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Refrigerator-Sized Machine Can Print Pills on Demand (dailymail.co.uk)

MIT Researchers have created a new "Pharmacy on Demand" prototype that can produce 1,000 doses of medication every 24 hours. Their new system "can be easily transported in case of outbreaks, supply shortage or if a manufacturing plant shuts down," notes the Daily Mail, and the on-demand technology can address many of the challenges in supplying medications, for example regions without facilities for storing pills. "The dosages don't have to have long-term stability," says the head of MIT's Chemistry department. "People line up, you make it, and they take it." The DARPA-funded researchers produced Valium, Prozac, Benadryl, and lidocaine, and demonstrated that "Within a few hours we could change from one compound to the other." The machine can also switch to a different drug type within a few hours, making it economical to produce drugs needed by only a small number of patients.

4 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The future of dosage? by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The pharmaceutical industry did not create the dosage problem. They are responsible for plenty of problems, but the variety of sizes of humans is not one of them.

    For that matter, the machine would not be producing the drugs, it would just be packaging them. The drugs go in to the machine in some sort of loose form and the machine prints them into pills. Manufacturing is serious chemistry that would be hard to do in a fully automated manner in the field.

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  2. Re:The future of dosage? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The funny part is, this machine is nothing special. they have had powdered candy into pill pressing vending machines for 10 YEARS.

    My daughter used to use them on vacation all the time, the kids put in the $2.00 push the buttons to drop in the different color powders and then they press go and it presses the bin of powder into hard candies for them. It is a willy wonka brand.

    So the pharma companies are 10 years behind the candy companies It's very easy to convert the candy machine to a medicine machine. same size pill for everyone, you just adjust the medicine to filler ratio, drop those powders to a mixing chamber and then to the presser, Exactly how they do it in a factory. you could have a rotating die if you just want to adjust pill size, but adding filler is far easier.

    Problem is, their machine either needs to have separate hermetically sealed sections for each medicine, or you will have cross contamination. and who is going to wear the hazmat suit to clean the thing? it will have medical compound dust all over the inside.

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    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Re:Good bye Martin Shkreli by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not they are out of date, its that the FDA is owned and paid for by big US pharma companies.

    The FDA STILL says that getting drugs from canada for a discount is DANGEROUS!

    Canadian drugs are the EXACT SAME drugs in the USA and made on the same line, their government just doesn't allow the companies to violently rape their citizens on price.

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    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  4. Re:Good bye Martin Shkreli by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Would you rather [...]

    Now, you are offering me a choice. FDA does not. And I don't need to "look into it" — I have a very close friend waiting for FDA's approval of "experimental" treatment for him. He's been waiting for over 18 months now.

    I'm more worried about what happens to our medical system when doctors and companies have the freedom to put random chemicals into people's bodies.

    Doctors would not have that freedom my way either. But people would.

    Neither your way nor mine is bullet-proof — indeed, nothing would be. But my way preserves people's freedom, whereas yours takes the freedom away. This alone ought to be enough for my way to be accepted as better, but that's not all.

    Your way is not remarkably safer either! The FDA was created after some spectacular abuses of patients' trust by "doctors" and "chemists", FDA has since had scandalous failures of its own, when the approved medicines and advice had to be withdrawn and reversed. As forewarned, we surrendered an essential liberty in exchange for temporary safety — and lost both...

    It quickly becomes a situation where some data is much worse than no data at all.

    Yes, yes, and too much freedom is too dangerous. Yours is a Statist argument — the State government knows best, citizens ought to defer to their benevolent and omniscient betters. And until those betters have enough data, the citizens should keep dying — because taking care of oneself causes chaos.

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    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.