Let’s get the obvious out of the way first — in his DEFCON 32 presentation, [Dr. Mixæl Laufer] shared quite a bit of information on how individuals can make and distribute various controlled substances. This cuts out pharmaceutical makers, who have a history of price-gouging and discontinuing recipes that hurt their bottom line. We predict that the comment section will be incendiary, so if your best argument is, “People are going to make bad drugs, so no one should get to have this,” please disconnect your keyboard now. You would not like the responses anyway.
Let’s talk about the device instead of policy because this is an article about an incredible machine that a team of hackers made on their own time and dime. The reactor is a motorized mixing vessel made from a couple of nested Mason jars, surrounded by a water layer fed by hot and cold reservoirs and cycled with water pumps. Your ingredients come from three syringes and three stepper-motor pumps for accurate control. The brains reside inside a printable case with a touchscreen for programming, interaction, and alerts.
It costs around $300 USD to build a MicroLab, and to keep it as accessible as possible, it can be assembled without soldering. Most of the cost goes to a Raspberry Pi and three peristaltic pumps, but if you shop around for the rest of the parts, you can deflate that price tag significantly. The steps are logical, broken up like book chapters, and have many clear pictures and diagrams. If you want to get fancy, there is room to improvise and personalize. We saw many opportunities where someone could swap out components, like power supplies, for something they had lying in a bin or forego the 3D printing for laser-cut boards. The printed pump holders spell “HACK” when you disassemble them, but we would have gone with extruded aluminum to save on filament.
Several times [Mixæl] brings up the point that you do not have to be a chemist to operate this any more than you have to be a mechanic to drive a car. Some of us learned about SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System) from this video, and with that elementary level of chemistry, we feel confident that we could follow a recipe, but maybe for something simple first. We would love to see a starter recipe that combines three sodas at precise ratios to form a color that matches a color swatch, so we know the machine is working correctly; a “calibration cocktail,” if you will.
If you want something else to tickle your chemistry itch, check out our Big Chemistry series or learn how big labs do automated chemistry.
Pretty cool, chemistry hacks are often not as visible as other kinds. And he is right that chemistry does seem less accessible.
Keep the politics away though. I don’t care about the pricing, policy, legality, whatever. I don’t think he should have been calling people.
Neat! We made aspirin at A-level, wasn’t particularly hard.
I’ve not watched the video but it’d be interesting to know what steps they’ve taken around verifying what it produces – that was a key step of our aspirin production.
Obviously need to check the reaction has gone as planned (wrong temperature can often produce a different result), that there’s no contamination or precursors left, etc.
We did a simple check on our aspirin with a titration of some kind if I remember; previous groups had managed to get their produce tested professionally for purity, and accurately dosed.
Also if the idea is that a “non-mechanic” can use it, seems like it’d benefit from some checks that the input chemicals are the correct ones in the correct hoppers…
It’s not really an issue for the production of illegal drugs – people who want to cook meth can find out how – the big issue is ensuring that it’s correctly producing what you thought. Given how bad most non-techies are at recognising when their inkjets aren’t printing correctly, I think it might need some heavy failsafes!
You missed out – we made alcohol at A-level and tested it by drinkng it! I don’t suppose they do that these days.
We also played with mercury balls in our hands, I don’t suppose they do that these days either!
In high school we let the kids distill wine (fortified with some denatured alcohol) in groups of a couple of students, each with a proper lab distillation setup with thermometer etc.
After the distillation, they have to clean up their work bench, pour the distillate on their bench, and light it.
If it is flammable, they did a good job. Some don’t understand when to stop distilling, and then they get something too dilute to be flammable. If their friends’ distillate is flammable and their own is not, they quickly learn why it is so important to follow the instructions.
It should be obvious that the kids love it. Moonshine and fire! Obviously they don’t get to drink it. Not that they want to – the residue (cheap shitty gluhwein, just now without alcohol) is re-used time and time again for each class that year, with some fresh denatured alcohol added each time. It does not smell particularly attractive.
Mercury is definitely a no go area. Just recently somewhere in my country a teacher showed mercury, and dropped it. Beads were everywhere and kids tracked them throughout a large part of the building because of insufficient cleanup – which now turned into a very expensive professional full inspection and cleanup by a hazmat company. It already wasn’t used at my school, but this made the folks in charge even more certain to never fool around with mercury in class.
