[Plura-list] Monopolizing turds

Mon May 29 03:10:15 EDT 2023

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/29/oh-shit/

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I'm at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in Hay-On-Wye. Today (May 29) at 12PM, I'm on a panel entitled "Danger and Desire at the Frontier"

https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-danger-and-desire-of-the-frontier-12246

I'm at Oxford's Blackwell's tonight (May 29) at 7:30PM with Tim Harford:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-red-team-blues-with-tim-harford-tickets-574673793787

I'm in Nottingham tomorrow (May 30) for a 6:30PM event at Waterstone's with Christian Reilly (MMT Podcast):

https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/nottingham

Then it's Manchester, London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

http://redteamblues.com

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Today's links

* Monopolizing turds: The FDA granted a pharma company a literal monopoly on shit.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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🧑🏿‍🦼 Monopolizing turds

It's been ten years - to the day! - since I first started writing about the bizarre, amazing world of turd transplants, in which a sick person receives a microbiotic infusion in the form of some processed poop from a healthy person:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130608030455/http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/

Gut biomes are one of those understudied, poorly understood medical areas that are both very promising and also full of sketchy medical claims from "supplement" companies, influencers, quacks and grifters. But in the decade since I first started tracking turd transplants (formally called "Fecal Microbiota Transplants" or FMTs), a growing body of sound science has emerged on the subject.

One thing that's increasingly undeniable is that the composition of your microbial nation is related in significant ways to both your physical and mental health. What's more, as antibiotic resistant "super bugs" proliferate, FMTs are becoming increasingly central to treating dangerous gut infections that otherwise stand a high chance of killing you.

"Eat Shit and Prosper" is Stephen Skolnick's delightfully named newsletter about poop and health science. Skolnick is a physicist by training, but has a long history of collaboration with Openbiome, a nonprofit that coordinates between doctors, patients and donors to provide safe FMTs:

https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/

In an edition of Eat Shit from last December, Skolnick recounts the amazing history and dismaying future of FMTs. In 2013, the FDA announced it would regulate FMTs as "Investigational New Drugs," which could only be administered as part of a registered clinical trial:

https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/p/a-monopoly-on-poop

At that point, FMTs were already in widespread use by docs to treat otherwise untreatable cases of *Clostridioides difficile* (C. diff), an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection that literally makes you shit yourself to death. These doctors were in no position to run registered clinical trials, which meant that they would have to stop using the most effective therapy they had for a potentially lethal infection.

Doctors and patients kicked up a fuss, and the FDA walked back its guidance, announcing that it would exercise "discretion" in enforcing its Investigational New Drug rule, giving a pass to docs who were treating C. diff with FMTs:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/07/18/2013-17223/guidance-for-industry-enforcement-policy-regarding-investigational-new-drug-requirements-for-use-of

That's where things have stood for the past decade or so. The "discretion" rule means that patients could still get FMTs, but their insurance wouldn't cover it. But even if you had cash to pay for an FMT, your doc probably wouldn't administer it for anything except a C. diff infection, despite the promising signs that FMT can help treat other conditions, and despite the generally safe nature of FMTs.

If your doc did give you an FMT, chances are good that they sourced their poop from Openbiome. Openbiome recruits very healthy people, gets them to poop in a bag, then processes the poop - removing nonbacterial solids, testing it for pathogens, freezing it, portioning it, and sending it to docs. All this is done at cost, and it's not cheap: $1-2k/treatment, mostly due to cold-chain logistics (the poop is shipped at -80C).

Despite the cost, and despite the limitations on treatment, the Openbiome method has proved very reliable. Indeed, FMTs as a whole are pretty darned safe, with the most common side-effects being transient gas and bloating. In the past decade, there've been a total of six "adverse effects" associated with Openbiome's 5,000+ procedures, all in severely immunocompromised people, and none conclusively linked to the treatment:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016508522003511/pdf

A decade into this system, the FDA has taken the next step forward - only it's actually a step *backwards*.

During this intervening decade, a pharma company called Ferring has conducted clinical trials on FMTs and received approval for an FMT product called Rebyota. The process for making Rebyota is effectively identical to the process used by Openbiome: collect poop, remove solids, test for pathogens, add glycerol, freeze and ship.

The main difference between Rebyota and Openbiome's poop is price. While Openbiome charges $1-2k per treatment, Rebyota charges *$20,000*.

That's some expensive shit!

Fine. Getting Rebyota through clinical trials means that insurers might start covering it, and perhaps some patients will prefer brand-name poop to open-source poop. But as part of the FDA's approval of Rebyota, the agency also rescinded its "discretionary enforcement" guidance, making it illegal for docs to source their poop from Openbiome:

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/enforcement-policy-regarding-investigational-new-drug-requirements-use-fecal-microbiota

For Ferring, this is a monopoly on shit, one that lets them charge patients $20k for poop that costs $1-2k to process. The FDA does not claim that this is being done in the name of safety. Instead, an FDA official told Skonick that the goal was to "incentivize innovation without creating an access crisis."

