start	end	text
27330	31290	Greetings fellow hackers, biohackers, and
31290	37690	friends of Four Thieves Vinegar. This is Michael Laufer, recording for you from a
37690	41770	secure undisclosed location. And don't worry, we'll actually have a live Q&A
41770	45870	after this session, so I will be available and excited to chat with all
45870	51770	of you. I am chief spokesperson for the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, and I do
51770	56810	want to emphasize the fact that we are a collective. Oftentimes it gets forgotten
56810	65050	because the many people who do the work for this are in the shadows. They have to,
65050	69590	for understandable reasons, keep themselves safe and can't be known to
69590	76230	the public. But there are so many people who work on the Four Thieves projects, and
76230	82070	there are so many teams who do so much amazing work. And I just want to emphasize
83050	88130	that it really does take a village, and when you're going for a project like
88130	93850	this it takes a lot of people with a lot of expertise. And I just want to
93850	96910	recognize how amazing all of these people that I'm lucky enough to get to
96910	103070	work with are. And maybe some of you out there will be inspired to come and help
103070	110770	us, because you can always use more people with great talents. So I want to
110770	115610	go through and talk about some of the things that we have coming up. I can't
115610	119210	talk about all of them, of course. We have about 11 different projects on the
119210	123030	boards, but I'd like to talk about three or four of them, and specifically how
123030	130270	they connect and relate to our main mission. Our main mission being that we
130830	136590	look to develop ways that people can get access to medicines and medical
136590	141590	technologies without having to interface with the medical infrastructure, do-it-
141590	148850	yourself methodologies, which of course rings with the hacker spirit. First thing
148850	155810	I want to chat about is drug delivery methodologies. Now we often sort of
155810	160630	forget about this, that somebody says they're taking a drug, or that some
160630	164410	medication was administered to them. But the way that drug is administered we
164410	169930	sometimes forget. Usually we think about taking pills, but there are so many other
169930	174790	ways that a drug can make its way into your body. Oftentimes you'll get an
174790	179270	injection, of course. There are different types of injections. We've seen, of
179270	182350	course, that there are also different types of pills. There are tablets, and
182350	186870	there are capsules, and there are time-release versions, and instantaneous-release
186870	192950	versions. Additionally, you see things that are more advanced nowadays. You see
192950	196250	things like transdermal patches, of course. Everybody's familiar with nicotine
196250	200230	patches, but you see that also with nitroglycerin, other medications that
200230	204050	make their way through. Even fentanyl is delivered in a patch for people who have
204050	210350	chronic pain. Inhalers, of course. And so looking at some of these images here, I
211290	216190	wanted to just take a moment to remember this really fun workshop that we did
216190	221410	last year at DEF CON here in Biohack Village, where we were talking about
221410	226070	hacking different drug delivery methodologies. And that you see that
226070	230550	that's actually, of course, not an inhaler. That's a vape pen. But you can hijack a
230550	234590	vape pen to work as an inhaler. And there are certain things that make their way
234590	238250	into your body more efficiently through the lungs than they do through other
238370	243110	means. Transdermal patches, when you buy them off the shelf, of course, are
243110	248170	made with these specialized gelatins. But you can make them yourself using gauze
248170	254910	pads and DMSO and some saran wrap and some medical tape. These things are all
254910	259890	hackable. But these aren't the ones I wanted to talk about. There's a different
259890	266670	one that is very exciting. So take a moment and see if this looks familiar to
266670	275570	you at all in any regard. What you're looking at here is a cylindrical piece of
275570	282530	flexible plastic. And what it is, it is a piece of plastic, which is
282530	288370	biocompatible. And it's doped with the active pharmaceutical ingredient, which
288370	293290	needs to be put into a person's body. Now, I'm sure some of you have heard of
293290	298690	this before. In the 90s, the first generation of this was called Norplant.
