on how you can make your own. But we have ways that you can make your own stickers or patches or a T-shirt. But yeah, we don't sell anything.

robi: [00:21:14.29] Cool. I think I'm going to ask you two questions, which you're probably tired of hearing them.

mixael: [00:21:19.81] Okay.

robi: [00:21:20.41] But I think it's important for listeners that are having the first contact with your kind of work to hear them. One is about safety and one is about legality.

mixael: [00:21:29.08] Sure.

robi: [00:21:29.80] Safety wise, I guess the biggest risk is maybe you don't clean your setup carefully or I don't know, some sensors malfunction. And it might result in a ... Because if it's working correctly, I understood from your presentation also that it's more pure than the drugs you buy from the pharmacy.

mixael: [00:21:47.88] Yes. Significantly.

robi: [00:21:49.32] Yeah. If something malfunctions, I imagine that it could lead to some harmful... yeah, impure or harmful substance. Would you say that it's a risk?

mixael: [00:22:00.08] It's typically unlikely. So when you're talking about a chemical reaction, there are two things that are worth mentioning here. The first one is what you generally run the risk of is sort of unreactive precursors. So you have the stuff that you start with. You're trying to get it to make something else. You can either have that reaction or not. Or less. Um, and so at the end, if you're worried about impurities, most of the time, all you're worried about is the stuff that you started with still being there. And the microlab at the end is typically going to, for any program, is going to walk you through a purification step, which will separate those out.

mixael: [00:22:44.06] The other thing to mention is that the modern sort of strategy for doing chemistry is very, very sloppy. Because most modern chemists are used to using very modern tools. And so because these modern tools are so powerful, it's like, okay, go ahead and make a mess in the lab and then filter it out and, you know, use high performance liquid chromatography and just take out the part where you've got the good stuff. And all the rest of the garbage doesn't matter. This is kind of silly. That is a strategy. If you have more money than time.

mixael: [00:23:22.22] But it's important to note that pharmaceutical chemistry has been around for hundreds of years, and a lot of medications really don't take a tremendous amount of sophistication to manufacture. And it's not as sketchy as everybody says. When people are concerned and as you say, I get these questions a lot, where people say, oh, what about heavy metals? Oh, you know, what about bacterial components? These questions, they're not unfounded. Right? You don't want heavy metals in your medications. Of course you don't want bacteria in your medications. Of course. But you take a step back and ask yourself, okay, where would these heavy metals show up from? And you look at any reaction that you would use to make medicine, you're not going to use a heavy metal catalyst. Because that's for that very reason that it's so dangerous.

mixael: [00:24:17.24] Plus, you know, when you use ChemHacktica, it has the ability that you can put parameters on there like that. If you're just doing chemistry for something random--you're trying to make something that'll clean your oven better or whatever--You can let it off the leash. But, you know, you can go through and say, I don't want to use any heavy metal catalysts, and then it'll just not give you any recommendations to do that. I mean, you should know to do that anyway. But again, these are these sorts of parameters that you can give computers so that, you know, you don't run that risk.

mixael: [00:24:49.71] Recently I was asked about hormone replacement therapy drugs. And if you're buying them from overseas, how could you test for the presence of heavy metals? There isn't any reason why those heavy metals would be there. Nowhere in the manufacture are heavy metals used. So it's not really a risk. Again, is that something that is dangerous if it were there? Absolutely. People asking about it does make sense. But again you have to take this further, step back and say are heavy metals that are used in the production of steroids? Somebody found a paper where somebody had done it theoretically, maybe in the 40s, but nobody would do this in a production setting. So that's not really a risk.

mixael: [00:25:31.65] And again, as you point out, right. Yes, yes. You don't want bacteria growing in your stuff. Well, sure. Of course not. But it doesn't really take a lot to make sure that things are safe. And if you're using solvents of any strength, you're going to absolutely wipe out any bacteria. And so typically, when you're looking at all of those solvents that are so nasty. Yeah, they're going to absolutely wipe out your bacteria. So again these sorts of concerns, it's great. Even though it does get tiring of course, to answer this question over and over. It is great that people are thinking about it because it means they're getting involved in their own health. They're thinking about the sorts of things that are dangerous.

