Doctor Semmelweis: Freedom of Thought Against Conservative Dogmas

Imagine a doctor who literally demands that his colleagues wash their hands—and becomes an outcast for it. It sounds anecdotal, but this is exactly what happened to the Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in the mid-19th century.

Vienna, 1840s: in one maternity ward, male doctors stubbornly follow the tradition of going straight from an autopsy to delivering babies without any hygiene. Meanwhile, there is a nearby midwives’ ward where this does not happen. The result shocked Semmelweis: the mortality rate of women in the first case reached 18%, while with the midwives, it was about 2%. The difference was like that between hell and heaven, and the young doctor wondered why.

Puzzled, Semmelweis began his investigation and went through every version, from overcrowded wards to even the position of the moon—until a tragic incident led him to the answer. One of the doctors cut himself with a scalpel during an autopsy and soon died from the same symptoms as puerperal fever. Eureka! Semmelweis realized that an invisible killer was being carried on the doctors’ hands from corpses directly to the mothers. The solution was dauntingly simple: wash hands and instruments with chlorinated water. By today’s standards, this is a banality, but back then, it was a revolution of clean hands.

Now imagine: Semmelweis stands at the head of the ward with a basin of chlorinated lime, demanding that the respected doctors scrub death off their fingers. One would think his colleagues should carry him on their (clean!) hands for saving hundreds of lives. After all, mortality plummeted to the level of the midwives’ ward. But instead of awards and honors, the innovator was met with ridicule and anger. The medical luminaries of the time took the idea as a personal insult: it implied that their own hands were killing patients. Pride and dogma prevailed over logic. Instead of admitting a mistake, the hospital administration preferred to fire the uncompromising doctor and stick to the familiar theory of miasmas—invisible “vapors” supposedly causing the fever. Simply put, Semmelweis’s colleagues rejected his discovery out of fear of the new, and the doctor’s free-thinking was considered dangerous audacity.

The story of Semmelweis is a clear example of how conservative thinking and fear of fresh ideas hinder progress. There is even a concept called the “Semmelweis reflex”—the automatic rejection of new knowledge simply because it contradicts established norms. In the case of the doctor from Vienna, this reflex cost many lives. His tragic fate (he ended his days in an asylum for the insane, never seeing recognition) shows the price society pays for stubborn dogmas.

Unfortunately, such fear of the new is not a relic of the past. Even today, dogmas and bureaucracy often stand like a concrete wall in the path of innovation. Examples are not hard to find: the denial that Helicobacter pylori bacteria cause stomach ulcers rather than stress and spicy food; the denial of the greater safety of NPPs compared to other power generation technologies; the denial of the benefits of psilocybin in treating PTSD and depression; the denial of a patient’s right to try experimental treatment.

Stories like the one that happened to Semmelweis show that progress is born from the freedom to think differently. New ideas often look frightening or heretical to those accustomed to old paradigms. Of course, skepticism is a healthy quality, but blinded dogmatism is dangerous. It can make rational people reject facts that are literally right in front of them (in Semmelweis’s case, literally on unwashed hands). Every new hypothesis deserves a fair test, not immediate execution just because it contradicts textbooks.

Remembering Doctor Semmelweis, one should ask: is there someone like that truth-teller among us today, whose ideas are ahead of their time but are drowning in the swamp of bureaucracy and prejudice? History teaches us to be bolder and to open the door to the new, even if it means facing rejection. After all, it is the freedom to seek truth and challenge dogmas that ultimately drives humanity forward.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Nonviolent Semai People

The Semai are a semi-nomadic people numbering about 50,000 who live in the center of the Malay Peninsula in Malaysia. This people are known for their absolute non-violence. Now, drawing on the works of anthropologist Robert Dentan, we will examine some interesting features of the lives of the members of this people.