298690	304490	And it was a birth control drug. It's placed in the upper arm and you can see
305070	314510	the more modern version that's called Nexoplanon. And it's being inserted with
314730	319750	a hollow needle here in the upper arm of someone you can see in the upper right
319750	324970	hand corner. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with this, or just
324970	330170	seeing it for the first time, and those of you who've seen it before, take a
330170	336670	moment to just look and see if this reminds you of anything. And let that
336670	341070	percolate in your brain while we move on. Now, the question is, of course, how is
341070	348490	this made? And how do you use it? Now, the uses are incredibly widespread. Now,
348490	354290	it's been already used for birth control. And it's currently being tested. I
354290	357970	believe it's in phase 2A trials for pre-exposure prophylaxis, which is really
357970	362290	huge. You think about something that could be put under your skin, that could
362290	369110	protect you from HIV infection for a decade. That's extraordinarily powerful.
369110	375570	And this really applies to anything that is something that anybody has to take
375570	383830	regularly, and where adherence is a big problem. Sovaldi is arguably the most
383830	388970	incredible thing that's ever been put out by the pharmaceutical industry. It
388970	395090	literally cures hepatitis C in 12 weeks. The problem is, is that if you do not
395090	401810	take that pill every day, in the same way, at the same time, and you fall off
402530	408090	adherence, it doesn't take and then you have to start over. And that's an $82,000
408090	414850	treatment. It shouldn't be and needn't be for reasons that you all know. But of
414850	420450	course, it's tragic when you get it together to get treatment to somebody and
420450	428510	it doesn't happen because somebody just forgot a dose one day. If this could
428510	431630	instead be put into an implant, and somebody could get it put under their
431630	437590	skin and 12 weeks later gets taken out and their hepatitis C free, that would
437590	443550	solve that particular problem, then you'd get 100% adherence instead of only
443550	450790	40%. Again, looking at all manner of things, if you think for a moment about
451550	459290	whether you or anybody who know, has any medication that they take every day, why
459950	465650	take the time and the attention to take it every day when you could merely have
465650	469510	something put under your skin and it would just sit there and you wouldn't
469510	476350	have to worry about that autoimmune issues. Hormone replacement therapy is
476350	482390	one that I'm very excited about. I know so many trans people who are so worried
482390	490770	about having their pipeline interrupted. And if we could instead place hormones
490770	494850	in an implant, which we know is possible because it was done with birth control
494850	500130	and say, hey, you don't have to worry about taking your shots or interface with
500130	505870	the medical infrastructure for five, maybe 10 years at a time. I think that
505870	511850	would solve a lot of really amazing problems. The naloxone pro drug that we
511850	514890	were looking at a couple of years ago would be really great to be able to put
514890	521230	into this. This would essentially be an overdose safeguard antidote that you
521230	525550	could put under somebody's skin and they wouldn't overdose. I mean, amazing.
525550	533150	Even things as basic as vitamins. Most people are vitamin B deficient. And you
533150	537170	could just have a vitamin B complex implant that would continue to dose your
537170	545730	body with vitamin B around the clock for years. And again, anything where people
545730	552610	have to take something every day. If you know anybody over the age of 60 in the
552610	556050	United States, they have several medications typically that they take
556050	564330	every day. And again, as years go on and days blur together, it can be harder and
564330	569650	harder to remember to take something at the same time every day. And that takes
569650	573950	care of that particular problem. So it's a very exciting technology in general.
573950	579650	Of course, the question is, you know, how do we hijack it? How is it made? So the
579650	586210	plastic has to actually be extruded. And so you have this big industrial machine
586790	591170	that's full of the active pharmaceutical ingredient as well as the plastic and
591170	600430	then it's pushed down through this screw and then heated along the way. And it's
600430	605670	pressed out a dye. Here's a diagram that sort of shows that and you can see the
605670	611030	spot there where everything's put into the feeder and that's the pharmaceutical
611030	617350	ingredient along with the plastic. The plastic is usually PLA or PLA and
617350	624210	another plastic. Again, some of you will start to see where this is heading. And
624210	629570	it gets pressed out a dye at the end and then you get these little pieces of
629570	635230	filament which are then broken off. And the question is, well, how do we do that?
