Last Born In The Wilderness

In this episode, I speak with Michael Laufer — Chief Spokesperson for the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, a network of individuals that seek to make commonly inaccessible medicines affordable and accessible to public by providing the means to produce pharmaceutical medicines outside of the dominant medical establishment. We tackle the ethics behind the project, the anti-capitalist/anarchist structure of the network, and the various technologies the Collective has been able to make affordable and accessible to the broader public, in order to adequately participate in pharmaceutical drug production in a more direct DIY fashion. In this discussion with Michael, we get at the various ways the for-profit healthcare system in the United States makes commonly needed medicines practically impossible to access for a wide swath of the population. "The main reasons for people being disenfranchised from medicines are: price, legality, and lack of infrastructure. Medicines like Solvadi which costs $80,000 for a course o