‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine

Mixæl Swan Laufer is the chief spokesperson of Four Thieves Vinegar Collective , an anarchist collective that teaches people how to make DIY versions of expensive pharmaceuticals at a tiny fraction of the cost.

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.

Four Thieves is helping people to make their own pirated versions of proven and tested pharmaceuticals by taking the precursor ingredients and performing the chemical reactions to make the medication themselves.

Unlike other medical freedom organizations, Four Thieves isn’t suggesting people treat COVID with Ivermectin .

The heart of what Four Thieves has built is a forked version of an MIT - DARPA project called Chemhacktica .

The Microlab is designed to load a recipe for a chemical reaction, then automate the temperature control, reagent addition, and stirring that are needed.

The Apothecarium is a drag-and-drop recipe system that Laufer explains as “how you generate a file that the Microlab will run,” and which gives step-by-step instructions on how to make specific medications.

Laufer : "I know what it feels like to not know what's wrong with your body and to have to go shop for a stranger who has to maybe or maybe not give you what you need".