Rendered at 01:57:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
derefr 23 hours ago [-]
My partner has had idiopathic hypersomnia (sleeps 12 hours most days, as much as 18 hours some days) for a few years now, and so far nothing we’ve tried has worked without awful side effects (e.g. constant heart palpitations and panic attacks.)
I had been looking into orexin agonists (along with other things like H3 autoreceptor antagonists) back when they were just a concept. It’s good to see them finally reaching commercialization. Although they’re not approved by our own (Canadian) regulatory body quite yet.
Now that they’re approved in the US, though, I’m looking very much forward to seeing how these drugs perform in off-label-ish treatment of the various other sleep disorders that I’m sure clinicians will now begin throwing them at.
chasebank 23 hours ago [-]
Have they tried GHB? I know it's used in narcolepsy patients with great success. If you "microdose" it, it's also one of the best drugs on the planet. Slippery slope, though.
pprotas 20 hours ago [-]
Please don’t ever recommend this extremely addictive drug to strangers on the internet again
skissane 15 hours ago [-]
GHB’s sodium salt (sodium oxybate, Xyrem/etc) is a legal prescription drug in several countries, used for treating narcolepsy, alcoholism, and also as an anaesthetic.
I don’t see what’s the problem with someone taking any drug legally prescribed to them by their doctor. Lots of prescription drugs are potentially addictive, but that’s a risk to be weighed against the potential benefits.
Controlled medicinal use of sodium oxybate under the supervision of a medical professional differs greatly from microdosing/self-medicating cleaning agents turned into GHB by yourself or your local dealer
skissane 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, I agree that taking drugs manufactured by unregulated black market operators is dangerous and not to be recommended.
But "microdosing" per se isn't the issue.
I once stumbled upon a psychiatry case report about a man with a psychotic illness, who found out by experimentation that taking significantly less of his antipsychotics than prescribed, along with up-titration when he began to notice the prodromal signs of relapse, helped him avoid relapse while also avoiding most of the unpleasant side effects. He did this on his own, only later confided in his psychiatrist he was doing it. Some psychiatrists would have reacted rather negatively, but his (being somewhat influenced by R. D. Laing & friends) actually thought it was smart, and wrote it up.
sph 19 hours ago [-]
Calm down, we’re all adults here, or pretending to be.
pprotas 17 hours ago [-]
I am calm. GHB has wreaked havoc in The Netherlands, it is something tweakers consume. Recommending microdosing GHB in my eyes is like recommending microdosing heroin.
> GHB is difficult to dose. The difference between a dose with pleasant effects and the dose at which someone becomes overwhelmed by sleep and becomes unconscious is very small. People quickly take too much GHB. The combination with alcohol enhances the effects of GHB. This means that people can become unconscious even with a small dose of GHB.
euroderf 15 hours ago [-]
very OT: lately I'm seeing "wreaked" a lot but what about "wrought".
pprotas 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
derefr 10 hours ago [-]
To jump in with a nitpick, I would point out that a "microdose", by definition, would be far below "a dose with pleasant effects", and so wouldn't be too hard to dose at all†.
The reason GHB has a narrow tolerance window (which, note, is not exactly the same thing as a therapeutic index, as the upper bound here isn't where the drug becomes toxic; it's just where the drug stops being recreationally "fun" and becomes a potent sleep drug instead) is because you actually require a decently high amount of the drug to get the recreational effect; and then only a little more of it will put you to sleep. But a "microdose" would imply that you're not going anywhere near the dose that gives you the recreational effect in the first place.
The term "microdose" is usually employed in conversations like this to specifically mean "a dose of a normally-conceptualized-as-recreational drug, too small to experience recreational effects" — although it can technically also mean "a dose of a prescription medicine too small to see the regular clinical effect."
People talk about microdoses of e.g. LSD, MDMA, or ketamine, as potential treatments for various mood disorders. In none of these cases is there an expectation that you'd "feel" the drug. It's a microdose, not a dose.