The Semai initially present themselves as non-violent people. In their words, they speak of non-violence not as an ideal to be achieved, but as something already accomplished. For example, instead of saying that hitting people is bad and forbidden, they simply say “we do not hit people.” Of course, in reality, the Semai can get angry with one another and have conflicts. But direct acts of aggression are a great rarity for them. Even when under the influence of alcohol, they become very talkative and noisy, but never violent.

It is very important to note that physically punishing children is condemned among the members of this people. In conversations about this, they are most likely to say something like “how would you feel if a child died,” thereby equating a simple blow to murder. They primarily prevent undesirable behavior from children through certain threats and intimidation; for example, they often tell children about evil spirits that will eat them, or may threaten to hit them (but will not actually do so). Even if a child hits an adult, the adult will most likely start laughing at them or intimidate them, rather than respond with violence. It is not even customary to force children to do anything against their will; the Semai believe that their children will learn everything necessary on their own, without coercion. Thus, they are simply deprived of observing the very model of violent relationships between people.

An important concept for the Semai is “punan,” which means taboo. If a person does something that reduces the satisfaction and well-being of another person, it is “punan” and is treated as if that person had increased the other person’s chance of sustaining a physical injury. Whoever committed such an act must apologize and materially compensate for the inconvenience caused. If they refuse, the victim has the right to take the offender’s belongings—for example, taking their clothes while they are bathing—and then simply notifying them that these were taken as compensation.

If a conflict cannot be resolved, elders may be sought for help. However, it should be noted that their decisions are not enforced; among the Semai, it is simply customary to respect them. Public opinion also plays an important role in such a system where there is very little power and restriction. The parties to a conflict try to gain the support and help of other people. Naturally, verbal skills become important in such cases, and usually, the most influential members of the Semai are good orators. On the other hand, however, the Semai view overly polished speeches with suspicion, so whoever wishes to gain support must not press the audience too hard.

Finally, it is important to note that the Semai have no provisions for sanctions for murder, simply because murders never occur among them. Even killing animals for sustenance is a task that the Semai perform with great difficulty, and the killing of a human is something absolutely unthinkable for them.

The non-violent lifestyle of the Semai is very interesting and shows that people can live in complete peace with one another, even if conflicts still occur between them. Zero tolerance for violence, even as a method of achieving goals or raising children—this is what everyone could learn from the Semai.

How billionaires bypass the oppression of the state

Following up on the previous post about the birth rate among billionaires.

In the previous post, we figured out why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy have a good birth rate compared to the general population—they successfully bypass the problem of state regulation that suffocates the psyche. Other people, living as if in a cage under the supervision of a “civil servant-trainer,” begin to behave like hunted animals with a lost instinct for procreation.

Why, then, do billionaires successfully bypass this problem? Because they have an antidote to state oppression—money and influence. With great fortunes, they buy themselves an immunity and peace of mind unknown to mere mortals. What is an inevitable obligation for us is, for them, a solvable organizational matter involving a couple of phone calls.

Here is how the elite free themselves from the problems that stifle everyone else:

1) An army of lawyers: For a wealthy person, any legal battle with the state ends before it even begins. Fines will be contested and overturned; loopholes in the law will be found. Billionaires do not fear laws—they turn them to their advantage. If it is necessary to bypass stupid regulation, they hire the best lawyers and lobby for the necessary amendments.

2) Personal assistants: You won’t find the wealthy in queues at clinics or government service centers. They have assistants who handle all the paperwork for them. Bureaucratic routine is outsourced to paid employees. The stress from bureaucracy for them is zero—they don’t immerse themselves in it personally.

3) Private jets and drivers: They are not threatened by the loss of their driver’s license for speeding—they have personal drivers who deal with the traffic police themselves. They don’t stand in stuffy buses or squeeze into the subway. A private jet saves them from humiliating border inspections. They do not feel the “shepherd’s whip” with which the stationary bandit drives us in everyday life.