mixael: [00:26:08.93] Fascinatingly enough, I think a lot of them are driven to ask this question, these types of questions, because these happen in industrial settings. They know stories, these horror stories, of buying commercially produces drugs that are tainted, you know. How did that happen? Well, this is the magic. And this is something that I find so exciting, is that those are risks that only are risks at the industrial scale. When you're doing small scale chemistry, so many things that you have to worry so much about, when you're making millions of pills per month, go away. The first thing is, is that you have perfect vertically integrated surveillance over everything. You have the starting material, you do all the chemistry, you compound it and then you take it. You can see everything. It's not that it goes through several different buildings and it's handled by a bunch of different machines and people. And if something goes wrong, you might not know how to identify that. You get to watch it the whole way. It's much, much safer.

mixael: [00:27:12.75] But again, it's counterintuitive because people are used to the notion of trying to trust institutions instead of themselves. And that comes as a result, the sort of regulatory bodies, when people say things like, oh, what about the FDA? Oh, what about the FDA? You can actually go and read the records. You know, we all know that the FDA is doing their best to try and keep things as safe as they can, but they really can't do that much. So many medications are produced in so many places, and then they're shipped places, and then they are stored places and then they're dispensed. They don't have the requisite number of humans to check on all of that.

mixael: [00:27:57.02] And all of the time it happens, not even through malice or terrible negligence, just from an error. Every single pharmaceutical company that has ever existed, that has produced things in mass amounts like that, they ships tons of pills that just don't have any active pharmaceutical ingredient in them. Or the wrong thing. So those sorts of problems, yeah, they're worth thinking about. And that's one of the key reasons why it's safer. I suppose people's intuition is that it's safer to make your own medications than to purchase them.

mixael: [00:28:34.60] And a lot of times people say, how do you know this is safe? They say, okay, where did you get your medications last? Oh, well, I got it from the pharmacy. And I say, okay, cool. The pharmacist, what's their name? They gave me this very strange look, like, why would you ask me that? I don't know their name. And I'm like, cool. But somehow you trust them. Well, yeah, they're a pharmacist. I'm like, all right, but you don't know anything about them. You don't know what they did. You don't know if they were very, very tired and maybe they just took the pills from the wrong bin. You don't know if they stored them properly. You don't know if they left them out in the heat. You don't know if they were shipped under good conditions. Maybe froze was overnight when they were being shipped across the, you know, the Baltic or whatever. How do you know? And you certainly don't know even where they were manufactured or by what process. And you don't get to go back and check any of that stuff.

mixael: [00:29:24.34] And You don't get to go back and check any of that stuff. But somehow, because it comes in a nice shiny box and the pills are bright color and they have a brand name on them or a cute logo, and that lulls us into this sense of complacency where we just trust it like it's okay. And it really should do the opposite. When we see things in slick packaging, we should ask ourselves, why are they trying to get us to trust them? Why is that necessary? And the answer is it's because you get almost no information. It will tell you what the ingredients ostensibly are, but you don't get to test that. You don't get to check except after the fact. So yeah.

robi: [00:30:10.54] Why we're saying this, i guess the example that popped into my mind, which is not from the like... it's from a different sector, but it's the same kind of thinking. Like this big shoe companies or clothing companies, like you buy their products and you think that it's made in some Nike whatever factory. But actually they contract other factories from Eastern Europe or China, Bangladesh, whatever. And actual working people from Romania make your shoes and they are not quality tested for Puma, Nike or whatever. I mean, my parents both worked in the textile industry, that's why I know. And you just trust that it's some very superior quality because it's Nike, but you don't actually know. And it's the same thing. Like if you would directly buy it from my parent's factory, it has the same quality because it was actually made there. It's maybe kind of like this with drugs also.