635230	643970	Well, this is the same as the 3D printing filament that is made by
643970	649690	hobbyists all over the world. People who are enthusiasts of 3D printing, of
649690	654490	course, take their old failed prints, shred them up, and re-extrude them. And
654490	659070	if you can look at the image on the right, you can, of course, get ones that
659070	664350	are manufactured in such a way that they're kind of a commercial. There are
664350	667830	the kits like the filler extruder in the upper right and there are ones that are
667830	675030	home-built like on the lower right. And this is basically all it takes. Concerns,
675030	678490	of course, of trying to make sure the densities are homogenous and you don't
678490	680930	get the active pharmaceutical ingredients separating away from the
680930	685450	plastic is simple to fix at a small scale. You merely extrude the plastic,
685450	691410	shred it again, and then re-extrude. And eventually you can have something where
691410	696990	you merely load it into the same sort of thing that you use to plant an RFID
696990	705730	implant into your hand and be able to put these in however you need them. Now,
705730	712230	of course, the natural question that comes up is, well, then what do you do
712230	716470	about getting the active pharmaceutical ingredient? And, of course, there are ways
716470	721590	to source those in some cases. But one of the big things that we've been focusing
721590	727890	on for a very long time is how do you manufacture your own drugs? And so I'm
727890	733010	very excited to present to all of you the new Apothecary Microlab. And this is
733370	740170	a picture of me holding the 3D printed case that has the brains of the machine
740170	745690	in it. And you can see at the top there, there's the embossed logo and there's
745690	757270	the touchscreen interface. And inside you have a Raspberry Pi and a shield that
757270	761570	sits on top of that with relays. And it is connected then also to an Arduino
761570	771630	which has a CNC shield on top of it. And I'll show you a little diagram for each
771630	776070	of those sub-assemblies. Here's the Raspberry Pi and the relay board and
776070	782790	then the touchscreen interface. And then this is a separate part, the CNC
782790	792070	shield that sits on top of the Arduino. Arduino sends over G-code then sends
792070	798510	information. So I put this together because the part of this graphic was
798510	802850	actually put together by some yellow journalists who were trying to shame us
802850	808130	when I was quoted as saying, shouldn't be any harder than putting together IKEA
808130	813930	furniture to build the micro lab. And at this point, it really isn't. And the
813930	818590	hardware team has done a just spectacular job of coming together with
819570	824290	finding parts that are literally off the shelf. No manufacturing required and no
824290	828670	soldering required. These literally snap together, which is so cool. It really
828670	832430	means that anybody could build it. And here's a little diagram of how
832430	838110	everything's connected. Those are stepper motors that drive the syringe pumps. And
838110	843670	also that drive the stirring motor. And there's a sensor with the heat
843670	851770	thermocouple and all bits and pieces. What you're looking at here is a video
851770	861130	in real time of the head of the hardware team actually assembling the entire
861130	865710	micro lab. And in addition to the fact that this is happening real time, what
865710	873650	you see on the table here as he's working is everything that is required.
873890	877490	And including the tools, I guess it's just slightly out of frame, but his
877490	884030	three tools are a hex key, a small screwdriver, and a pair of scissors. And
884030	890230	using nothing else, it takes him about 25 minutes to assemble this. So it
890230	895610	probably won't finish quite by the time I'm done. But hopefully if the editing
895610	900070	goes well, what will occur here is that as I go to the next slide, this video
900070	905990	will go into a corner and you'll be able to see it continue in real time as I
905990	912210	continue to talk about some of the other stuff that we've been working on. So you
912210	916170	see these 3D printed parts that he's bolting onto the stepper motors. Those
916170	921150	are the syringe pumps. The electronics that he snapped together just a moment
921150	927250	ago was the control module that I talked about. And the circular piece
927250	932270	that's 3D printed on the lower right of the screen that you see is the core for
932270	936950	the actual reaction chamber. And then you see some miscellaneous parts along the
936950	943230	left side of the screen tubing, the fish pumps that circulate the water, along
943230	951610	with the bars and the threaded rod that allows the syringe pumps to work. So
951610	957330	hopefully this will now move into the corner and you'll be able to continue to