4) Private schools and medicine: Their children study in elite schools and universities, outside the system of mandatory standards to which everyone else is subjected. They don’t need to worry that a state school will negatively affect the child—they simply move to the private sector. The same goes for medicine: any problem is solved for money in a private clinic, bypassing the queues and low quality of state hospitals.

5) Tax minimization: While income tax is automatically deducted from your salary, large corporations and their owners hide profits in offshore accounts and use tax breaks.

6) A billionaire pays the state relatively less than you do as a percentage of their income—even though it would seem it should be the other way around. But they have the best accountants, financial consultants, and the ability to move their business where the tax is lower. As a result, the super-wealthy often avoid the bulk of the tax burden, shifting it onto the middle class.

7) Private security: Many billionaires simply don’t need the state police—they have their own private security service. Security often has access to weapons, special control systems, and high-tech surveillance (from CCTV systems to internet tracking tools). Consequently, a billionaire can set the rules on their own property (mansions, corporate campuses, “closed” gated communities), often ignoring state laws.

8) Influence and connections: Finally, the cleverest install and remove rulers. If a law hinders them, they will see to it that it is changed. If a regulator pressures their industry, they will find a way to the right minister. The state serves big capital rather than commanding it. In a sense, billionaires keep the state on a short leash, using it for their own interests.

Taken together, this produces a striking effect: most state restrictions practically do not apply to the super-wealthy. They live as if outside the state—or above it. The rules are written for you, not for them. That is why their hands are free where you are bound hand and foot.

P.S. Specifically for the authoritarian-right who see no problem in this: Elon Musk’s 12 children in no way compensate for the zero children of millions of ordinary people.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The State is Stifling the Birth Rate: Why Billionaires Multiply While Ordinary People Are Dying Out

The wealthiest people on the planet are not dying out at all—on the contrary, they have more children than the average citizen. Research shows that among billionaires, the average number of children per family is around 3.2, whereas for ordinary people in developed countries, it barely exceeds 1.5, and even then, not everywhere. Simply put, many billionaires have 3–4 children or more, while the average taxpayer struggles to decide on a second. Look at the examples: Elon Musk—the world’s wealthiest entrepreneur—is the father of at least 12 children. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has four children. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg recently became a father for the third time. Many of the largest entrepreneurs have families far larger than the average.

Where does such fecundity come from? Because they can afford it! Financially, of course, but it is not just about money as such. It is about the freedom that capital provides them. Billionaires can “buy” themselves freedom from many of the restrictions that hold others back. And first and foremost—freedom from the pressure of the state. They have effectively bought an indulgence from the system that stifles everyone else. While you spend your best years fighting bureaucracy and paying taxes, they have walled themselves off from this oppression and are calmly raising their dynasties. Freedom breeds wealth and children—that is the formula of the elite.

And what about ordinary people? Why has having many children become a luxury for them? Look at the daily reality of the average citizen: it resembles the life of an animal in a cage. You and I are surrounded by the constant grip of the system. And every day under this pressure leaves its mark. Hellish bureaucracy, taxes and levies, regulations at every turn, fines for every little thing, licenses and permits for everything, bans on many types of activities and behavioral models—each of these factors adds anxiety and pressure. As a result, the ordinary citizen lives with a constant feeling that they owe something to the state, that they are under supervision and prohibition.

Such chronic stress is not the best atmosphere for having children, right? Try starting a large family when your head is filled with tax returns and your account could be frozen over an unpaid fine. The body reacts to constant tension predictably: libido is suppressed, and the hormonal balance is disrupted. Nature “understands” that in a state of danger and stress, it is not the time to reproduce.

And these are not empty words. Even in zoos, the obvious has long been noticed. Animals in captivity under chronic stress stop reproducing or sharply reduce their fertility. Many animals do not produce offspring while languishing in cages until their conditions are improved. In cheetahs and white rhinos in captivity, libido practically disappears and birth rates drop.

