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Because when biologics become edible, and agriculture
becomes medicine, health stops being something you
wait for—and becomes something you grow.

7.4 – The Ethics of Access: Redesigning
Distribution

The modern biologics industry is built on manufactured
scarcity.

Drugs priced at hundreds of thousands of dollars per year
are justified by layers of complexity—expensive
manufacturing, fragile cold-chain logistics, institutional
delivery models, and high-risk regulatory pathways. But all
of that complexity serves a second purpose beyond
scientific necessity: it reinforces exclusivity. It erects gates
around the most advanced therapies, positioning them as
rarefied commodities rather than shared public goods.

Infusion centers. Specialty pharmacies. Tiered
reimbursement.
These aren’t just delivery systems. They’re mechanisms of
economic control.

And beneath all of them lies a deeply entrenched moral
logic:
If a drug is valuable, it must be expensive.
And if you can’t afford it, you must wait.
Or appeal.
Or go without.

This model was built around biologics that required
industrial infrastructure to produce and administer. But

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