That is, the FDA changed its guidance and put nonprofit stool banks out of business because it wants to incentivize pharma companies to perform expensive clinical trials, and it believes that these companies won't pay for trials if they have to compete with the likes of Openbiome, which would make it impossible to charge 900% markups on poop.

Trials are important! Evidence-based medicine is important! But Ferring's clinical trials didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. FMTs were already the best therapy we had for C. diff. Testing Rebyota against a placebo didn't tell us anything new - unlike testing Rebyota against the existing therapies, e.g. product from open stool banks.

Such a trial might have given rise to a very different regulatory outcome, because the cure rate reported by Rebyota is much lower than the cure rate from Openbiome's own interventions:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-022-01797-x

That is, using the $1k poop from Openbiome seems to be much more effective than using the $20k poop from Ferring. But Openbiome, a nonprofit, hasn't been able to perform the kind of rigorous - and expensive - clinical trial that Ferring funded.

This points to a significant problem with the FDA's model. The agency wants good clinical data for the medicines it regulates, as it should, It presumes that the only way to get that data is through granting commercial exclusivity to a for-profit, which ends up costing patients vast sums, and locking many patients out altogether.

This creates all kinds of new dangers. 150,000 people/year in the US contract Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection (RCdI). FMT increases the cure rate by 20% relative to antibiotics alone. That means that if everyone with RCdI gets a poop transplant, 30,000 extra people will get better. That's a big number!

For well insured people, Rebyota probably represents a cash-savings - if your insurance covers the $20,000 procedure, you might pay $500 out of pocket, which is far less than the $1-2K you'd pay to get an Openbiome poop transplant. But if you're uninsured or underinsured, the FDA's new enforcement rules mean that you're now on the hook for *$20,000*.

The FDA did carve out a loophole: if your doc or their hospital are willing to prepare the poop transplant themselves, they can administer that. On the one hand, preparing a poop transplant isn't that hard - some people do them at home, on their own:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211015060558/https://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/fecal-transplant-instructions/

But on the other hand, there's been exactly one death conclusively linked to FMT, and it was from one of these hospital-prepared transplants (the patient had just had a marrow transplant for cancer that wiped out their immune system, and the donor had a novel pathogen that the hospital failed to test for).

So the FDA has created a situation where, if you can't afford a $20,000 proprietary formulation, your only option is to convince your doc or hospital to prepare their own poop transplant, which will cost less than the $20k for Rebyota, but more than the $1-2k from Openbiome, which has all kinds of economies of scale. And if you do manage it, you'll be getting a procedure that has a much worse safety track-record than the Openbiome process that the FDA just killed.

The FDA has an important role to play here, but as with so many policy questions, how the FDA plays that role depends on things that are far upstream from the agency and its decisions. The choice to fund medical trials through the promise of exclusivity - and with it, extremely high margins - puts the FDA in the position of choosing winners in the marketplace: Ferring wins, Openbiome loses.

Ironically, this is the thing that exclusivity is supposed to prevent. By using profit to incentivize medical research, the FDA is supposed to be recruiting the Invisible Hand as its partner in regulation. But exclusivity is incompatible with the idea of medicine as a public good. The tens (hundreds) of millions that Americans will pay for $20k poop transplants from Ferring will add up to far more than it would cost to underwrite clinical trials for an open process like Openbiome's.

The result: both Americans' wallets *and* Americans' guts suffer.

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🧑🏿‍🦼 Hey look at this

* Rich People Are Boring https://jacobin.com/2023/05/rich-people-boring-syd-hoff-the-ruling-clawss-book-review/

* Terrible Terms and Conditions https://terrible-terms.online (h/t Waxy)

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🧑🏿‍🦼 This day in history

#20yrsago HaidaBucks versus Starbucks https://memex.craphound.com/2003/05/29/haidabucks-versus-starbucks/

#10yrsago Bank of Canada kills editorial cartoon, calls it “counterfeiting” https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/jack-knox-the-90000-duffy-buck-stops-here-bank-of-canada-decides-4592661

#10yrsago Toronto mayoral car-crash: homicide detectives search mayor’s office after tip on crack-smoking video; top staffers quit https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/two-senior-members-of-toronto-mayor-rob-fords-staff-resign/article12168106/

#10yrsago UK Ministry of Justice denies that the court system is to be sold to hedge funds https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/28/moj-denies-privatisation-courts-service

#10yrsago Shambling Guide to New York City https://memex.craphound.com/2013/05/28/shambling-guide-to-new-york-city/

#10yrsago Canada’s business groups wants to hack your computer even more than the creeps at the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property https://www.thestar.com/business/2013/02/08/business_thinks_antispam_law_should_protect_them_not_consumers_geist.html

#10yrsago Disaster porn and elite panic: the militarized lie of savage disaster aftermath https://web.archive.org/web/20130609055535/http://www.ochbergsociety.org/magazine/2013/05/in-haiti-and-beyond-learning-to-look-for-resilience/

#10yrsago Toronto cops hospitalize hotel guest who recorded them arresting another guest https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/05/26/exclusive_toronto_police_arrest_man_take_phone_after_attempt_to_film_takedown_at_sheraton.html