In humans, as research shows, stress, anxiety, and depression also reduce fertility. And it is precisely the absence of imposed stress that allows billionaires to calmly have as many children as they wish, without looking back at bureaucratic hurdles and financial nooses.

What should be done if we truly want to raise the birth rate, not just among the rich? Some socialists have the answer ready: let’s take money from the billionaires and give it to the poor, introduce new benefits, maternity capital, tax breaks, etc. But this is a false solution. State redistribution will not lead to a baby boom, but it will certainly lead to even greater control over citizens. In many countries, authorities introduced generous “pro-natalist” benefits and payments, but the birth rate hardly grew, and over time it actually fell. Meanwhile, the tax burden on working citizens increased. Analysis of global experience clearly shows: almost everywhere the state tried to administratively increase the birth rate, these attempts failed miserably.

Instead of strengthening state supervision over the family, we must do the exact opposite: remove state barriers and give people the freedom to decide for themselves how many children to have. Abolish those very taxes and regulations that stifle human life. Remove the stationary bandit—and people will begin to reproduce naturally once again.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

How important it is to double-check popular claims

Many of you have likely heard the story of an experiment with monkeys, a banana, and a cold shower, also frequently circulated under the title “that’s just how it’s done here.” The essence of the experiment was that several monkeys were placed in a cage; a banana was hung from the ceiling, and a ladder was placed beneath it. Whenever one of the monkeys tried to reach the banana, all the monkeys were sprayed with cold water, and over time they lost interest in the banana. When one of the monkeys was replaced with a new one, the other monkeys would stop it from trying to reach the banana. Gradually, all the old monkeys were replaced by new ones, but the “tradition” of forcibly stopping newcomers from reaching the banana did not disappear, even after the cold shower was completely removed.

But this “widely known” experiment, which is often used to explain the process of socialization and the formation of traditions, seems to have never actually been conducted. Several online sources indicate that this experiment was first mentioned in the 1994 book “Competing for the Future,” written by strategic management consultants Hamel and Prahalad[1][2]. No references to the experiment are provided, and its description begins with the words “a friend of ours once described an experiment with monkeys.”

It is suggested that this story may have been partially based on an experiment conducted by researcher Gordon Stephenson in 1967. In this experiment, while alone, monkeys were presented with an object that, when manipulated, resulted in punishment—a jet of air directed at them. Afterwards, another monkey was placed with them as a partner who also attempted to manipulate the object. As a result, one of the trained monkeys pulled its partner away from the object, while two others expressed fear while observing the partner.

As we can see, the previously mentioned story bears little resemblance to the closest experiment actually conducted in reality. Nevertheless, this myth has been recounted in hundreds of books and thousands of articles. This story shows us that it is very important to double-check popular claims, as they may simply be false. And regarding the problem of violence addressed by our project, many such myths have also developed. One might recall the Milgram experiment, in which most of the results were hidden in the archives, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, which turned out to be a staged production with a predetermined result[3][4].

Albedo Stellar wallet

This review was done for a donation from @ignatyashin (bought 1.4 EURMTL of my ANCAPCHAN tokens)

All of Montellibero’s tokenomics operate on the Stellar blockchain. A number of third-party tools plus proprietary developments are used for operations with it. There are several different blockchain explorers, online transaction builders, and a couple of services for a purely Montelliberian feature—BSN (Blockchain Social Network), but users of the tokenomics primarily interact with wallets.

Historically, the first wallet we started using was Lobstr. Its advantages are: a) the ability to link a so-called federation address to the public key, which is convenient due to its human-readability; b) a contact list; c) convenient order book display for trading on the decentralized exchange integrated into the blockchain; d) the ability to top up via fiat. Disadvantages are: a) it supports only one account; b) it charges a fee for swaps.

Next, the community turned its attention to the open-source Solar wallet. It could handle multiple accounts and didn’t mess with the user’s money, but trading from it was not very convenient, and soon the developers stopped supporting it. Now, our people have forked it, and a wallet called Sunce has been created on its basis. It can already work with multi-signature and is equipped with a contact list, but trading from it remains just as inconvenient.

