from the because-we-already-know-how-to-make-our-own-booze dept.
Forget those long lines at the pharmacy: Someday soon, you might be making your own medicines at home. That's because researchers have tailored a 3D printer to synthesize pharmaceuticals and other chemicals from simple, widely available starting compounds fed into a series of water bottle–size reactors. The work, they say, could digitize chemistry, allowing users to synthesize almost any compound anywhere in the world.
"It could become a milestone paper, a really seminal paper," says Fraser Stoddart, a chemist and chemistry Nobel laureate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who was not involved with the work. "This is one of those articles that has to make [people] sit up and take notice."
[...] In today's issue of Science, [Leroy] Cronin and his colleagues report printing a series of interconnected reaction vessels that carry out four different chemical reactions involving 12 separate steps, from filtering to evaporating different solutions. By adding different reagents and solvents at the right times and in a precise order, they were able to convert simple, widely available starting compounds into a muscle relaxant called baclofen. And by designing reactionware to carry out different chemical reactions with different reagents, they produced other medicines, including an anticonvulsant and a drug to fight ulcers and acid reflux.
[...] But it remains to be seen whether drug regulators will go along with a new way of making medicines. To do so, agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will need to rewrite their rules for validating the safety of medicines. Instead of signing off on the production facility and manufactured drug samples, regulators would have to validate that reactionware produces the desired medication.
Source: ScienceMag
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday January 22 2018, @11:38AM (4 children)
Yeah, if the big pharma firms don't kill this because it interferes with their profits, and goverment doesn't kill it because it interferes with their sensibilities, then you can expect the illegal drug industry to kill it because who the hell is going to risk arrest / death for buying ecstasy or LSD or whatever from some random dodgy geezer when they can just download and print their own, and know exactly what's in it?
If this could somehow being squashed by the incumbents though, the possibility for changing society is breathtaking. Some interesting possibilities for abuse too though: Could it be used to create poisons or chemical weapons? Date rape drugs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @11:41AM
But you can also print
* a 3D prison for yourself
* a gun to kill yourself with
* [your brand name here, now only $7,99 a month]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @11:59AM
LSD [wikipedia.org] is a good test case for a chemputer [theguardian.com]. It's one of the safest recreational drugs in existence. The effective dose is measured in micrograms (with single-digit milligrams being more than enough to go fully cosmic). A single chemist can make millions of doses of LSD, but good luck distributing that to people who want it. If a "drug printer" or "chemputer" device typically has very low yields compared to traditional drug synthesis methods, it's still likely to be able to produce enough acid for one person, or even a ballroom of people. And it could do so without the user needing any chemical knowledge (or just very little and basic attention to the operating parameters and cleanliness of the device), while avoiding human mistakes that hurt yield or add unwanted byproducts.
It seems very likely that "incumbents" or the U.S. government will throw some roadblocks in the way to stop such a device from gaining traction. But if the device is cheap and simple enough, the roadblocks won't do much. If someone starts selling a $5,000 chemputer, they could be able to move a lot of them before the DoJ can find the legal reasoning to shut them down. They could also avoid being shut down by not shipping the device with presets/software that allow it to create recreational drugs right out of the box. They can let others do that for them, or upload files/software onto random sites or the dark web themselves. They can offer general yet extremely specific and helpful technical support on various forums without needing to link to the necessary files/software.
You could compare the above scenario to Cody Wilson's Defense Distributed activities [soylentnews.org], which have spawned countless headlines and some DoJ heat yet have not landed him in jail. Or Josiah Zayner's company The Odin [soylentnews.org], which sells CRISPR experimentation kits.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @12:18PM
One way for the individual to "easily" "print" drugs would be to use genetically engineered yeast:
'Home-Brewed Morphine' Made Possible [soylentnews.org]
Genetically Engineered Yeasts Produce Thebaine and Hydrocodone [soylentnews.org]
To my knowledge, the genomes of those yeast have not been published, and they aren't available outside of the small number of labs that work on them. If anyone knows any differently or knows any other drugs that have been produced by engineered yeast, let us know.