(And a fun tangent, back on the clinical end of things: sometimes microdoses of drugs can have paradoxical or unique effects, due to the particular ligand having higher binding affinity for a postsynaptic autoreceptor than for regular presynaptic receptors, such that microdoses of the ligand will only agonize the autoreceptors, with no accompanying agonism of the regular receptors. Activating the autoreceptor without activating the regular receptors can potentially do all sorts of wacky things — you're essentially giving the receptor's coupled ion channel a "negative stimulus", which for most gated ion channels isn't something they're they know what to do with; it's an "undefined behavior" kind of state. But some of these "undefined behavior" states are very useful! Low-dose naltrexone [LDN] therapy, for example: it has none of the subjective anti-euphoric effects of regular naltrexone therapy; but nor does it have pro-euphoric effects. Instead, it has anti-inflammatory effects, specifically on the tissues of the brain itself [astrocytes + microglia] that express opioid autoreceptors. LDN therapy is thus being investigated as a treatment for ME/CFS.)
---
† Presuming that what you have is actually pure GHB. Microdosing GHB's cousin GBL would be a different story, since it is extremely potent, with its active dose (and tolerance window) being measured in micrograms. Don't try to microdose GBL, kids. Not even if you know what solvents dissolve GBL and what serial dilution is.
Gud 12 hours ago [-]
No, not everyone is an adult on HN.
sph 9 hours ago [-]
Yet we’re supposed to treat everybody like one, not put disclaimers on everything we say in case it’s a kid that got his hands on some GHB
I added the “pretending to be an adult” part because I knew someone was going to be a pedant about it.
xtiansimon 14 hours ago [-]
I appreciate the statement. And I appreciate the other reply about adults in the room. What needed to be said was said—Thank you both.
mlrtime 16 hours ago [-]
Everything is addictive to the right/wrong person. GHB is no more addictive than alcohol [IMO] , just much more dangerous at high doses. Although safer at low doses.
pprotas 15 hours ago [-]
Alcohol is extremely addictive so I don't understand the point you're trying to make. You shouldn't microdose alcohol either. Millions of people are addicted to alcohol and many more (ab)use it in the form of a bad habit.
ta20240528 17 hours ago [-]
Given that some will freak out about GHB, is there any information on whether beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) would help?
BHB is quite similar to GHB, but is a naturally produced ketone.
It sounds like is a genuine treatment for those who suffer from narcolepsy, and everything else is merely speculative and has seem pretty bad side-effects.
bitexploder 23 hours ago [-]
There is evidence that some forms of ADHD are effectively just the brain falling asleep rapidly and then waking up. This form cam be attenuated with norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor alone. Presents with ADHD like symptoms. But it’s a new thing most likely. Called “Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome”.
ykonstant 21 hours ago [-]
For the record, since I am on a mix of concerta and effexor, effexor alone does nothing to alleviate my symptoms (at the 150mg dosage). Although for me the adhd medication is no problem. It is actually effexor that torments me, because I have extreme withdrawal symptoms if I go even one day without it.
poulpy123 18 hours ago [-]
Effector is for dépression not ADHD. Do you get brain zap when you miss a dose ? Other medications don't have this problem, at least for many of not most people
ykonstant 9 hours ago [-]
Right, the reason I am mentioning effexor is because venlafaxine is one of the basic SNRIs, relevant to the parent comment.
infinite_spin 21 hours ago [-]
it's possible your doctor is treating you for depression as well as ADHD
nextaccountic 20 hours ago [-]
Or maybe venlafaxine is to counteract any anxiety that the upper may cause. Well that's the theory my doctor had anyway. (I took venlafaxine with ADHD meds because of this)
__alias 17 hours ago [-]
Wow. First i've heard of this but the description sound so relatable. Very interesting, and makes total sense to differentiate from ADHD
fennec-posix 1 days ago [-]
If this means I don't have to take Methylphenidate to function 100% all the time and as a result feel tremendously anxious 100% all the time. SIGN ME UP.
didgeoridoo 23 hours ago [-]
Adding guanfacine (Intuniv) to my methylphenidate took the weird anxious-angry edge off. Would be nice to not have to take one med to fix the side effects of the other, though.
fennec-posix 23 hours ago [-]
Interesting, will check it out. Cheers!
genghisjahn 23 hours ago [-]
My son takes the methylphenidate / guanfacine combo as well and it’s been a game changer.
hirvi74 23 hours ago [-]
Any other benefits?
didgeoridoo 14 hours ago [-]
It’s also a blood pressure med, so I went from borderline prehypertensive to perfect 105/70. You can’t go on and off it at will though, since you’ll get rebound high BP if you don’t taper.
mial 20 hours ago [-]
FWIW, I was on MP for years and never really liked it. Tried all possible dosages and delivery methods. I switched to lisdexamfetamine a couple of years ago and never looked back. 0 side effects apart from my mouth.
