I don't think people understand just how quickly the liver, kidneys, hormone levels, your whole body can be destroyed in the blink of an eye by bad drugs. I would say, I've seen more than a few HN contributors have a less than cautious attitude toward recreational drugs. Drugs, period, without proper knowledge and guidance can do irreparable harm to internal organs and should be treated with proper respect.

Absolutely whilst I was UK renal unit (after a transplant) an older guy was I the next bed as an emergency admission he had been taking zinc tablets in addition to his gp subscribed drugs and his kidneys had totally shut down due to some interactions.

Recreational drugs are one thing, synthesizing compounds yourself is another. The risk profiles are completely different.

On what do you base this (remarkable) claim? Synthesizing drugs to act on the brain is at least as dangerous as those for kidneys, liver, etc. More than a few amateur drug designers have pickled their synapses into broccoli.

I meant it the other way around; an amateur synthesizing compounds themselves is probably more risky. Then again, it depends on the substance.

It's hard to mess up sodium oxybate, but it's way easier to mess up methamphetamine, for instance.

Agreed that the article is a little too flattering to his ego, but what about people desperate for medical aid, can't afford it, and would probably end up with pain/death without this as an alternative? What should they do?

Not listen to this guy. As the article notes none of his ideas or creations have ever been tried by anyone, including himself, and require fairly sophisticated ability to set up and make.

In fact from the article it's not clear at all what exactly this guy is offering or how it helps anyone beyond his self-aggrandizing bluster.

Most people who are desperate and too poor to afford medications are also too poor to afford the tools and supplies necessary to make their own medications. I don't think this will solve the problem of drug affordability.

Buy time at a lab to ensure QC at all levels of production, which they’d need to do this safely? I’m sure lots of desperate people have the time, money, and expertise ro make that work.

the overall affect that Laufer strikes throughout the interview and article gives me a strange impression - it's like a kind of self-parody

I get the feeling that the author really dislikes Laufer. The whole article comes across as wanting to smear his character as a rich, egoistic crazy person with hubris. I don't know what kind of anarchists you got in SV, but wtf:

> He said this over lunch at an upscale French bistro in the Silicon Valley, where he orders Champagne and sauteed scallops. “If you really take the time to smell the scallops,” Laufer said, inhaling luxuriantly, “you can feel the ocean.”

I really disagree with the commentators that feels that this is an article aimed at lifting Laufer.

I applaud the goal, but the article paints him as a showy douche who mimes his own existence. Why does everything have to get defconn'd

i empathize with Laufer's goals and purpose and concept, but, er, judging by this article's description of the man, he seems highly idealistic and overconfident.

i personally wouldn't be ready to place my trust in his drug recipes.

You're still underplaying just how radical this DIY approach is.

Imagine you decide you are a modern day Robinhood, and you go around the U.S. breaking into medical facilities and stealing Epipens to distribute them for free to the general populace. You do this until you and your band get caught, and which point you go to prison.

At the end of your run every person who received a free Epipen got the same quality device as the people who paid exorbitant price for an Epipen. To the degree that you inspire others to do this, they are bound by the same risk of prison time. Finally, since the price you charged was $0 there is no financial incentive for copycats to distribute fake Epipens (or at least if somebody does they must be a bad actor with ill intentions, or they must charge a fee in which case potential buyers will rightly be skeptical of the product).

What the DIY chemist apparently wants to do is persuade non-experts that they can produce Artisanal Epipens that are ostensibly as safe as the real thing (or at least safe enough that the risk is overridden by the alternative). But that is only an argument for a doctor to use an artisanal epipen if it is the only thing that happens to be lying around-- it's not an argument for persuading the general public to practice and spread the idea of DIY non-expert chemistry.

DIY chemistry doesn't come with public policy expertise. It doesn't come with trained (and funded!) epidemiology. And if their DIY ethos goes horribly wrong-- as the "roll-up-our-sleeves-and-research-our-own-vaccines-schedules" movement has-- they won't have the competence in statistics to know just how dangerous their movement has become in terms of public health. Worse, where science tends toward rigor, verifiability, and a narrowly defined scope of research, these DIY chemists will likely be skeptical of the published canon and "wing it" by trying to do their own epidemiology (because after, ignorance and lack of training didn't stop them from being a chemist...)

Worst of all, unlike my Robinhood example there is no natural filter to keep otherwise good faith actors from making decisions that will have terrible consequences for themselves and others. To steal Epipens you've got to break in to a physical place and potentially physically harm or threaten a security guard. This filter keeps tens of millions of people who are no doubt convinced of the deep unfairness of pharmaceutical prices from becoming an angry and dangerous mob whose violence quickly outweighs the single benefit of redistributing epipens to the poor.

Based on that, DIY artisanal epipens are more risky and can scale into a public hazard more easily than just robbing a pharmaceutical warehouse. So I claim that casually encouraging people to make DIY epipens without a systematic, well-tested, and well-funded research regimen is more dangerous and irresponsible than just stealing extant epipens.

So if you're the type of person who rejects robbery out of hand, you probably shouldn't entertain the idea of Artisanal Epipens, either.