The main wallet for Montellibero remains a custom-developed Telegram bot, @MyMTLWalletBot. Pros: it supports multiple accounts, multi-signature, swaps, an address book, and some other specific Montelliberian features. Cons: you never know at what moment Durov will decide to completely ban the use of any blockchains in Telegram other than TON.

And now, another wallet, Albedo, has been presented to me for review. Let’s see what interesting things it can offer.

This is an open-source wallet which, judging by its GitHub account, has been slowly developed by five developers for five years. Moreover, the team clearly has some connection to the stellar.expert blockchain explorer. The wallet is written in JavaScript, which implies its use via a web interface. Furthermore, it is theoretically possible to embed it into your own website, for example, as a large golden “donate” button that would immediately generate a payment transaction and prompt to sign it. However, I didn’t have enough brains to build such a button for myself—well, to each their own. Usually, there was always some kind of kind subscriber who helped implement one useful tool or another in WordPress.

If we set aside the idea of integrating the wallet functionality for now and open the wallet’s own website, the first thing offered, of course, is to create a new account.

Scrolling past the routine blah-blah

Next, we are prompted to protect the account with a password (which will be used to locally encrypt our keys), after which we can either create a new account, log into a previously created one, or import one created elsewhere.

If you create an account, a pair of public and private keys is generated, but the wallet is completely empty, so for the blockchain, this account does not yet exist.

You can click on the phrase “public network” and select “test network.” A sandbox will open for playing around. There, you will have 10,000 test Lumens (XLM, the native token of the Stellar blockchain), the ability to open trustlines to some test tokens from a given list, exchange them for each other, and so on. The alternative—while staying in the public network—is to find a few Lumens somewhere and send them to your new account, for which the “Receive” button is used.

I simply imported my main account into the new wallet right away and gained access to all my tokens. It’s convenient that the wallet also imports custom token icons. For example, Lobstr doesn’t see the icon for my ANCAPCHAN token, which is somewhat disappointing, but here everything is fine.

In the account properties, you can set your name, fill out the address book, and connect additional accounts to the wallet if needed.

By playing with the buttons at the bottom, you can discover that the wallet also allows for fairly advanced operations that are not needed very often. When swapping, an allowable slippage percentage is set. When sending, you can perform an immediate send with conversion or send tokens for which the recipient does not have a trustline, so they will receive a notification and either accept the tokens or refuse them. An interesting option: you can immediately generate a link to receive a specific amount of specific tokens; this is convenient if, for example, you are pouring a beer for a customer and then present the bill this way. Our Montelliberian wallets cannot do this—a useful feature. If you already have a Stellar account, you can scan the code and see that you will be prompted to send me 10 EURMTL.

Most likely, some functionality was not considered by me; for instance, I didn’t find out about the multi-signature. However, the mere ability to issue fixed invoices already makes the wallet worthy of attention.

The wallet can also be installed on a phone as a web app. Open the site albedo.link in Chrome, click the three dots in the right corner, and in the menu that opens, select “Add to Home screen.” That’s it—you have a shortcut through which this web wallet will open immediately.

The author of the review request also asks to provide a channel for user support if anything remains unclear while working with the wallet. Perhaps I will use this channel to figure out how to organize the “stellarization” of my website.

Why it is often useless to threaten psychopathic individuals with punishment

Social orders are often built on the assumption that potential punishments for their violation should deter a significant portion of individuals who would otherwise boldly commit any crime. To some extent, this is indeed true; however, the degree to which a person is susceptible to the threat of punishment also depends on what kind of personality they have.