> IMO the much more likely explanation is that the brain uses contrastive learning somewhere. [...] Instead of using calculus and outer products to calculate derivatives, you feed real data and false data forward through the network and each neuron tracks and trains on the difference.
Kinrany 23 hours ago [-]
Separately, do I understand the idea correctly:
- when learning on the real examples, just propagate forward
- when learning on the fake examples, first generate them by propagating white noise backward
inigyou 23 hours ago [-]
That's a technique that was tried in machine learning and worked (although obviously not optimally or we'd all be using it by now) and then we hypothesised that animal brains use it because it would explain sleep.
Kinrany 23 hours ago [-]
I'm curious if there is an explanation for it not being more common to sleep like dolphins do, small parts of the brain at a time.
sig-11 20 hours ago [-]
You may be thinking of sharks.
wewewedxfgdf 23 hours ago [-]
I like sleep - it's not a problem to be solved.
WesolyKubeczek 21 hours ago [-]
Since we’re talking narcolepsy here, your passengers might disagree
kajaktum 20 hours ago [-]
Just imagine yourself never needing (or even able to) sleep. It is actually a nightmare. Your bad day is now permanent.
WesolyKubeczek 18 hours ago [-]
There are levels to that:
1) don’t need to sleep, be able to sleep: the coolest thing in the universe.
2) don’t need to sleep, be unable to sleep: you would likely cope. Also, be an irreplaceable shift worker.
3) need to sleep, be able to sleep: this is where most of us are now, nothing to write home about.
4) need to sleep, be unable to sleep: the rest of your life is short and full of exponentially growing suffering.
By „don’t need to sleep” I mean that the body refreshes itself by different means and you still reap the benefits.
I can’t really imagine how it would feel, much like I can’t imagine being immortal. Most fiction describing those phenomena as „nightmare” usually is about a character who gains the ability but none of the protective mechanisms.
fishfasell 24 hours ago [-]
Despite the stigma surrounding semaglutide, its impact across various health conditions has been remarkable. Bringing that same level of innovation to cognitive disorders could be truly transformative for society
JKCalhoun 16 hours ago [-]
I've not detected a stigma around semaglutide.
Is it from these Valley Bros I read about experimenting with designer semaglutide on themselves? Or is there another stigma?
AnneTrotter 14 hours ago [-]
There's a crust of "but that's cheating" folks who have opinions on "taking drugs to lose weight". They're ignorant, of course, but that never stopped anyone from being loud.
fedpost 23 hours ago [-]
Well, they're filming the next season of black mirror right now, it's probably not too late to throw this one in there.
protocolture 21 hours ago [-]
Its going to be 12 episodes of "What if Datacenter took my water" and similar isnt it?
red75prime 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah, they need a bit of fiction there after all.
20 hours ago [-]
almost_usual 24 hours ago [-]
Sleep less and sit more. What a species we’ve become.
24 hours ago [-]
madhacker 23 hours ago [-]
"Others are exploring their use for treating sleep apnoea, which is a far more common disorder." CPAP biomedical equipment manufacturer watch out!
EA-3167 1 days ago [-]
The second I read the print in Nature a bit ago I knew some version would show up here. I swear I’ve met deployed Marines less obsessed with staying awake through chemistry than some people here.
AnneTrotter 14 hours ago [-]
Do they sell caffeinated crayons yet? If not I have a startup idea-
oblio 17 hours ago [-]
1. Virtue signaling.
2. Unhealthy desire to get rich (or work on interesting projects, which would be the better option).
copperx 1 days ago [-]
A better modafinil? Sign me up.
brador 19 hours ago [-]
With so much malformed/fake diagnosis out there for mental health the data, research and conclusions will be a mess obscuring and obfuscating truth.
The only way through will be anecdata. Science of one.
I await basic safety reports.
kbrannigan 24 hours ago [-]
To get a job at our company take three pills of brainOzempic every day to maximize productivity.