mixael: [00:31:02.01] It's very much the case with pharmaceuticals. Yeah. I mean, the entirety of pharmaceutical production again is a profit seeking undertaking. And so typically what will happen is they will look to source materials from the cheapest place possible, and they will look to set up factories in a place where labour is the cheapest. And then they will try to optimise so that shipping is as cheap as it possibly can be. And while there are methodologies to try and safeguard against catastrophes or quality control, the reality is that they only need to make it so that they're not losing money when quality control fails. They're not really optimizing for people's wellbeing or health. They're trying to optimize for profit. And while that is better than nothing at all, it's not thinking about health. It's still just thinking about profit.

robi: [00:31:53.79] Yeah. Yeah and legality wise, I guess I just want to ask if you can tell us... Like, I mean, I'm guessing not all of this is legal, quite strictly legal. And I guess if you know at what step, at least in the US, maybe it's different in different countries... Because, for example, another example that I can think of is like with recreational drugs, different countries criminalize different aspects: consumption, transportation, buying, selling. And for you to be able to make informed decisions, you need to know what step to avoid or be careful around. Yeah, I guess I'm asking from the same place.

mixael: [00:32:28.89] Yeah. So in terms of legality, there are two aspects. There's the criminal and the civil. The criminal is pretty blanket. And again, it varies not only country to country. But since you mentioned the US specifically very state to state. And so when you're looking at manufacturing your own drugs, depending on where you are and how it is approached, any number of crimes could be thrown at you, because of the blanket nature in which the laws are written. So, for instance, in the state of New York, if you were to say, hey, Michael, you know, um, I've really got a headache. And I said, huh? Have you thought about taking an ibuprofen for that? I am technically committing a state level felony of practicing medicine without a license, because I just gave you medical advice. That qualifies.

mixael: [00:33:23.64] So if you're manufacturing your own drugs, there are any number of weird laws that could be pulled into place. However, in many places... So hang on, let me go back. The other half is the civil, where also in the US patent law is so strong that even if you utilize patent in the way it was designed... So the theory, the sort of abstract idea behind patent is that you have an idea and you register it with the patent office, you make the information that you've discovered public so that human research can go further, faster, instead of keeping it a secret. In exchange for making this no longer a secret, you get a license to have a monopoly on production for a set period of time. Now, in theory, if one believes in capitalism, that seems like a reasonable trade off. You say cool, let's make things better for humanity so that information is free and we can all benefit from it. And this person who managed to do that gets the capability to benefit from it financially.

mixael: [00:34:36.58] Okay. That in the abstract does not seem too insane. Um, of course this system has been abused and degraded. And since the 1670s in Venice, when this idea first came up, it's certainly become horrifically outdated. But in that notion, the patent law in the US has become such a weapon that even if you were to utilize a patent in the way it was designed, where you read the pattern and you try to replicate the work, in a research setting only, you're technically in violation of their patent. If you do not obtain licensure from them and pay them. Which is absolutely insane.

mixael: [00:35:23.08] Things are not quite so strict in other parts of the world. In most of Europe there are what are called personal use exemptions. So in a lot of parts of the northwest of Europe and Belgium and Sweden and the Netherlands and a few other places, in general there are these personal use exemptions, where if you read some of these patents and you make one of their invention for yourself, you're not selling it, then that's fine. In terms of manufacturing drugs for yourself, again, that's there's a very strict and unfortunate philosophy that tends to stand behind the laws that prohibit people from manufacturing their own medicines. When you boil it down to its most basic elements, you either have the notion that people should be free to make their own decisions about their own health, and that includes what they take and whether they make it or not.

mixael: [00:36:30.83] Contrastingly, there is the view that there are these special people, the smart people, the rulers who need to make rules for everyone else who, if they do not follow the rules, will hurt themselves. Or hurt the economy. And that that needs to be criminalized and people need to be punished if they step out of line. And that's kind of where this lands in terms of the criminality of it. It comes from this very classist, very oppressive theory of societal structure. Where in order to keep everyone docile and behaving well for the good of the national interest, we have to throw them in prison if they make any decisions for themselves. And there must be many layers of structured authority. Oh, you want the medicine? Well, your doctor has to say yes, your insurance agent has to say yes. And you have to have a job and be paying your taxes so you can afford it. And, and and and.