As was recently found, individuals with psychopathic predispositions demonstrate reduced sensitivity to pain, which affects their ability to learn from painful consequences. In one experiment, while performing a task in which participants could receive either a reward or an electric shock, possessing more pronounced psychopathic traits led to a poorer ability to learn from painful experience. Due to the more rapid development of pain tolerance, participants with high psychopathy scores quickly returned to their initial expectations and did not change their behavior.

Earlier studies show that if psychopathic individuals are asked to learn how to navigate a maze using various levers, while simultaneously avoiding those that cause painful shocks, they handle only the first task well. And in the case of a gambling experiment, in which two decks contained cards leading to high wins but also high losses, making long-term winning impossible, while the other two decks led to small wins but also small losses, making long-term winning possible, psychopathic individuals were poor at learning not to choose cards from the first two decks, whereas ordinary participants had no such problem. Apparently, they easily concentrate on faster and larger gains, ignoring the accompanying risks. Additionally, one MRI study showed that the brains of violent offenders with high psychopathy scores process punishment stimuli in an atypical way, which may lead to an inadequate assessment of benefits and punishments.

There is also a suggestion that psychopaths may actually derive pleasure from experiencing fear and deliberately place themselves in situations that induce it. This is supported by one study in which individuals with higher psychopathy scores, and especially its primary factor (traits such as lack of empathy and superficial charm), expressed more pleasure from watching videos with content aimed at inducing fear than participants with lower scores. Furthermore, researchers of corporate psychopathy studying information security in the banking sector note that fear of immediate or direct punishment is unable to prevent unethical behavior on the part of psychopathic people. Therefore, they, among others, propose conducting screening for psychopathic predispositions before hiring anyone.

It can be observed that individuals with psychopathic predispositions tend to inadequately assess the benefits and negative consequences of their behavior, and threatening them with punishment is often simply pointless. Therefore, in their case, instead of punishment, it is certainly worth considering a therapeutic approach that corrects the dysfunction of the violence inhibition mechanism, because of which they possess high psychopathy scores.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Stop fighting with Russia, it is time to fight with Ukraine

To mark the third anniversary of the start of the SMO, I want to reflect on whether it is ultimately beneficial for libertarians for the hostilities between Ukrainian and Russian troops to end immediately, even on terms that are quite unfavorable for the Ukrainian state. From the phrasing used, the reader can already guess that I will be arguing that this is indeed beneficial for libertarians.

Ukraine has always had an abysmal state (confirmed by several Maidans) and a civil society that is developed relative to the RF (confirmed by those same Maidans, as well as the fact that the front is held largely through the efforts of volunteers—both among those fighting and those providing supplies). Civil society has neither piety nor illusions regarding the state. And over these years, Ukrainian civil society has learned to fight very well. But right now it is terribly preoccupied: fighting another state, Russia, in a situational alliance with a treacherous but slightly less dangerous enemy—the state of Ukraine.

What happens if no one on the Ukrainian side concludes peace with Putin? The flow of resources for conducting military operations in favor of the Ukrainian side will weaken, and the tension of the conflict will gradually fade on its own as the warring parties exhaust themselves. When both armies are completely bled dry, peace will happen eventually, and there will not be much benefit in this peace for Ukraine’s civil society, even if the terms for the Ukrainian state are better than those currently offered.

What happens if a ceasefire with the Russian side is reached and turns out to be relatively stable? A huge number of very angry and highly skilled military representatives of Ukrainian civil society will return from the Russian front to within drone-flight distance of Ukrainian officials. How soon will these gluttonous grabbers (I mean the officials, of course, not the veterans) begin to die en masse, playing with grenades or some other stupid way? How soon will the current Ukrainian president join the ranks of the clumsy idiots who ignore safety protocols? Does he really want that? Therefore, Zelensky will do everything possible to delay the moment of concluding peace. He should not be helped in this. One can even support the pressure on him to finally conclude any deal with Putin. One can even support Mikhail Svetov: I do not know his true motivations, his public argumentation is poor, but he pushes for peace—and good for him.