#10yrsago Reality check on the 3D printing hype-cycle https://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/an-insiders-view-of-the-hype-and-realities-of-3-d-printing/

#10yrsago Texas to pass landmark email privacy law https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/unprecedented-e-mail-privacy-bill-sent-to-texas-governors-desk/

#10yrsago UK film industry requisitions cops for massive raid on suspected pirate, get to question him at police station https://torrentfreak.com/five-undercover-police-cars-sent-to-arrest-single-alleged-movie-pirate-130525/

#10yrsago Hemispherical Earth cake with crust, mantle and core https://cakecrumbs.livejournal.com/55884.html

#10yrsago Legal analysis of the conclusion to Dark Knight Rises http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2013/05/27/guest-post-end-dark-knight-rises/

#10yrsago Singapore to individually license websites, require a $50K bond against bad taste https://web.archive.org/web/20130607052042/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/news-websites-to-be-individually-license/690226.html

#10yrsago Canadian PM Steven Harper mercilessly grilled over corruption in his office, senate, government and party https://www.joeydevilla.com/2013/05/29/in-which-thomas-mulcair-takes-the-prime-minister-behind-the-shed-for-a-much-needed-spanking/

#10yrsago RIP, Jack Vance https://www.jackvance.com/jackvance_05262013/

#10yrsago EFF files formal objection against DRM’s inclusion in HTML5 https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/w3c-formal-objection-html-wg

#10yrsago Survivorship bias and electronic publishing: practically no one is making any money https://web.archive.org/web/20130607203005/https://tobiasbuckell.com/2013/05/27/survivorship-bias-why-90-of-the-advice-about-writing-is-bullshit-right-now/

#5yrsago Scott Pruitt’s EPA has opened secret backchannels to the climate denial industry to find “scientists” and other “experts” https://apnews.com/article/north-america-ap-top-news-environment-climate-change-politics-64cd37b0503440c0b92e6ca075f87dd4

#5yrsago Garbage In, Garbage Out: machine learning has not repealed the iron law of computer science https://memex.craphound.com/2018/05/29/garbage-in-garbage-out-machine-learning-has-not-repealed-the-iron-law-of-computer-science/

#5yrsago The first cyberattack took place nearly 200 years ago in France https://www.economist.com/1843/2017/10/05/the-crooked-timber-of-humanity

#5yrsago Germany’s scientific texts were made free during and after WWII; analyzing them today shows the negative effect of paywalls on science https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/effects-copyrights-science

#5yrsago 8 years of austerity have turned the UK into a bleak Victorian dystopia, where pensioners without electricity die from fires ignited by their candles https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/world/europe/uk-austerity-poverty.html

#5yrsago Canadian Conservative parliamentarian accuses black rival of “thinking the world revolves around her skin colour” https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bernier-cesar-chavannes-tweet-1.4680467

#5yrsago RIP Gardner Dozois, pioneering, genre-defining science fiction editor who helped launch my career https://memex.craphound.com/2018/05/28/rip-gardner-dozois-pioneering-genre-defining-science-fiction-editor-who-helped-launch-my-career/

#5yrsago Futuristic designs for products the EU’s stupid new copyright law would kill https://web.archive.org/web/20180615000000*/https://futurenotmade.eu/

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🧑🏿‍🦼 Colophon

Today's top sources: Stephen Skolnick.

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION

Latest podcast: The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point https://craphound.com/news/2023/05/14/the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Upcoming appearances:

* HowTheLightGetsIn (Hay), May 29
https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-danger-and-desire-of-the-frontier-12246

* Red Team Blues event with Tim Harford (Oxford), May 29
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-red-team-blues-with-tim-harford-tickets-574673793787

* Red Team Blues event with Christian Reilly (Nottingham), May 30
https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/nottingham

* Red Team Blues event with Ian Forrester (Manchester), May 31
https://www.waterstones.com/events/in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow/manchester-deansgate

* UCL Peter Kirstein Lecture, Jun 1 (London):
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirstein-lecture-2023-featuring-cory-doctorow-registration-539205788027

* Cymera Festival, Jun 3 (Edinburgh)
https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

* Red Team Blues with Martha Lane Fox at the British Library, Jun 5 (London):
https://www.bl.uk/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-techno-thriller

* Rightscon, "Interoperability: from buzzword to a map of solutions," Jun 6 (Costa Rica):
https://www.rightscon.org/program/

* Re:publica keynote, Jun 7 (Berlin)
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp23-keynote-von-cory-doctorow-rebecca-giblin-kreative-arbeitsmaerkte-und-monopole

* Otherland event for Red Team Blues, Jun 8 (Berlin)
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-autorenabend.html

Recent appearances:

*  Most AI is not artificial or intelligent (with James Bridle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPvHjvZz7l0

* This Machine Kills
https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/257-red-team-blues-ft-cory-doctorow

* How Big Tech Captured Culture (The Agenda/TVO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiIovIKzBlc

Latest books:

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023

* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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