mixael: [00:37:29.89] And so yeah. How much you're breaking the law varies place to place. Also how much the establishment will actually care various place to place. Because if you're just one person making your own drugs. Or maybe you're making them for like a few friends. It's unlikely that most law enforcement is going to bother with that. In terms of the problems that they're trying to solve, they don't care that much. Now, if you started selling it, well, yeah, you're going to get in a lot of trouble. And you probably should. Because you should be selling medicines. This is the whole problem in the beginning, right? Unfortunately, they don't arrest the pharmaceutical companies.

robi: [00:38:11.31] I guess this scenario of selling it doesn't really interest us. But maybe distributing it for free might be something that's, uh, like within the realm of activism that's aligned with my principles.

mixael: [00:38:23.23] Yeah. And I think it's perfectly moral and ethical to make high quality medicines and distribute them for free. And, um, you know, when I'm at conferences, I do that. It's fun and it feels good. And the idea is that hopefully more people will be doing that. Maybe, you know, we'll see a world where there are people who will be serving their local community where somebody needs something and can't afford it, and they'll come to the person who has a micro lab and has done this a couple of times before and say, hey, can you help me make XYZ? Sure, come on in. You know, the same way that if you had a broken car that you need to fix to go to the makerspace and find a personal 3D printer or someone good with manufacturing and say, hey, you know how to make something like this? And they say, yeah, sure, come on, let me help you.

mixael: [00:39:08.94] And I think it's the same thing. If your wheelchair broke and you went to a makerspace and said, can you help me fix this? And we're like, oh, yeah, here, go talk to Jim. He knows how to weld. And oh, this guy over here, he knows how to work with rubber and oh, cool, this guy knows how to press fit roller bearings. And that would be a wonderful thing, you know. And in the same way, if you say, you know, gosh, I can't get access to this critical medication that helps me breathe. And you go to somebody who knows a little bit of chemistry and understands how to utilize these tools that we're trying to get to proliferate. And they say, yeah, here, let's let's figure it out together and I'll help you. And then you can go home with the medication you need. That seems like a really obvious thing that every community should have.

robi: [00:39:49.38] Yeah. I mean, like, for example, we do or did do a lot of this kind of very direct, uh, solidarity work with our collective--my local collective here where I live. And this is real a situation ... One guy, he had asthma, really bad asthma from working in some shitty environment. And he just did not have the money to buy his asthma treatment. And we did help him, like with money quite a lot, or directly buying the inhaler and stuff. But uh, yeah, I mean, he was just struggling to survive. And then he disappeared for a while and we didn't hear anything from him. So I don't know what happened to him. But it was this kind of like... If the options were to just die or have very poor quality of life and have something done by a comrade, which is maybe not, I don't know, as safe as I don't know what. I mean, of course. That sounds very reasonable.

mixael: [00:40:45.24] Yeah, and I love that you say that, because this is an argument that I make very often. Like, oh, you know, what if somebody gets this wrong and hurts themselves? These people are already dying! And what exactly is going to be worse than dying? Your example is really astute. You know, here's someone who can't breathe. Can't breathe. Like, oh, no, don't go make your own medicines, you might hurt yourself. The guy can't breathe. What's going to be more dangerous than not breathing? It boggles the mind that people don't think this extra step through. This crisis that this poor guy is in, is already as dire as it gets. Like do anything. Like do a dance. Pray. You know, sing a song. Like anything that might make it better. Sure. Try it. And making your own medicine, that seems like a really obvious thing, that has a high percentage chance of working. And again, if it doesn't work, you're no worse off than you were.

mixael: [00:41:41.62] And in the same way, just to harken back to the legality question, when people are like, oh, isn't this illegal? And I'm like, whoa, would you rather be the most law abiding person in your local graveyard. Or would you like to break the law and continue to live? I think it's a pretty easily answered question in my mind. Or not. Maybe somebody would answer that differently. But I think that that's the question. It's not just like, oh, this is illegal, don't do it. It's like, well, this is illegal, make a decision as to whether you want to do it or not. And in the face of your health, failing and potentially dying, like, I don't think there's a heavy exchange.

