Post by Origanalist on May 17, 2016 3:57:39 GMT -8
Instead of adapting laws and regulations to the evolving possibilities of the world in which they live, regulators, could try to head off that evolution instead
J.D. Tuccille | May 17, 2016
"You could print your own medicine. And this is what we're doing in the lab at the moment," chemist Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow announced in a 2012 TED talk. The glimpse into yet another mindboggling use of 3D printing seemed like science-fiction—enhanced by his closing prediction of a future in which "you're going to have your own personal matter fabricator. Beam me up, Scotty."
But Cronin is a serious scientist actively working on making his predictions come to life. So commentators immediately started weighing in on the uses and (alleged) abuses of this distantly looming technology.
"[T]he orphan drug problem may well become a bad memory," I wrote, referring to the potential for printing small, personalized batches of medicine for sufferers of uncommon ailments. That would be a big deal for the treatment of diseases so rare that the development of treatments is currently an act of charity.
On the other hand, "Today's primitive psychedelics and artificial mood-boosters may be just the beginning," fretted The Week's Chris Gayomali, referring to the ability to craft recreational drugs on demand at the point of use.
But it was all so very speculative... So far off in the future.
Except, it wasn't. And now the concern is that regulators might find the challenges of 3D medicine so daunting that they try to choke it off—and, ironically, leave illegal use as the only implementation.
The first commercially 3D-printed drug, the epilepsy medication SPRITAM, went on sale in March of this year. SPRITAM doesn't fulfill Cronin's promise of custom medications printed by patients—3D production in this case is used to create a rapidly disintegrating, easily swallowed pill—but it's a demonstration of the medical use of the technology earlier than most people expected to see anything of the sort.
And even as SPRITAM prepared to go to market, "investigators from Wake Forest University, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina created a prototype computer algorithm featuring software for 3D printing of personalized medications" and successfully used it to print varying doses of pills. The software isn't yet ready to make an appearance at pharmacies, much less in people's homes, but it works now. That brings the goal of personalized medicine much closer to fruition, just a few years after Cronin invoked Star Trek. This "could very well change how we treat serious and common medical conditions, from epilepsy to chronic pain, on a patient-specific basis, making medications customizable and therefore cheaper, more accurate, and more effective than ever before," predicted 3Ders.org.
But the same article noted that the technology could be "used to manufacture and mask illegal drugs."
continued at... reason.com/archives/2016/05/17/print-your-own-drugs-for-health-and-fun#comment
J.D. Tuccille | May 17, 2016
"You could print your own medicine. And this is what we're doing in the lab at the moment," chemist Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow announced in a 2012 TED talk. The glimpse into yet another mindboggling use of 3D printing seemed like science-fiction—enhanced by his closing prediction of a future in which "you're going to have your own personal matter fabricator. Beam me up, Scotty."
But Cronin is a serious scientist actively working on making his predictions come to life. So commentators immediately started weighing in on the uses and (alleged) abuses of this distantly looming technology.
"[T]he orphan drug problem may well become a bad memory," I wrote, referring to the potential for printing small, personalized batches of medicine for sufferers of uncommon ailments. That would be a big deal for the treatment of diseases so rare that the development of treatments is currently an act of charity.
On the other hand, "Today's primitive psychedelics and artificial mood-boosters may be just the beginning," fretted The Week's Chris Gayomali, referring to the ability to craft recreational drugs on demand at the point of use.
But it was all so very speculative... So far off in the future.
Except, it wasn't. And now the concern is that regulators might find the challenges of 3D medicine so daunting that they try to choke it off—and, ironically, leave illegal use as the only implementation.
The first commercially 3D-printed drug, the epilepsy medication SPRITAM, went on sale in March of this year. SPRITAM doesn't fulfill Cronin's promise of custom medications printed by patients—3D production in this case is used to create a rapidly disintegrating, easily swallowed pill—but it's a demonstration of the medical use of the technology earlier than most people expected to see anything of the sort.
And even as SPRITAM prepared to go to market, "investigators from Wake Forest University, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina created a prototype computer algorithm featuring software for 3D printing of personalized medications" and successfully used it to print varying doses of pills. The software isn't yet ready to make an appearance at pharmacies, much less in people's homes, but it works now. That brings the goal of personalized medicine much closer to fruition, just a few years after Cronin invoked Star Trek. This "could very well change how we treat serious and common medical conditions, from epilepsy to chronic pain, on a patient-specific basis, making medications customizable and therefore cheaper, more accurate, and more effective than ever before," predicted 3Ders.org.
But the same article noted that the technology could be "used to manufacture and mask illegal drugs."
continued at... reason.com/archives/2016/05/17/print-your-own-drugs-for-health-and-fun#comment