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this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Yeah, as somebody in the USA, I think that both you and @gerikson@awful.systems are pearl-clutching over laboratory conditions while ignoring the other, more serious safety problems being addressed; the presentation was not exaggerating when they were talking about the lifesaving impact of gender-affirming therapy. Last thread, you sheepishly admitted that part of the synthesis is complicated by criminalization and over-regulation; this thread, I'd like a sheepish admission that about a third of the USA (by population) suffers from restrictions on their reproductive rights.
Like, yes, you shouldn't brew your own high-proof alcohol at home, because you can go blind from methanol poisoning. But also, there was a time in the USA when high-proof alcohol was over-regulated, and it incentivized a lot of people to homebrew.
i see this all more as a publicity stunt/attention grab than anything else. i wrote there about naloxone because laufer has put much more information about naloxone than about anything else in question there. he has put naloxone structure on his website all the way back in 2016 with "other molecules" description, suggesting that there's some work in progress. now he's talking about "releasing" procedure for naloxone synthesis ripped from a paper that came out in 2013, available on scihub for all to see. it took them so fucking long that since then: 1. availability of black market opioids shifted from genuine perc pills that you can divert from real pharmacy and that can be used to make naloxone, to possibly counterfeit ones containing fentanyl that you can't. were he releasing this all the way back in say 2018, this still could be marginally useful. 2. since then naloxone has been made available OTC making cooking it on your own obsolete. 3. there's also an option of using some other antagonists that can use codeine as starting material - i'd like to see this regulated - but these come with more side effects and absolutely zero work has been done in this direction either. whatever he's doing, it's not particularly fruitful other than getting talks for people who don't know any better
you're saying this as if it's american-only problem. diy hrt and diy plan-b were a thing way before laufer and will continue to be a thing until they're not needed, and these work by diverting legit pharmaceuticals. his miso card thing is possibly okayish if sealed but it works only because there's no synthesis involved, it's diverting veterinary drugs, which is fine because it's likely that these come from the same reactor anyway. if anything i guess he might be harmful in this one by bringing unwanted attention. if you take into attention that he floated an idea of making gene therapy on their own, with aim of introducing extra aromatase so that testosterone is transformed into estrogen almost completely, as an alternative to hrt, and possibly some other gene therapies, i cannot take him seriously. this gotta be a massive, overly long, deeply unserious attention grab. if it's grift, it's not a very good one, with $23k (current prices) in crypto donations since 2019 and $5/mo patreon
and btw there's no methanol in moonshine, at least not in harmful levels. there is methanol in denatured alcohol in countries where regulators don't give a fuck or where they believe that "morally deficient" people like addicts should suffer, like in US, in EU contaminants are nontoxic. methanol in counterfeit alcohol occurs only as intentional contamination and/or cost-cutting measure, or when whoever is cooking it does not know any better
The US healthcare system needs to be fixed, and probably others as well.
Synthesizing your own meds is not the fix.
It is, at best, a band-aid. Having transpersons and pregnant women reliant on international drug networks (becuse realistically those are the orgs that are gonna step into this void if needed) is not a good outcome.