Just as Milei’s victory in Argentina gave libertarians arguments in favor of political methods of shrinking the state, a potential military coup in Ukraine after concluding an agreement with Putin will give libertarians arguments in favor of armed methods of shrinking the state, and my bloodthirsty heart rejoices in anticipation.

A request to readers. If anyone knows of a specific Ukrainian unit conducting its own crowdfunding for modern, high-efficiency tools of warfare applicable also for combat operations against its own state—please provide links to their materials. I want to read, form an opinion, and donate.

Dallas Buyers Club

Imagine: you are given a terminal diagnosis, and a cure for your disease exists, but you aren’t given it. Why? Because it’s not allowed; it’s not state-approved. Absurd? However, this is exactly the situation a Texan named Ron Woodroof once found himself in—the hero of a true story that became the basis for the film “Dallas Buyers Club.” And how he acted is a true lesson in freedom and the fight against bureaucracy.

Ron was an ordinary guy from Dallas: an electrician who loved rodeos and lived a quiet life. In 1985, he received terrible news—he had HIV/AIDS and only a month to live. The doctors threw up their hands: they said there was an experimental drug called AZT, but access to it was strictly limited, and there were no other officially approved medicines. For most, such a sentence would sound like the bell for the final round, but not for Ron. He had no intention of obediently dying according to a schedule approved by officials.

What does a desperate but stubborn Texan do? He takes matters into his own hands! Ron found out that in Mexico and other countries, other drugs were already being used against AIDS—unapproved in the US, but helpful. He told all the prohibitions to go to hell and went across the border for medicine. He returned with a trunk full of life-saving pills and began sharing them with other patients. Thus, the underground “Dallas Buyers Club” was born—a kind of medical cooperative of freedom. Patients united, paid a symbolic membership fee, and in return received the necessary medicines they could not obtain legally. No charitable foundation or government program could have helped them as quickly as this club did.

Of course, the authorities found such lawlessness intolerable. The FDA and other officials declared war on Ron. He had dared to break the rules: he sold unregistered drugs, bypassed pharmaceutical monopolists, and generally dared to treat himself without permission! The bureaucrats tried to shut down the shop: raids, confiscations, threats of lawsuits. But Ron just looked for new ways. He transformed himself into a doctor or a priest, smuggling medicine in suitcases across the border. He set up supplies from Mexico, Japan, Europe—everywhere where regulators were faster. Every additional batch of drugs meant months and years of life saved for someone. In the end, Ron lived not 30 days, but over seven years—largely because he chose how to be treated himself instead of waiting for mercy from officials.

Let’s look at the situation more broadly: new drugs and technologies are born every year—from gene therapy and stem cells to experimental cancer drugs. Scientists figure out how to save a life—it seems like a miracle! But years will pass before the bureaucratic machine allows these miracle cures to be widely used. The usual approval path for a new drug can stretch for 5, 10, or 15 years. For a critically ill patient, this is an eternity they do not have. It results in a strange ethic: “Yes, we have a potential rescue for you, but please wait, first we need the paperwork.” The right to experiment is something that suggests itself. It is no coincidence that some countries have passed “Right to Try” laws—allowing the terminally ill to try any experimental therapies, bypassing part of the bureaucracy. It’s better to take a risk than to be guaranteed to die, right?!

And here is another interesting twist—biohacking. This is when people are both the guinea pigs and the doctors. Some, not waiting for approval, inject themselves with an experimental vaccine or gene therapy. Some take potent nootropics or hormones that are not officially permitted to upgrade their organism. In short, they test everything new that science has devised on themselves, regardless of regulators. These enthusiasts also defend their right to dispose of their own body and health. Their motto is “My body, my choice,” and they are ready to bear the consequences. The state, however, usually sees them as violators: oh, so you’re experimenting without a license, how dare you! And they dare because they want to live long, be healthy, or simply not wait for permission from above.

Voluntarist, Bitarch