We have our NeuroLinkBrain Implant plugin to AI agent , so that you can vibe code 24/7 . To maximize shareholder value.
anakaine 23 hours ago [-]
I reckon I'll buy some landscaping machinery and a truck before I ever sign up for that distopian nightmare. At least sound ordinance would prevent 24/7 operation.
bowmessage 23 hours ago [-]
No more sound ordinance, just install Neuralink and receive free auto-mute during sleeping hours.
vhcr 23 hours ago [-]
Isn't this already happening with ADHD drugs?
blackjack_ 22 hours ago [-]
To some extent ADHD drugs are abused but to us neurodivergent people those stimulants (or in other cases just alpha 2 agonists) just help us do normal things that normal people can do without drugs, like laundry. Or reading a book, or be able to focus on literally anything that isn’t giving us a high level dopamine response.
The meds (both stimulant and non stimulant) help people with ADHD choose where to hyperfocus, but hyperfocus is an internal trait of the ADHD neurotype, so it isn’t just attributable to the drugs or something.
I.e. normal people use stimulants to go fast, while ND people with ADHD use them to go slow or have their brain actually be able to slow down.
yuye 23 hours ago [-]
A lot of people with ADHD that have success with medication can tell you that it's not just about work.
It also helps with non-work stuff that's just not fun to do, such as chores or filing your taxes. It even helps you stick with hobbies you actually enjoy but your brain gets bored of.
chocrates 23 hours ago [-]
Don't tell me psychiatrist but I take my addon Ritalin at night so I can play games or read a book. I just can't do it without it
ykonstant 21 hours ago [-]
I don't doubt that. For me, however, drugs like concerta changed my life from near catatonia to almost-regular function. If you see me behaving "normally", that is because I have taken my prescription. Otherwise, you will not see me because I will be sleeping, or worse, you will see me.
rc5150 23 hours ago [-]
on the recreational level, maybe, but from a therapeutic perspective for people who actually benefit from its prescribed use its absolutely game-changing to live a life without (or with mitigated) executive dysfunction.
MelonArmiger 22 hours ago [-]
People say "narcolepsy this" and "ADHD that" but we know y'all need off these drugs.
rich_sasha 22 hours ago [-]
You don’t look like a cultural
fit to our company, but try a course of Ozempic and reapply in 6 months.
Probs already there…
CalRobert 21 hours ago [-]
Absolutely, just not in writing :-\.
Nothing like losing 100 pounds to show you how profoundly lookist society is. It's been great.
seeknotfind 23 hours ago [-]
Is this supposed to be scary or amazing?
alimhaq 23 hours ago [-]
Your comment is probably the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read on this website
rc5150 23 hours ago [-]
I dunno, there's been a whole lot of fascist bootlicking going on lately under the guise of good faith discussion. That's pretty disturbing to me.
BLKNSLVR 22 hours ago [-]
Astroturfing crosses all boundaries eventually.
Uptrenda 22 hours ago [-]
I know you're joking but I saw a company that had similar policies like fasting and stuff like that to improve productivity. They seemed to take it pretty seriously...
ValdikSS 1 days ago [-]
Hooray fatal insomnia
livinglist 24 hours ago [-]
24/7 stock market, least sleep needed, most AI piled, I’m very excited!
inigyou 23 hours ago [-]
Cryptocurrency markets are open 24/7 btw.
Everyone involved in a stock market agrees it's quite useful to have a separation between days, although you could have a 23.5/7 stock market with only half hour day-ends. That's when things like index rebalancing, addition, removal, stock splits occur. You say whoever holds stock X at end of a certain day holds stock Y+Z at the start of the next day (due to a company splitting up) and there's no need to argue about which millisecond a trade occurred. (It's your own damn fault if you were trying to buy the stock in the milliseconds before closing, but some exchanges run a special closing auction with a different algorithm to prevent races). It's also the time you can deploy software, which you can't do during the day. Maybe half an hour is too short for all this stuff. Or maybe it should be a 12 hour window once a week instead.
notpushkin 22 hours ago [-]
I think you can have a separation between days while still allowing 24/7 trading. Just schedule automatic operations like stock splits at midnight, and with a proper staging environment you can deploy software in the middle of the day, too (just give a heads-up first).
And of course, overnight trading is available on some stock exchanges now. (I’m not sure whether this is a new thing or has existed for a while, but I’ve only noticed it on TradingView for some papers about a year ago I think.)
WalterGR 22 hours ago [-]
And isn’t forex 24/5?
blinkbat 23 hours ago [-]
Aw hell no
acosmism 24 hours ago [-]
wow. now i'm really excited for the future
stego-tech 22 hours ago [-]
I’m not about to stifle research into genuinely useful therapies just because some aspects of society will abuse the absolute shit out of them, and these therapies seem profoundly useful to those who suffer from the mentioned ailments.