The yeast approach would be an imperfect way of producing the drugs you want, but maybe there are ways to extend the approach. For example, engineer a switch statement [wikipedia.org] in the genome that lets one strain of yeast produce up to 10 different drugs based on some external factor (such as a chemical or light trigger). You could see a problem happening with that approach, such as some % of the yeast mutating or not working properly, mixing a little hydrocodone into your LSD. But that could be averted by using a centrifuge or something else inside your machine to separate the desired drug from any unwanted components.
At least one proposed chemputer [theguardian.com] does not use any GMO yeast but simply uses novel approaches to chemical reactions in order to miniaturize them and combine steps into a single machine that could produce more than one drug:
Innovations like microfluidic channels [nature.com] are probably going to be very relevant for the hypothetical chemputer.
Just because a yeast strain or chemputer could create morphine [wikipedia.org] does not mean that the effort will easily translate to a general approach capable of creating thousands of molecules, including LSD, ibuprofen [wikipedia.org], VX [wikipedia.org], rophynol [wikipedia.org], TNT [wikipedia.org], etc., all in the same machine with a push of a button. But we could be moving ever closer in that direction, so expect the authoritarians in government to be keeping a close eye on this field.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Monday January 22 2018, @10:45PM
people manufacturing/distributing LSD generally aren't in it for the money. Even the DEA recognizes this.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 22 2018, @11:48AM
Who says I'm not already? Mind your own business.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday January 22 2018, @01:20PM (2 children)
This is simply a proposal to synthesise organic chemicals on a small scale. The authors have tossed in the idea of making the containment vessels by 3-D printing in order to get attention, although they could just as use moulded vessels. As a weasel-phrase, "3-D Printing" works like that. It used to be "Using a computer", then it was "Digital technology", now it's "3-D Printing". Actually, TFA uses both those last two.
If they had not said "3-D Printing" somewhere, no-one would have noticed this article. And don't expect to be doing this at home "someday soon". The Year of Linux on the desktop will happen before that. By "local" (it does not say "at home"), TFA means in your region rather than on the other side of the World.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @01:30PM
It still has the potential to be revolutionary, even if 3D printing was only a small part of the process. Here is a 2012 article about the same researcher:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jul/21/chemputer-that-prints-out-drugs [theguardian.com]
Different buzzword which is all too applicable to what they have published here.
You're wrong that nobody would have noticed this article if it did not contain "3d printing" (which the experiment does). SIMPLY "a proposal to synthesise organic chemicals on a small scale" could SIMPLY lead to the ability of amateurs to create drugs at home with no complicated chemistry knowledge, or create drugs in constrained environments such as a space station. Oops, I added another buzzphrase! Deep Space Gateway! Deeeeeep Spaaaaace Gaaaaatewaaay!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @02:36PM
I can tie my shoes digitally.
If more people knew latin, explaining some things would be simpler...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 22 2018, @02:06PM (3 children)
It will be very convenient to 3D print some cough syrup!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @02:14PM (2 children)
Codeine, Codeine
You're the nicest thing I've seen
For a while, for a while
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 22 2018, @02:20PM (1 child)
Nah, hydrocodone works much better. But most of the time over the counter cough syrup is just fine. And having it 3D printed would be great. Even better if you can also 3D print the bottle it comes in. Best of all if you can 3D print the bottle and the cough syrup together.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @11:49PM
I've never noticed any appreciable medical benefits from any opiates/opiods. Still cough, still feel pain, still shit out all my fluids m the high is ok though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday January 22 2018, @02:59PM (1 child)
This is kinda the chemistry equivalent of writing "hello world" thus proving that ALL programming can be replaced by five minutes of noob work. Its not that simple. I looked up the product and was impressed with how bucket chemist it was.
I'm assuming they're doing:
http://icc.journals.pnu.ac.ir/article_1893_296.html [pnu.ac.ir]
So if you have p-chlorobenzaldehyde and ethyl acetoacetate laying around the house in usable qtys, then its not much more complicated than cooking to abuse it further with COTS potassium hydroxide, ammonium hydroxide, and sodium hydroxide which are admittedly pretty stereotypical household chemicals.