mixael: [00:42:24.81] Also, when people talk about violating patent law, that it's theft. I say, okay, if you believe that, without attacking the notion of intellectual property law and ownership, but if you really qualify a violation of intellectual property law as theft, then you price somebody out from access to their medication until they die from lack of it. That's a murder. So if we're talking about the sort of proportionality of crime, forming an act of theft to prevent an act of murder is justifiable in any moral philosophy that I've ever heard of. So again, it seems like the answer is pretty obvious.

robi: [00:43:10.39] Yeah, I agree. And I think one more question that is kind of related also to this. You always say, I think you said also before, that you have this guiding principle that people should be able to make informed choices for themselves.

mixael: [00:43:23.35] Yeah, that is super critical. That has to come before everything.

robi: [00:43:26.79] Yeah. Us here at the podcast are like different flavors of anarchists and we fully agree with that. I guess one question which pops into my mind here, related to this is like, yes. And. Also there are some structural factors that contribute, uh, like lots of misinformation or um... I guess what I'm thinking about is like, people always have free will and it's their responsibility alone. Individual responsibility what happens. But to me, this flows a bit into the right wing libertarian side of the spectrum. I [identify with a praxis and tradition] of left anarchism and we do have some kind of socially based position. But then again, like Marxists would say that they focus only on the structural factors. And for them, most of the time, the individual choice, the agency factor, doesn't even count. A lot of the time. So I definitely don't agree with that. Yeah, I'd just love to hear your thoughts on this.

mixael: [00:44:22.41] This is a really critical point. And there are a couple of moving parts here. The first thing sort of underlying everything, that's really critical. And this is really interesting because it's not talked about in the public sphere a lot. But if you ever talk to any medical professional and you ask them about how do you deal with patients who make poor medical decisions, they are very sophisticated in their philosophy. They put that problem to bed for themselves a long time ago. They all say something equivalent to people are going to make bad health decisions, and we will be here to help them when they do.

mixael: [00:45:01.20] It's amazing to see this very, in many cases at least, many of the doctors and nurses and other medical professionals that we work with, have this very compassionate, non-judgmental approach. That people are going to make bad medical decisions. And the job is not to judge that. The job is to deal with what's in front of you and do the best you can with what you have. And again, this circles back to the legality question in a really fascinating way. Because you're allowed to refuse treatment. That's a really interesting sort of dichotomy. You've got a medical authority that says you should do this. And if you say no thanks, you're well within your rights to do that in most places.

mixael: [00:45:48.98] However, if you go to a medical professional and say, I want that. The medical professional can just say, yeah, I don't agree, and so you don't get to. And so there's this weird like the photo negative of your personal freedom somehow falls into a very different category. So to circle back to your question here. In terms of people being well informed and the questions of misinformation, the root of that goes very deep. And the main thing that is so hard to contend with is people being information literate. And that is something that you find less and less of late. Where information flows so quickly, it's generated so quickly, the volume of information is so large [that] it's hard to pick through.

mixael: [00:46:43.74] And while often times people will rely on intermediaries to digest information for them and to place trust in them, as you point out, oftentimes that trust is misplaced. And it's very difficult to sort of bring people into the fold of saying, look, all information that you get, you must look at it with a critical eye. Here are things that tend to be more trustworthy. There are ways that you can look for things that are generally higher quality of information. Here is how you look for a separate source of similar pieces of information. Especially in the sort of hyper accelerated world we live in. Where people want, you know, a chatbot to tell them the answer. They want the Google search to tell them the answer.

mixael: [00:47:40.52] And it's not that it's all that different than 50-60 years ago, when people would put on the news and want the news anchor to tell them the answer. Or 100 years ago for the newspaper to tell him the answer. But when you're making your own decisions, it is worth digging in and trying to figure out, well, where did that information come from. Is that information correct, or is acceptable. Or the how is that information processed. How is it digested. This is one of the reasons why I think that all of the informational freedom systems that are out there, like what's left of sci-hub, all of the things that it has birthed, things like Anna's archive and Libgen are so, so, so critical.