Here’s the thing: what a lot of these drugs are doing are basically acting as equivalents to the store-bought neurotransmitters you’d find in things like SSRIs or -phetamines/stimulants. To people lacking in these substances, they’re game changers.
The problem right now is a mismatch between regulation, availability, and testing regimes. Regulations are meant to prevent dystopian shit like employers mandating (or encouraging) a drug regimen for employment through threat of punitive fines or prosecution, while the private insurance markets promote unaffordability domestically (as North America is where over half of pharma revenues come from) and testing regimes fail to identify who is best suited for a given drug. All three of these prongs will shake out in time, but cause new problems as a result.
Where we’re at right now is less of a click-baity headline from The Economist, and more at the start of a new frontier in medicine that capitalizes on decades of research. We’ve maximized the benefits of “low-hanging” chemical-based drugs, and have moved into more complex, nuanced, or targeted drugs developed through modern compute rather than traditional drug trials alone. Things will change very quickly, and then stagnate again when we’ve picked clean the easy fruits from these new branches.
I had been looking into orexin agonists (along with other things like H3 autoreceptor antagonists) back when they were just a concept. It’s good to see them finally reaching commercialization. Although they’re not approved by our own (Canadian) regulatory body quite yet.
Now that they’re approved in the US, though, I’m looking very much forward to seeing how these drugs perform in off-label-ish treatment of the various other sleep disorders that I’m sure clinicians will now begin throwing them at.
I don’t see what’s the problem with someone taking any drug legally prescribed to them by their doctor. Lots of prescription drugs are potentially addictive, but that’s a risk to be weighed against the potential benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_oxybate
But "microdosing" per se isn't the issue.
I once stumbled upon a psychiatry case report about a man with a psychotic illness, who found out by experimentation that taking significantly less of his antipsychotics than prescribed, along with up-titration when he began to notice the prodromal signs of relapse, helped him avoid relapse while also avoiding most of the unpleasant side effects. He did this on his own, only later confided in his psychiatrist he was doing it. Some psychiatrists would have reacted rather negatively, but his (being somewhat influenced by R. D. Laing & friends) actually thought it was smart, and wrote it up.
https://www.jellinek.nl/en/alcohol-drugs-behavior/ghb/
> GHB is difficult to dose. The difference between a dose with pleasant effects and the dose at which someone becomes overwhelmed by sleep and becomes unconscious is very small. People quickly take too much GHB. The combination with alcohol enhances the effects of GHB. This means that people can become unconscious even with a small dose of GHB.
The reason GHB has a narrow tolerance window (which, note, is not exactly the same thing as a therapeutic index, as the upper bound here isn't where the drug becomes toxic; it's just where the drug stops being recreationally "fun" and becomes a potent sleep drug instead) is because you actually require a decently high amount of the drug to get the recreational effect; and then only a little more of it will put you to sleep. But a "microdose" would imply that you're not going anywhere near the dose that gives you the recreational effect in the first place.
The term "microdose" is usually employed in conversations like this to specifically mean "a dose of a normally-conceptualized-as-recreational drug, too small to experience recreational effects" — although it can technically also mean "a dose of a prescription medicine too small to see the regular clinical effect."
People talk about microdoses of e.g. LSD, MDMA, or ketamine, as potential treatments for various mood disorders. In none of these cases is there an expectation that you'd "feel" the drug. It's a microdose, not a dose.
(And a fun tangent, back on the clinical end of things: sometimes microdoses of drugs can have paradoxical or unique effects, due to the particular ligand having higher binding affinity for a postsynaptic autoreceptor than for regular presynaptic receptors, such that microdoses of the ligand will only agonize the autoreceptors, with no accompanying agonism of the regular receptors. Activating the autoreceptor without activating the regular receptors can potentially do all sorts of wacky things — you're essentially giving the receptor's coupled ion channel a "negative stimulus", which for most gated ion channels isn't something they're they know what to do with; it's an "undefined behavior" kind of state. But some of these "undefined behavior" states are very useful! Low-dose naltrexone [LDN] therapy, for example: it has none of the subjective anti-euphoric effects of regular naltrexone therapy; but nor does it have pro-euphoric effects. Instead, it has anti-inflammatory effects, specifically on the tissues of the brain itself [astrocytes + microglia] that express opioid autoreceptors. LDN therapy is thus being investigated as a treatment for ME/CFS.)