957330	965670	watch it while I talk about the other developments. Now, of course, the big
965670	972570	question always is the chemistry. And this is where our chemistry team has
972570	979490	done such great work in the past of trying to find ways to synthesize, to
979490	983430	actually manufacture the active pharmaceutical ingredients from things
983430	994510	that were easily available, cheap, having high margins for error, having no
994510	1000590	specialized materials needed or specialized techniques used. This was
1001510	1007930	fairly tricky. And some of you, I'm sure, remember that in the early days, we had
1008090	1012070	a deal with a company called Comatica that had developed some very
1012070	1016770	sophisticated machine learning algorithms that would crawl through the
1017610	1024250	databases of chemistry and give good guesses as to what might or might not
1024250	1028950	work in terms of trying to do retrosynthesis on chemistry. Now, they,
1028950	1035790	of course, were bought by Merck and that process is now proprietary, used
1035790	1040070	internally, they don't farm it out, they don't share it. And one thing that we
1040910	1047330	had this idea to do was to say, gosh, you know, we have a data science team,
1047330	1051070	and they looked at some things and they said, you know, we could probably do the
1051070	1055110	same thing, it wouldn't be that hard. And if you look on the right, this is the
1055110	1059390	the NIST database that we had used with only 1000 reactions. And of course, it
1059390	1065290	had the same structure. But Reaxis, the one that Comatica used, which is premium
1065290	1070350	and paid for, of course, has 6 million reactions. Well, some of you remember
1070350	1076610	the narrative and one thing and another, we got our hands on that data. And we're
1076610	1084050	able to actually run an analog of that software. Now, the problem is, is you
1084050	1090150	need a supercomputer for this. A very congenial fellow was working with me, and
1090150	1095230	he tried to put together a Raspberry Pi cluster. And then when he looked at the
1095230	1099470	software, the data science team had passed along, he said, Oh, this isn't
1099470	1103950	going to work. And I asked why. And he said, Well, this is not something that
1103950	1107690	lends itself to parallel computing, you need a traditional supercomputer, you
1107690	1114310	need something with a tremendous amount of RAM, and you need a lot of cores
1114310	1119050	running. And so when you need a supercomputer, the regular thing that
1119050	1124750	most people will suggest is using Google Cloud. And I have some opinions on that.
1124750	1129590	And then other people will suggest using Amazon Web Services. And I have feelings
1129590	1134290	about that too, which I'm sure most of you share. And so the question is, if you
1134290	1138850	need a supercomputer, and you don't want to play ball and pay for it, what do you
1138850	1148470	do? Well, we figured out a solution to this. And we got very lucky. This is the
1148470	1156130	Glitter supercomputer. And it's an HP ProLiant DL580. It's a 4U rack mount
1156130	1166590	unit. And it's extremely powerful. If you look at the specs, this is a 40 core
1167290	1176550	unit with half a terabyte of RAM. It's optimized in a lot of ways, it draws a
1176550	1184370	tremendous amount of power. But we were very lucky that we managed to find one
1184370	1193290	used for $300. Usually these go for upwards of $6,000. I mean, I think that's
1193290	1197850	what the baseline unit costs. And I think it's more like, you know, double that for
1197850	1201810	something with the specs that we have. But we just got very lucky that we found a
1201810	1206190	used one that some company just wasn't using and managed to get our hands on it.
1206190	1213890	In addition to running the software, we're hoping that this can actually
1213890	1220570	become an open source supercomputer that everybody in the hacker community can
1220570	1224310	use. So if somebody has something that they want to run, and they need a
1224310	1229630	supercomputer for it, that they can just use some time on the supercomputer. So
1229630	1237690	I'm gonna try and pull it up here. This is sort of what it'll look like. These
1237690	1242630	are sort of mockups, but just so you can get sort of a sense of what things
1242630	1249270	should look like when the machine is booting and running. Just wanted to give
1249270	1254390	you guys a sense. And of course, you know, you want things to look pretty while
1254390	1259230	they're starting. So if you'll bear with me here. Alright, so this is sort of what
1259230	1265930	the should look like when you start things up. And when it says the smile
1265930	1273510	string smiles is a it's a protocol for being able to use essentially ASCII to
1273510	1278910	input the structure of molecule. And you'll see this looks a little goofy.