mixael: [00:48:26.91] Because even though it takes a little getting used to to read scientific papers and, you know, scientific papers sometimes get things wrong too. But that's where you're going to get typically your highest quality of information about medicine, you're going to be able to dig into the original research. You're going to be able to look at people who invented the drug and what they found out and how they found it out. And then you can go and look at the clinical trials and see how those went.

mixael: [00:48:58.61] The unfortunate problem there, [is that] those aren't all published. Only the ones that work are published. Because when you're trying to get a drug validated or approved by the FDA, you have to show that it worked. But you only have to show the ones in which it worked. If there were a dozen that failed and one that worked, you don't have to show those other ones that didn't work, which is a real drag.

mixael: [00:49:21.93] But you go around and you pull up as much information as you can, and you try to aggregate your information, and you make your own decision. And having the freedom to make your own decision is absolutely critical. And I think it's not a whole lot different than the news, right? You know, a lot of people get their news from, I don't know, their news feed on Google. Or on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Or whatever their social media is. It's just sort of the rumor mill. And like, that is not a whole lot different than it's ever been. Sure. You know, people hear something at the office over coffee, somebody hears something at a party. That's how that goes. Yeah. Okay. That all makes sense. That happens.

mixael: [00:50:03.12] But the better way to get quality information is that, you know, you listen to the BBC and you listen to Al Jazeera, and, you know, maybe you listen to Fox News, too. And then you can sort of see that all of these institutions that have different goals and different agendas view the same event through a different lens. And once you get enough of these separately, you can put enough pieces together that you can have an idea of what's really going on. And at the end, you make a decision based on the best information that you have. And you can do the same thing when talking about medications.

mixael: [00:50:40.34] And when people say, I did my own research, it's like, yeah, a lot of people, when they say that, they mean they watch YouTube videos or social media, rather than actually digging into primary source material. Which is where the quality information is going to lie. Not that getting a message from a friend or reading some popular science article can't point you in the direction. But like when you read a popular science article that says, oh, scientists have discovered a thing that does, yada yada yada. Well, scroll down to the bottom and you find out where the original paper is.

robi: [00:51:10.94] And if the paper is not linked, uh, become skeptical at once. I think that's a good rule of thumb.

mixael: [00:51:17.54] Well, I mean, take the extra step to dig around. Like that must have come from somewhere. And the thing is, is like, I'm not trying to read a tremendous amount of mistrust, but to encourage people to have more faith in their own capability of uncovering information, rather than relying on others. But yeah, you have to put in some work and then make your own decision, you know. I do that. Most people I know do that. And it's worth doing. Because you're manipulating your body and you've only got one.

mixael: [00:51:47.80] And it's also a skill that you develop gradually and intentionally, to be able to tell what is propaganda.

mixael: [00:51:56.08] Yeah. And you get better at it. Right. So as you do this more, it becomes a faster process. The first couple of times you do it, maybe it'll take you all day and then eventually it only takes you an hour. And then eventually, you know, if you want to do a pass on a medication, it's going to be fairly quick. But, you know, most people don't do this all day, every day. And you don't even have to get that good at it. But if you've never done this before, yeah, maybe it'll take you a couple of days to look at the scope of a particular medication. But if you're only looking at one, yeah, take a couple of days, take your time, dig through, find out everything you can about it. And then decide if that's what you want to be putting into your body.

robi: [00:52:31.88] I guess a negative example or the like the worst case example that you can give it, like, for example, when during Covid, Trump told people to take hydrochloroquine or how it was called and some people took it and like there were a few people who died. But I fully agree with what you say, that if you as a state want to have an intervention to prevent that, don't do it by taking people's agency, but by having some kind of intervention, like to combat misinformation, to foster critical thinking, etc etc. Not by taking people's agency.

mixael: [00:53:04.83] Yeah. Again, I think to your point, the people who took that were misinformed.

robi: [00:53:11.35] Of course, the orange clown on TV told them to take it, so they took it.

mixael: [00:53:16.11] Sure. And then they just took it on faith, right?

robi: [00:53:18.43] Yeah.