There are scaling problems. Secret Sauce number one is p-chlorobenzaldehyde and Sigma Aldrich will (LOL, not) ship you a min qty of enough to get an entire college high for $27, and secret sauce two is ethyl acetoacetate which is an artificial "fruity" flavor which in theory could be made at home by a dedicated chemist, but probably not. If you have a source of ethyl acetate solvent, then maybe you could make ethyl acetoacetate at home. Sigma Aldrich (I swear I don't work for them, although a chemistry classmate ended up there, I think) is like $100 for a kilogram which is a lot.
The point of looking up cost and availability of the secret sauce(s) is the semi-addictive GHB-alike they're pushing home synthesis of, is like $20 for prescription in the US (assuming no insurance). So if you're trying to self-medicate its going to be a hell of a lot cheaper WRT minimum shipments of secret sauce(s) to take legit big pharma, the only purpose of home synthesis would be to mfgr enough to get an entire university town high at a rave. Also you're gonna use like $5 of filament to print up a shitty impression of a flask I can buy for $3.
The meta-point is this is a boring easy synthesis, equivalent to stir frying pepper steak once using a 3-d printed wok (yeah, that'll work well) and declaring yourself a Chinese chef.
The biggest problem with "make it at home" is most people have pretty magical thinking about chemistry. There are people out there who are smart enough not to, for example, shit into their homemade bread dough, admittedly not a high bar. But those same people will see "windex with ammonia alternative" or WTF its called and pour that in place of actual pharm-grade ammonia hydroxide solution, then wonder why their product is blue and foamy and makes people vomit and die. And somehow this will all be the fault of home or amateur chemistry as a hobby, not the mfgr being a moron.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @04:04PM
This is actually a reason why the printer/chemputer is a good idea (from a perspective of someone who wants to make chemical or drug products at home). It could make the process of chemistry somewhat more idiot-proof and allow dumb or distracted users to make more complicated chemicals/drugs at home. The point of failure becomes loading the starting chemicals into the machine, and running the right file/program. I guess dealing with your machine being broken would also become a major point of failure. You're not going to take your MDMA-spewing machine in to get fixed, and might not even notice when something goes wrong.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 22 2018, @03:10PM
Now as a cousin post of my previous post, you can mfgr substances of minimal medical value that somewhat exceed placebo level effectiveness by fooling around with herbal teas and various solvent extractions of smelly things. A nice homemade peppermint tea will not clear the sinuses as well as the semi-illegal psuedoephedrine meth precursor that used to be freely OTC, but it will work a hell of a lot better than drinking tap water or just sitting there feeling miserable. There's a lot of quartz crystal woo woo bs in that field but some real (admittedly often weak) science.
Rather than making a shitty rave drug at home you'd be better served 3-d printing gear to brew herbal teas, 3d print little containers to hold dried leaves or whatever. Its not gonna work well, but it'll work better than getting arrested for running a "ecstasy drug lab" (because its not ecstasy, its more of a GHB-alike) but the cops and the morons call anything used at a rave, "ecstasy", so ...)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 22 2018, @05:44PM
So far I've come to realize, that while 3D Printers have their place. They are far from being simple, cheap, or better quality than just buying something off the shelf. A 3D Printer for over the counter drugs or what not in your living room would need Tons of Quality Control. Sure there could be uses for it, but it could be really dangerous as well. This could be useful for a "hobbyist" Chemist, very dubious attachments for an average consumer. It seems to me that we should be able to tell the computer to make me a lasagna and get it, before we get to computer give me an aspirin.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @07:26PM
"But it remains to be seen whether drug regulators will go along with a new way of making medicines. To do so, agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will need to rewrite their rules for validating the safety of medicines. Instead of signing off on the production facility and manufactured drug samples, regulators would have to validate that reactionware produces the desired medication."
1) print poison for regulators.
2) be free.