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Technology has been revolutionizing each year that people and companies are looking forward to try new smart gadgets to witness the power in technology. 3D printers are the most astonishing piece of technology that surprises consumers by its ability to print many things from toys to guns. For pharmaceutical companies, 3D printers are being tested to print prescription drugs so that the pharmaceutical companies can later sell the printed drugs to patients. Today, 3D printers are now available for purchase, but the pharmaceutical companies are suggesting that patients can have access to make their own prescription pills. It sounds that 3D printing drugs is a one step forward for patients and pharmaceutical companies to engage in making pills, but it can be a risk for a patient to be making drugs in their home and can create 3D printers into a personal drug dealer or the 3D printer might fall into the wrong hands. Although that the public does not have access for 3D printers that print drugs, there is an ongoing debate of the pros and cons that if it’s a good idea that if the public can be trusted owning a powerful machine that prints prescription drugs. 3D printers began into play since the 1980’s as an experimental invention to revolutionize modern technology. In 1986, Charles “Chuck” Hull invented a stereo lithography machine, that was known as the earliest 3D printers according to Elizabeth Matias and Bharat Rao. In 1988, another inventor named Scott Crump invented fused deposition modeling (FDM), which is known as the second invented 3D printer. Seventeen years after the second 3D printer was invented, designers and engineers quietly evolved and developed more 3D printers. In 2005, Dr. Gordon started a RepRap project, which is an open source community with the goal of making 3D printing technologies accessible to all. As I mentioned before about the controversy about whether let people own their own 3D printer to print drugs has been focused on more about the risk if a drug abuser has access to this printer and begins to have his or her addiction worse. The best option would be for patients to not be given the opportunity to own a 3D printer to print their own prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are still developing more research to print out more 3D pills, so it is not safe for patients to print drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are only predicting the future and are working on making it a reality. Pharmaceutical companies are not aware or they don’t care about people that have drug addiction problems and are preparing to allow people to 3D print drugs. Statistics in the US, patients and non- patients that are drug addicts overdose from prescription pills die each year and imagine the chaos that can occur if patients and non-patients can print drugs to possibly double the number of drug overdose and deaths. The ethical framework that describes each stakeholder (pharmaceutical companies, patients, and non-patients) are Ethical Egoism. Ethical Egoism means the rightness of an act is determined solely by how much it benefits the agent doing it. Some defenders of ethical egoism argue that we are always motivated by our own self-interest, whether we realize this or not. Pharmaceutical companies argue that they’re rebuilding the future in medicine and care deeply for their patients, but individuals in pharmaceutical companies only see interest in themselves by selling prescription drugs to drug dealers only to satisfy themselves with money and greed.
3D printing drugs link for more information
3 Comments
Christian Martinez
4/30/2017 02:41:24 pm
Fernando this is a really interesting topic. I think it would be really cool to be able to do this so the person taking the drug knows what is actually inside the pills. I would hope that it was heavily regulated because I now people are probably not going to use this as safely as we would hope. Anyway, great read.
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Laura Chavez
5/16/2017 08:52:17 pm
This was an interesting read, I had never heard of pharmaceutical companies wanting to 3D print drugs. It could definitely be a problem for people who have drug addictions. How will pharmaceutical companies make money of this? Could the amount of drugs printed be regulated?
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5/20/2017 04:01:34 pm
This new technology of 3D printing is really a break through if it can even print drugs. I am not sure how a 3D printer can print out all the components that go into prescription drugs. I really hope that these ingredients are still safe for the public. If so, this new tech could be a very cost effective alternative to mass producing drugs. Prescription drug costs would go down and that would benefit many people in need.
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Fernando MadrigalHello, my name is Fernando Madrigal and I am a Junior at CSUMB. My major is Computer Science with my concentration in Network and Security. I recently transferred from Hartnell Community College last fall. Archives
May 2017
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