The main problem I see with this is that so few syntheses are one-pot..
“People are going to make bad drugs, so no one should get to have this. … You would not like the response”.
Okay, but if you are going to make a bold statement, you really should back it up, so…
“People will do bad things, so this should not be allowed” is said about so many things today and really though-out history, from guns to speech, radio, computers., etc. maybe we should just stop telling people what they can and can’t do or say.
Long as they can keep the consequences to just themselves, no problem. Guess what happens when that’s no longer true. We get things like tragedy of the commons, among other things. Sorry one has to think of others but there’s no other way to building an effective society.
“maybe we should just stop telling people what they can and can’t do or say.”
Where’s the fun in that?
B^)
Note that the four thieves vinegar collective was banned from Youtube quite a while back. This vid is a Defcon vid.
The 4TVC videos are hosted over on peertube: https://kolektiva.media/c/4thievesvinegarcollective/videos
Just checked. In the Netherlands Daraprim (25mg) is $4 for 30 pills.
What the hell are you guys doing in the US?
A bit more than that, €12,40, but the point is valid. The US pharma market is terminally ill.
https://www.medicijnkosten.nl/medicijn?artikel=DARAPRIM+TABLET+25MG&id=e5a47d7d32d1fcaef62a693bb8287efd
You’re right. The price I mentioned was in Belgium. Doesn’t change the premise that Daraprim is a generic drug that’s practically free.
https://www.apotheekmaes.be/producten/daraprim-comp-30×25-mg
What are we doing? Propping up our retirement system with pharma profits?
Subsidizing your cheap drugs.
Nope. You subsidise your corporations and bilionaires tax breaks and profits.
“What the hell are you guys doing in the US?”
Paying for the fact that our government is corporate owned and one of the biggies providing the legal bribes called “campaign donations” is Big Pharma.
Dying
“What the hell are you guys doing in the US?”
My friend, volumes and volumes have been written about the mess that is our health care system. While we all have very different ideas on how to fix it, I think the vast majority of us recognize how broken it is.
The US has a patent exemption where and patent holder is paid a royalty and the state or federal government gets to use the patent. It’s used a lot in arms manufacturing, it avoids any delays caused by patent disputes.
If any state felt there was a problem with your system, they could start manufacturing a drug and pay the patent hold a token sum. With a life saving product that has a 10,000% mark-up on a $1 – $5 production cost, building a production line becomes trivial. States don’t do this because the system is working as intended.
28 USC 1428 Only grants the federal government, not the states, immunity from patent claims.
A token sum is not exactly accurate either as the law guarantees the patent holder fair reasonable and entire compensation, calculated by a neutral judge and paid proportionately to the government’s use.The compensation is typically a court-set royalty that approximates the fair market value of a license to the patent.
Neat project continuing great work from them. Also not to chicken little, warrant canary is 10 days out of date. Stay safe everyone
Thanks for the post, a most illuminating video; the microlab is a remarkable project, and the ChemHacktica tools are interesting to play with (created synth routes for some drugs I have historically been presecribed and got for “free” in the UK on the NHS).
The Hep-C drug featured is also NHS available. I wonder what they pay for it.
Anyway, the microlab setup is one I will try out – most of the bits and bobs are lying around here – if only to play with some thermochromism effects.
The use of contactor relay instead of solid state relay does not inspire trust. A 3d printer board could have been used repurposing the bed, hotend and fan mosfet to drive the heater and paddle. Also, peristaltic pump are not that precise. They give a pulse. A stepper with a leadscrew pushing on the syringe would have been much better. The idea is good but the overall setup does not inspire trust.
I love the machine, and it’s even better that it works.
But I find the announcer manipulative,and too much political to my taste.
So this mixes, heats, and cools inputs from three syringes, right?
What exactly does it do that I couldn’t do better, faster, and cheaper with whatever’s lying around my kitchen, assuming I could get the precursors?
Not that I’d try it with many, if any, drugs I planned to use… even though I suspect I am about ten thousand times more qualified to do it than the median member of their “target audience”. GMP is a thing for a reason.
Are these the same idiots who were out there a few years ago crowing about toy microscopes and 3D printed specula and squirting vinegar on your cervix as a substitute for histology?