mixael: [00:53:19.27] And bizarrely, it's like, yes, of course you can kill viruses with bleach. You shouldn't be drinking bleach to kill viruses, though, right? There's the notion of something that sits in a petri dish, and here's something that's toxic to it and something that your body will tolerate, that is toxic only to the virus and not to the rest of your body, or at least is more toxic to the virus. You know, again, when people will pull up a headline and not read past the headline and not contextualize the information, yeah, things can get dodgy. If you're not thinking about it. But again, I think everybody has the capacity to think. It is not a question of capacity, i think it's a question of whether they will take the time and take the energy to do so, and understand why that's important. I think that's the real critical thing.

robi: [00:54:06.89] Great. I think this has been a great discussion. I really love the places we went with the discussion.

mixael: [00:54:12.81] Yeah. And I just want to thank you. Because a lot of times when I go on shows, I get asked really boring questions. And so it's really nice to get a chance to dig into the philosophy of things. And so I just I really appreciate you having put together these thoughtful ideas about how all of these things intersect.

robi: [00:54:29.25] And maybe before we end, would you like to shout out some like recommendations for more reading or listening, maybe about biohacking and stuff like that? And also where can people find your work?

mixael: [00:54:43.19] Yeah. So at four Thieves vinegar.org you can find most of our stuff documented. And there are links to the various projects and you get a lot of videos there. And our GitHub repos are all there. And the real critical thing that I really get a chance to touch on is the notion of making sure that we all help each other. So for people out there who like what Four Thieves is doing or would like to support the mission, I would say to you, find somebody who needs your help. And go help them. And help them, even if they don't deserve it.

robi: [00:55:20.15] This has been very fun to do this discussion, and thank you for coming. I'm a researcher and I work like in solar energy stuff and air pollution stuff. And I've been also like thinking, how can you make this stuff more accessible to people, exactly in the way that you do it. Strip it down to the bare elements and just make it accessible. And I haven't done anything practically, but this is also what drives my work. To think about how I can do this. It's been so inspiring to discover your work.

mixael: [00:55:47.66] Yeah, I remember when we were texting, you said you work in de Sitter space and it was such a flashback.

robi: [00:55:52.82] Pheew. That was a while ago. Yeah.

mixael: [00:55:54.34] Yeah. But maybe another time we can do another chat and we can talk about the notions of pedagogy. Because a lot of these same principles apply, you know. A lot of these ideas were not just birthed on the spot, but came from a lot of upset that I had trying to instruct people in mathematics and physics. And seeing that instead of being taught these beautiful tools that I loved so much, that people have been basically turned into these machines to repeat procedures. And they weren't enjoying it the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Instead, it was this point of suffering. And of course, it's suffering if you have something that's totally abstract and nobody's telling you how it works. And they're just telling you what to do. Then yeah, it's going to be difficult, it's going to be boring. It's going to be just memorizing something that is entirely abstract. And seeing how, how long your medium term memory can hold it. And it's such a crime. But maybe next time we can dig into that one.

robi: [00:56:55.32] I would love that, actually. And I do agree that, like making education boring is a crime. It should be a crime, legally.

mixael: [00:57:03.04] It should be. I couldn't agree more. And you know, again, I fought it for a long time inside the system and eventually made my exit.

robi: [00:57:11.40] Thanks so much. Again, thank you for offering us your time and your energy to record this episode together. It's been great. And I will maybe take you up on that idea to record something about pedagogy also.

mixael: [00:57:22.80] Absolutely. I'd love to do that. And yeah, next time I'm in your part of Europe. I'd love to come by and hang out and meet your comrades.

NPC: [00:57:29.22] [outro collage of sloth sounds]

robi: [00:57:33.94] That's it for today. We hope you found the episode informative, and that it was as interesting and exciting to you as it was for me to read and talk with Michael about this stuff. Please follow the activity of Four Thieves Vinegar Collective on their website, which you can find in the links in the description. The cover art for today's episode is based on the logo of the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, and tweaked a bit by us. And the music for today is the very nice song Mass Cisteria by the queer anti-speciesist band Zimbru. The song has this great line 'I will not deny myself the right to heal'. Which of course in the song it's more about emotional healing, while our episode is mostly about physical health. But I thought that it fits very well with the discussion. That's it. And until next time, take care. Bye bye.