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Hackers Offer a DIY Alternative To The $600 EpiPen (ieee.org)
After the pharmaceutical company Mylan raised the price of a 2-pen set of EpiPens by nearly $500 over the course of 9 years, Michael Laufer and his "pharma-hacking confederates at the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective," decided to make their own budget-friendly EpiPens. IEEE Spectrum reports: Today they released a video and instructions showing DIYers how to make a generic EpiPen using materials that can be bought online for about $30. They call it the EpiPencil. "It functions just as well as an EpiPen," Laufer says in the video, after demonstrating the assembly and showing that it works. "With no special training, anybody can use it." An EpiPen is just a spring-loaded syringe filled with the pharmaceutical epinephrine. Laufer's video shows how to assemble the "open source medical device" and provides links for where to buy the components online. He stops short of telling viewers how to get their hands on the drug, noting that you need a prescription for it. But Laufer tells IEEE Spectrum in an interview that it's easy to buy epinephrine online from a chemical supplier, and he hopes viewers will do just that. "There's a small but hopefully growing subculture of people who are buying the active ingredients of drugs," he says. "It's encouraging to see people take control of their own health."
the autoinjector is intended to be used by untrained people.
The "training" in this case takes literally 5 minutes if you are a slow reader. I refuse to have that used as an excuse for a $600 (or even a $50) "auto-injector". Blah blah blah you're not qualified to say this what are you a doctor? Yes. Yes I am a medical doctor.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
works fine everywhere else.
the us isn't such a special snowflake that it cant work here too.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A few small air bubbles, while not ideal, are not as bad as you might think. An important reason that you use the Hollywood-style flick-flick-flick to get air bubbles to the top of a syringe and then press them out is to make sure that you've filled the syringe with the appropriate amount of drug. Whereas 0.2 cc of air probably won't do much to you if injected (and that's a pretty big bubble in a syringe), if you're injecting 1 cc of drug, that 20% difference with versus without bubble can make a big difference in the mount of drug that actually gets delivered.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
"The company that makes epipens has been given free reign to set the price however they want"
You do realize that the line right there was made possible by government, right? There are competitors who make them and sell them for much cheaper on the international market, but the government, the one you're saying would make everything better, has banned them from being allowed to be sold in this country.
And if you think the government has no profit motive, you're a naive fool. How do you think lobbying groups work? They just say "pretty please with a cherry on top"? No, they dump lots of money at the government to get their way.
The U.S. federal government makes it illegal to import, or even RE-import prescription drugs. That's right. Thanks to government, you can't even buy the same exact product in the manufacturer's original packaging after it has been exported.
Then, you have Medicare and Medicaid which dictate prices for products and services. The medical service providers then jack up prices on everyone else to offset the below-market prices from the government programs. That's why people go bankrupt due to medical bills. The uninsured have no negotiating power, and get charged 10x, 50x or more for the same exact services. If everyone paid the Medicare/Medicaid prices, providers would go bankrupt. If Medicare/Medicaid paid fair market prices, those programs would go bankrupt.
The USA federal government has been involved in healthcare for over 50 years. Their intervention has been an absolute disaster. Skyrocketing prices, millions unable to afford even basic services, substandard quality of outcomes.
And these are the people you want to put in charge of the entire USA healthcare system? Fuck "socialized medicine" and fuck the U.S. federal government. They're the problem, not the solution.