---
† Presuming that what you have is actually pure GHB. Microdosing GHB's cousin GBL would be a different story, since it is extremely potent, with its active dose (and tolerance window) being measured in micrograms. Don't try to microdose GBL, kids. Not even if you know what solvents dissolve GBL and what serial dilution is.
I added the “pretending to be an adult” part because I knew someone was going to be a pedant about it.
BHB is quite similar to GHB, but is a naturally produced ketone.
(I did try google)
> IMO the much more likely explanation is that the brain uses contrastive learning somewhere. [...] Instead of using calculus and outer products to calculate derivatives, you feed real data and false data forward through the network and each neuron tracks and trains on the difference.
- when learning on the real examples, just propagate forward
- when learning on the fake examples, first generate them by propagating white noise backward
1) don’t need to sleep, be able to sleep: the coolest thing in the universe.
2) don’t need to sleep, be unable to sleep: you would likely cope. Also, be an irreplaceable shift worker.
3) need to sleep, be able to sleep: this is where most of us are now, nothing to write home about.
4) need to sleep, be unable to sleep: the rest of your life is short and full of exponentially growing suffering.
By „don’t need to sleep” I mean that the body refreshes itself by different means and you still reap the benefits.
I can’t really imagine how it would feel, much like I can’t imagine being immortal. Most fiction describing those phenomena as „nightmare” usually is about a character who gains the ability but none of the protective mechanisms.
Is it from these Valley Bros I read about experimenting with designer semaglutide on themselves? Or is there another stigma?
2. Unhealthy desire to get rich (or work on interesting projects, which would be the better option).
The only way through will be anecdata. Science of one.
I await basic safety reports.
We have our NeuroLinkBrain Implant plugin to AI agent , so that you can vibe code 24/7 . To maximize shareholder value.
The meds (both stimulant and non stimulant) help people with ADHD choose where to hyperfocus, but hyperfocus is an internal trait of the ADHD neurotype, so it isn’t just attributable to the drugs or something.
I.e. normal people use stimulants to go fast, while ND people with ADHD use them to go slow or have their brain actually be able to slow down.
It also helps with non-work stuff that's just not fun to do, such as chores or filing your taxes. It even helps you stick with hobbies you actually enjoy but your brain gets bored of.
Probs already there…
Nothing like losing 100 pounds to show you how profoundly lookist society is. It's been great.
Everyone involved in a stock market agrees it's quite useful to have a separation between days, although you could have a 23.5/7 stock market with only half hour day-ends. That's when things like index rebalancing, addition, removal, stock splits occur. You say whoever holds stock X at end of a certain day holds stock Y+Z at the start of the next day (due to a company splitting up) and there's no need to argue about which millisecond a trade occurred. (It's your own damn fault if you were trying to buy the stock in the milliseconds before closing, but some exchanges run a special closing auction with a different algorithm to prevent races). It's also the time you can deploy software, which you can't do during the day. Maybe half an hour is too short for all this stuff. Or maybe it should be a 12 hour window once a week instead.
And of course, overnight trading is available on some stock exchanges now. (I’m not sure whether this is a new thing or has existed for a while, but I’ve only noticed it on TradingView for some papers about a year ago I think.)
Here’s the thing: what a lot of these drugs are doing are basically acting as equivalents to the store-bought neurotransmitters you’d find in things like SSRIs or -phetamines/stimulants. To people lacking in these substances, they’re game changers.
The problem right now is a mismatch between regulation, availability, and testing regimes. Regulations are meant to prevent dystopian shit like employers mandating (or encouraging) a drug regimen for employment through threat of punitive fines or prosecution, while the private insurance markets promote unaffordability domestically (as North America is where over half of pharma revenues come from) and testing regimes fail to identify who is best suited for a given drug. All three of these prongs will shake out in time, but cause new problems as a result.
Where we’re at right now is less of a click-baity headline from The Economist, and more at the start of a new frontier in medicine that capitalizes on decades of research. We’ve maximized the benefits of “low-hanging” chemical-based drugs, and have moved into more complex, nuanced, or targeted drugs developed through modern compute rather than traditional drug trials alone. Things will change very quickly, and then stagnate again when we’ve picked clean the easy fruits from these new branches.