this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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I was first on the fence, but yeah, at the very least, it's a clear signal to big pharma, and I welcome that move. Also, if this will actually get safe, reliable, and controlled enough, I'd love to have some basic spare parts and make my meds at home. But that would probably require something more complex than Microlab.
Don't trust your life with this unless you have to. Curious project nonetheless!
This could be very good for people with orphan diseases(diseases that are rare enough that they aren't profitable for private companies to research)
Also, having an orphan disease often results in insurance companies denying coverage for everything because they don't have a policy written up for that specific disease.... so there's no script for the workers to follow. Then your doctor has to argue with them, which can take weeks, in the meantime you have no medication.
Yeah, I'm not mad or anything. I wish I could've cooked up my own meds when insurance denied me life giving meds because they'd never heard of my disorder.
I think that is one of the cases where it wouldn't help. The medical research still needs to happen and it requires experts.
The tools provided by this organization are useful for manufacturing your own medication off of an existing, proven formula.
What we need is for all this research to be government funded, so profitability isn't what decides whether a disease needs to be researched.
It would if there's already a therapeutic medication available(but more research could create a cure, or better therapies).
Usually insurance will deny a medication for these diseases either because the medication currently available is older(no one prescribes that anymore!), or it's too expensive, or it's too new/was developed in another country. For example ireland developed a new medication for narcolepsy, but it's impossible to get in the US, nevermind getting insurance coverage.
I'm on one med that was developed in the 60's and it's the only one that actually works. It's over $300 a month. The other newer one I tried made in the 90's is over $1000 a month and doesn't work as well. Insurance tried to deny coverage for both.
The problem with older meds is there's fewer manufacturers so they can charge whatever they want due to lack of competition. There's little demand, so the few people who need it are charged out the ass for them since insurance will deny deny deny.