Both Inevitable and Justified

It appears that activists are distributing information that would allow for anyone to make some of the most expensive medications in the world themselves.

A case in point is Sofosbuvir (brand name Sovaldi), which is at this point the only drug which cures Hepatitis C, which sells for $1,000.00 a pill but can be made in a relatively simple home lab for $0.87 a pill, a 114,943% markup.

This means that the treatment regimen can be had for less than $100.00, as opposed to almost $100,000.00.

Drug patents have gotten out of hand, and it needs to stop:

I’ve been video chatting with Mixæl Swan Laufer for about 30 minutes about an exciting discovery when he points out that to date, the best way he’s been able to bring attention to his organization is “the old school method of me performing a bunch of federal felonies on stage in front of a bunch of people.”

I stop him and ask: “In this case, what are the felonies?”

“Well, the list is pretty long,” he said.

Laufer is the chief spokesperson of Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, an anarchist collective that has spent the last few years teaching people how to make DIY versions of expensive pharmaceuticals at a tiny fraction of the cost. Four Thieves Vinegar Collective call what they do “right to repair for your body.”

Laufer has become well known for handing out DIY pills and medicines at hacking conferences, which include, for example, courses of the abortion drug misoprostol that can be manufactured for 89 cents (normal cost: $160) and which has become increasingly difficult to obtain in some states following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs.

In our call, Laufer had just explained that Four Thieves’ had made some miscalculations as part of its latest project, to create instructions for replicating sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), a miracle drug that cures hepatitis C, which he planned to explain and reveal at the DEF CON hacking conference.

Unlike many other drugs that treat viruses, Sovaldi does not suppress hepatitis C, a virus that kills roughly 250,000 people around the world each year. It cures it.

“Normally you have a virus, and your body fights it off or your body fights it to a standstill and you just have it forever, basically, and hope it remains dormant more or less,” Laufer said. “The holy grail for every virologist is to find a way to drain the viral reservoir, and Sovaldi does this. You take one pill of Sovaldi a day for 12 weeks and then you don’t have hepatitis C anymore.”

The problem is that those pills are under patent, and they cost $1,000 per pill.

“Literally, if you have $84,000 then hepatitis C is not your problem anymore,” Laufer said. “But given that there are other methodologies for managing hepatitis C that are not curing it and that are cheaper, insurance typically will not cover [Sovaldi]. And so we’ve got this incredible technology and it’s sitting on the shelf except for people who are ridiculously wealthy.”

So Four Thieves Vinegar Collective set out to teach people how to make their own version of Sovaldi. Chemists at the collective thought the DIY version would cost about $300 for the entire course of medication, or about $3.57 per pill. But they were wrong. “It’s actually just a little under $70 (83 cents per pill), which just kind of blew my mind when they finally showed me the results,” Laufer said. “I was like, can we do the math here again?”

Our current IP regime, particularly with regard to pharmaceuticals does not work.

Furthermore, it runs counter to the Constitutional requirements of such a system, (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

This sort of looting and rent seeking does not promote the, "Progress of Science and useful Arts," it promotes corrupt business models.

Patent and copyright are a tax on the rest of us that is provided in order to benefit the public.

Our current IP regime does not do this.