4 ms·
> Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on
by darawk 8y ago
> Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on a budget outside of institutional channels.
Synthesized. Not developed. Synthesizing medicines is easy. Developing them is extremely difficult.
- klipt 8y agoI can "render" a movie onto my harddrive from bittorrent in minutes. I don't know why Pixar has to spend so much time on their rendering! /s
- malkia 8y agoIf stealing movies helped people survived, given financial difficulties, then they'll do it. Survival beats "no-steal" laws.
- wavefunction 8y agoin the face of immorality, morality stand supreme
- lovich 8y agoWould you wait to die instead of stealing something to save yourself?
- sabujp 8y agothis is the worst analogy ever
- tibu 8y agoNot really. Pixar has to render a movie before you can download it. Pfizer has to develop the medicine before you can synthesize it.
- armandososa 8y agoA more apt analogy would be to make the movie again, frame by frame, using different voice actors maybe and slightly changing the character looks. Sure, they are skipping over the long process of writing and refining a script, painfully planning and directing the movie over many years and then carefully editing it to perfection, but it's not quite the same as downloading the finished movie.
- VvR-Ox 8y agoSorry but that is not a valid comparison. Movies are for fun & profit. Medicine is for people's health / survival and profit. You can live without the first but without the second you'll probably die soon and maybe painful as well (depending on the first fatal desease you contract).
- drawnwren 8y agoEqually, my personal utility gained from new innovations in the pharmaceutical space is much higher than the entertainment space. As long as the pharmaceutical industry doesn't go the way of the post-piracy entertainment industry, this is great. I don't think anyone is arguing that big pharma is perfect, but I do enjoy the fact that a lot of money goes into finding new drugs.
- Eric_WVGG 8y agoMost of the replies to this comment don't seem to understand that "/s" indicates sarcasm.
- Hasz 8y agoEh, it's not as simple. From what it looks like, they're not just copying syntheses from the patent application. With this Chematica data, it seems like they were pursuing novel syntheses for a variety of drugs in order to minimize side product formation or make the synthesis easier, which is an impressive feat. That being said, they aren't running clinical trials or evaluating drug efficacy, which is another difficult part of drug development.
- darawk 8y agoYou're right, they are doing something a bit novel, which is cool from a technical/hacker perspective. But clinical trials and efficacy aren't just 'another difficult part', they are the difficult part. Synthesis routes are an after-thought to any serious pharmaceutical company.
- endymi0n 8y agoIt‘s interesting to see how negative the comments are here, compared to the civil disobedience of SciHub — in fact it‘s much of the same thing. And while there is an argument to be made about how developing new medicine costs real money, the re-investment of profits into research is around 10%, we‘re talking about a deeply corrupt industry here. And while it‘s definitely still morally questionable to clone new drugs, the case is much more clear cut for substances like epinepherine or insulin, for which the patents have long expired. If pharma corporations keep these meds at insane prices with dirty tricks like biosimilars or application patents (the equivalent of „doing X on a computer“ software patents), that‘s at least as immoral. I for one welcome these hackers for some fresh air in the market.
- darawk 8y ago> It‘s interesting to see how negative the comments are here, compared to the civil disobedience of SciHub — in fact it‘s much of the same thing. Those things are worlds apart, in my view. Pharmaceutical companies add serious value to the world. They expend enormous amounts of money researching and testing drugs, and then shepherding them through the obscenely expensive FDA approval process. Journal publishers like Elsevier do not fund research. They don't pay the authors of the articles they publish. They add literally zero value to the ecosystem. It's honestly a modern marvel that they still exist. They provide absolutely nothing of value to the world.