Friday, July 22, 2016: 11:00 am (Friedman): Why are people still being left to die from treatable diseases when they can’t afford the arbitrarily inflated prices of patent-protected medications? As hackers, we believe that when the infrastructure fails, we must have a way to fall back to DIY methods. Medicine should not be an exception to this. Pharmaceuticals are just chemicals, chemicals are made using chemistry, and chemistry can be automated. Come learn how anyone can make patent-protected medications at home using a new open-source automated chemical reaction chamber made from off-the-shelf parts. One no longer has to have a science background to do chemistry. We can save our own lives. Speakers will detail how the mechanism can be built, how it is programmed, and distribute the plans and programs live at the talk. The programs for drug synthesis and the design of the mechanism can be shared over any digital channel - and can be improved and modified by any end user. A highly controversial drug will be synthesized live on stage during the talk.

Michael Swan Laufer