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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.
More drugs than people realize should be dosed in proportion to the patient's weight. Physicians often go for the closest size of pill to make it easier for the patient; if we could have a machine automatically print the pills of an exact size every month, that could be an important change.
It would be interesting to see if it can do some of the new tamper-resistant coatings as well.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
What kind of "outbreak" would require any of those medications: Valium, Prozac, Benadryl, and Lidocaine ???
I predict Cleveland Ohio will see such an outbreak this July. We may see one on a national level in November as well.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Just how far are we from Niven's autodocs now?
A very, very long way. Autodocs were more about fully automated surgery and organ replacement rather than dispensing drugs. I particularly remember a case where one of the Wus is exposed to vacuum and the autodoc aboard ship replaces both lungs without any human intervention; one would have to assume that people are flying around with all manner of organs stored aboard just in case. Before we have anything like that I think we'll see something more like an automated pharmacy that takes blood samples, analyses them and manufactures/dispenses exactly what the patient needs... even medication for paranoid schizophrenics.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
This is a proof of concept flow synthesizer that makes the APIs (chemical compounds) and then formulates them with excipients to make the pills. Flow synthesis is definitely going to become more and more useful, but for emergency situations it's absolutely useless. You'd be much better off sending a 50 gallon carboy full of drugs then an easily damaged frig size synthesizer, drums full of solvents and reagents, a generator and gas to run it, etc. It's like sending a 3D printer on a camping trip instead of a box of plastic cutlery.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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...
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.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.