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Open Insulin, 'DIY bio' and the future of pharma
The development, manufacture and sale of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States is a complex landscape involving intellectual property and strict federal regulations. But according to Colorado State University scientists, the status quo of the U.S. pharmaceutical market may soon be turned on its head. That's due in part to a growing community of do-it-yourself "biohackers" who are disrupting business-as-usual for pharmaceutical discovery, development and distribution. A Sept. 13 perspective piece in Trends in Biotechnology [DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.07.009] [DX] frames these emerging issues, and predicts how the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. regulatory environment, will need to change in response.
[...] The authors use the California-based Open Insulin Project as a case study of how the DIY bio movement might shape the future of medicine. Founded in 2015, the project's creators are trying to increase competition in the insulin market by developing and releasing an open-source protocol for manufacturing off-patent insulin.
Why does the Open Insulin Project exist in the first place? Insulin is 100 years old, but it remains prohibitively expensive for many patients, with some uninsured patients paying up to $400 a month for this life-saving medicine. People are angry, and in some cases, people are dying, from lack of access to affordable insulin.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)
I am with you on this, this is good. Competition is good, if it fails its part of life.
This is where the actual philosophy and morality enter: Is the US system, with it's Darwinism always going to come out on top of the game? Perhaps. Is it worth it?
One of my current philosophical dilemmas.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:54AM
We should ask why the US system ended on top in the first place? Second, the US health care system is screwed up despite significant attempts to make it less Darwinian. These attempts have often backfired badly (such as creating the oligopoly situation with insulin).