1279170	1283650	But at the same time, you can see it's sort of suggested of of the structure of
1283650	1289970	molecule that, of course, is a double bonded O. And here you have, again,
1290590	1295670	another group that's specified and where it is. And this is all standardized in
1295670	1301370	databases. So it's it's good, and it's easy to use. And if this is all work,
1301370	1309730	then this should be go there. And you'll see the computer come up here now with
1309730	1317410	recommendations. And along the right column, you'll see how likely it is that
1317410	1324890	this is actually going to be plausible. And point 999, of course, is is really
1324890	1328250	good. When you see the one that means they are actually found it in the
1328250	1332130	literature. 994 may seem like it's pretty good. But again, this is fairly
1332130	1335950	iffy. The thing that's important to remember when looking at this sort of
1335950	1341770	thing is that the really great strength of machine learning and AI is not to
1341770	1347390	replace human intuition, but to augment it. So this is something that could
1347390	1355810	change things so that instead of needing, say, oh, months to years with a
1355810	1362670	team of really gifted chemists, you could have this with a good chemist, and
1362670	1367190	just one of them and be able to do it in a few days. When you see these things
1367190	1372930	that say cannot buy, that's part of one of the kinks we're working out is, you
1372930	1376370	know, trying to show what's available commercially. And if something isn't
1376370	1379450	available commercially, you'll notice that each of these are, of course,
1379450	1383630	hyperlinks. And what you can do is you can actually click on them and then do
1383630	1388410	the retrosynthesis on one of those and work your way back to see, do you have
1388410	1392590	to make the thing that you need to make the next thing? And again, what is
1392590	1400790	purity and yield look like and how you work forward from there? So to sort of
1400790	1408790	sum up as we're going, you look for treating yourself. When you look for
1408790	1417630	taking control of your own health, the thing to do, of course, is at the end is
1417630	1421510	you need to package your treatment, right? You need that delivery mechanism,
1421510	1424710	whether it's something that you load into a syringe or something that you
1424710	1430250	pack into a tablet, or something to load into an inhaler, you need to package it.
1430250	1435390	But of course, before that, you need to manufacture it, you need to generate that
1435390	1442190	active pharmaceutical ingredient, somehow. And again, the packaging, we
1442190	1448730	have these ideas for specifically, we're trying to develop these, these implants,
1448730	1452970	which is really exciting. The manufacturer, we're hoping to make happen
1452970	1457870	with the new version of the micro lab. And of course, developing a process for
1457870	1462890	manufacture, we're hoping to do with the glitter computer and chemhactica, the new
1462890	1468390	system for trying to do retrosynthesis. But there's one extra piece, which of
1468390	1473250	course, before all of that, having all these things at your fingertips means
1473250	1482190	almost nothing. If you don't know what it is you actually need to manufacture.
1482710	1488430	This is sort of the antecedent problem that comes before everything. And the
1488430	1493270	question comes, of course, how do you determine what it is you need? We all
1493270	1500210	have health issues, but going from I understand what's wrong, or I understand
1500210	1505990	what is not right, I recognize my symptoms, to understanding what is ailing
1505990	1512310	you and what would ameliorate that is quite a jump. So I'm very excited to
1512310	1516410	announce this that we're working on. This is the anarchist medical book, and
1516410	1522130	we're trying to develop a compendium that will be a reference that people can
1522130	1531410	use when they are not well, and yet do not wish to interface with the medical
1531410	1535750	infrastructure. We're really excited. We have a bunch of things that are going
1535750	1541930	into this book. And of course, to all of you out there, if you have things that
1541930	1546890	you think should be included about this, if you know some cool trick, or some
1546890	1552930	secret, some treatment that is not popular, that very few people know about,
1552930	1557130	that other people could benefit from, please, please, please get in touch and
1557130	1561290	let us know about it so that we can include it. We're trying to make this the
1561290	1566230	best book we can, and try to include as much as we can gather. And so all the
1566230	1570630	secret little folk wisdom of all the wonderful hacker anarchist communities
1570630	1575190	out there, we'd really love to pack it in. So please send us anything you can. We'd
1575190	1582390	love to see all of it. This is about where I end. And I always end with this
1582390	1588690	slide. Because it's a, it's an important reminder that that helps not on the way
1589510	1599790	that we really need to work to help each other, keep each other safe. And there's
1599790	1607170	nobody but us. So let's take care of each other. Thank you all so much. It's
1607170	1611930	been wonderful being with you. And after this video closes out, we'll have a
1611930	1621520	little q&a. And I look forward to talking with all of you. Thanks so much.
1621920	1632280	Rest in peace. Here's another warrior song. Here's a toast to the dead for
1632280	1636260	children with cancer and AIDS. A cure exists and you probably could have been
1636260	1641060	saved. Sad to see medicine divorce morality. Corporate homewreckers pipping
1641060	1642200	up the salary.