While from a technical standpoint this is somewhat cool, this is practical nor safe. So you’ll end up with a solution that contains an API (active pharmaceutical ingredient), but also precursors, intermediates, byproducts, solvent(s) and impurities. That is a long way off from an actual dosage form (tablet, capsule, suppository, whatever) that would be practical or safe to use. Supplying it to someone else would be a felony in most jurisdictions.
Running a cyclograph isnt exactly rocket science.
Compounding is relatively trivial as well.
Synthesizing many things is a felony even for personal use.
Supplying most anything to anyone is a felony as well.
I have learnt a lot during my PharmD education, but running an cyclograph was not one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclograph
WTH does that have to do with pharmaceuticals?
I also learnt proper compounding is not as simple as you think it is, especially from a QA/GMP standpoint.
Wrong Cyclograph
https://youtu.be/fOOtUIppdJw?si=jjtryvsfxk6HAxzg
Its a cheap system for small batch chomaatographic separation.
For larger quantities youd probably want to use a CPC disk stack
https://www.gilson.com/pub/media/images/figure-2-cpc.JPG
As for your QA/GMP concerns, we will have to agree to disagree as ensuring homogeneous blending of carrier and active constituents is well understood and manageable with basic equipment in most circumstances.
I made a working prototype of a histology processing machine. Basically tissue samples are bathed in a sequence of chemicals, so it is just a matter of moving chemical liquids around. More generally moving chemicals around is a useful activity in a variety of use cases.
The chemicals were stored in plastic drink bottles. The bottles were connected to a central retort by silicone tubes. Fluid was moved between into the retort and the bottles by pressure differentials – applying vacuums and pressures to bottles and/or retort.
There are lots of ways to achieve the pressure differentials. I did it by switching air pressures from a small vacuum pump and a small pressure pump only on the bottle side. The switches and pumps were controlled by an arduino Mega.The volume of fluid could be limited by the depth of the suction tube in the bottle.
Why? Because there are no pumps touching the chemicals. All fluid movements are done by manipulating air. Air is much cleaner and much easier to switch and pump than chemical fluids. The air switches I used were dodgy – 3d-printed rigs with servos to press on silicone tubes. Proper pneumatic valves would have been much easier and better but also more expensive.
That’s cool. I used to rebuild Tissue-Tek processors. Big issue was pinholes developing in the teflon vacuum pump membranes. How’d you avoid that?
Also the turret-style tissue processors weren’t bad, although without the help of vacuum / pressure cycles they didn’t get quite as good penetration. Still in use in some research labs though.
For $12 a unit I took chemistry and organic chemistry at the local 2-year college. Lessons learned- making it is one thing, assay/QI/QC is another and separations is what, um, separates the grownups from the children.
I don’t think “controlled substances” is the right term. While this term does cover a few prescription medications (notably many ADHD meds), it doesn’t generally mean “Rx only” medications, nor those controlled by patent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_substance
Yeah, who needs the FDA or pharma industry. Tech bros know better! Everything we produce is well tested, reliable, and has no side effects, right?
Yep. Home-made pharmaceuticals are a terrible idea.
Unfortunately in some parts of the world we keep electing people who are even worse ideas.
I’m not saying we are there yet but reaching the tipping point where home-made pharmaceuticals are the lesser evil is not that hard to imagine.
Earth is round. Maga is dumb. Donnie Diaper is grabbing your bum.
TDS is a horrible diseae.
With this system can I make effective antibiotics or antivirals during the Zombie Apocalypse?
Or maybe cause it!
well, these things are really usefull to have in a space based colony. Or is there something like this on the ISS already?
Nothing about mixing three things together at a certain temperature require something this complicated.
You can buy jacketed glassware quite cheaply and you don’t need syringes and stepper motors to measure small volumes. You can just use a syringe with your hands lol.
This is something “kool” made by people who don’t know chemistry well enough to realize that this isn’t something that is complicated or needs automation.
This is the Juicero of chemistry.
Just a word of warning, there are many variables at play when creating desired drugs that cannot be always controlled for.
This is why being able to analyses your products is incredibly import.
Sometimes you’ll form a side product, perhaps even just a different isomer, that is toxic in small amounts despite doing nothing noticeably different.
This is an interesting project, and perhaps necessary for some people, but there will always be significant risk, especially if you’re not a chemist.
Inherently dangerous like igniting fireworks in your home or haphazardly mixing household chemicals.
Oh yeah- and lets not forget the criminal penalties. Super stupid. Forest Gump is more intelligent per se.