Do-it-Yourself Vaccines for Covid-19 | Hacker News Reader

Do-it-Yourself Vaccines for Covid-19

scientificamerican.com

42 pointspseudolus53 comments

>Some scientists are self-administering an untested product. Is that legal?

Yes, of course. Obviously.

>Some scientists are self-administering an untested product. Is it ethical?

Who cares? They are self administering.

This whole article can be summed up to "Bureaucrats are annoyed that some scientists aren't playing ball with their giant piles of unnecessary paperwork and invented regulations."

The bureaucracy is so complicated that the scientists have to test their vaccines on themselves to get a quick result. I don't think that's ethical, and I don't think that's good for science either. I don't think we want those things to happen.

Dis you actually read the article? It sets out some real world ethical problems in terms of reproducibility of results and wasted effort as well as issues of recommending vaccinations to third parties that haven't undergone rigorous double-blind trials.

Yes; I wish commenters would actually debate the point of the article.

The comment about scientists self-administering reminded me of Barry Marshall drinking a vial of H. Pylori

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

That is covered in the article.

>Some scientists are self-administering an untested product. Is it ethical?

Depends, if the self-administering scientist is the only person at risk then I don't see any reason to believe it is not ethical. Assuming they are adult, sane persons it is ethical to take personal risk, at least in my book. Now, depending on what is being injected you could imagine a situation where this could pose risk to other people as well - for example a vaccination containing an active virus (through a design or mistake) that could spread outside the lab and infect others. This would NOT be ethical.

tldr: if the self-administering person does not put anyone else at risk it should be considered ethical

What if they are a well educated, critical scientist who loses their life to the untested vaccine? The world may be missing out on decades of their future work. If they have a family who has to mourn their passing?

Not saying that makes it unethical, but the calculus is more complex than just whether they put others in direct risk.

is the world entitled to the future work of a bright mind, before it is even done? imo, this is a worrying line of thought if you follow the thread further.

This is not ethical, regardless!

It creates a precedent and expectation from other scientists to do the same, which, down the road will lead to laxed testing standards in the future -- this isn't the wild west!

What does self administering a vaccine actually accomplished in the end?

Guys, read the article, they are not doing it to speed things up for everybody, they are doing it because they think their survival of the pandemic is a net positive for science!

Is that at all obvious? Suppose there are serious side effects and the scientist loses his arm. You bet that people will say it was unethical by the lab provider to let them try.

One view of this is that the question ought to be whether or not those people are right in assigning blame to anyone. If the scientist is fully aware of the risk and willing to use himself as a test subject, it's hard to argue that there is any blame to go around.

But what if the scientist feels pressured to provide results and cuts corners to get those results. That may be something intagible but still have an effect on the decisions he/she makes. It would be next to impossible to prove that and in term protect the person, so the only way would be to outright ban such tests.

But what if all scientists feel pressured to do the same, in an effort to win relevance?

.... what if .... entire nations feel pressured to do the same, not wait for trials, just proclaim victory on a hunch... like Russia?

> .... what if .... entire nations feel pressured to do the same, not wait for trials, just proclaim victory on a hunch... like Russia?

Funny for you to say that right now...

https://nypost.com/2020/08/31/fda-willing-to-fast-track-covi...

But it does make perfect sense -- if at some point a certain category was shown to have a very high projected morbidity rate -- say the overweight elderly with diabetes -- you could approve the medicine just for that group if it was deemed better than just letting those people die.

Just like you give amphetamine salts to people with ADHD and not to the general population -- because the benefits outweigh the risks for that particular population.

But scientists are not in that category. I don't event want to get into the legalities of self-administering a vaccine not yet marketed -- shouldn't you pay an astronomical price for it?

Sort of like how spinraza costs 2$ million because there are so few patients and you have to split the development cost among them, if you self-administer a vaccine before mass marketing, perhaps you should pay the development costs out of your own pocket?

I'm not really criticizing the policy, mostly because there is no policy there to criticize. There was a political outcry accusing the US government of bottlenecking treatments, so an agency makes a public statement saying they are willing to take risks.

The actual content of the statement has nothing actionable in it, so it can never be an issue. The fact that the agency is reacting to some plain-Earth level nut outcry is an issue.

And, yeah, of course, nothing really happened there, at least yet. Nothing did happen on Russia either, again, at least yet. It all just makes for a funny comment with really interesting timing.

In a vacuum perhaps. But in real life, the scientist ends up making insurance claims when the self-administered vaccine goes wrong.

in the US, this would be insurance that the scientist (and/or their emloyer) pays for. if enough scientists perform risky experiments that it meaningfully increases payouts, I'm sure the insurer could figure out a way to account for that in the premiums.

in short: who cares?

I mean, there's plenty of recreational activities where the participant has a pretty good chance of losing their arm or worse. Nobody seems to argue about the legality, let alone the ethics of BASE jumping, wingsuiting, free solo climbing, or technical diving.

And unlike scientific experimentation, these don't even come with any sort of broader social benefit. We let consenting adults mix wildly speculative breathing gasses so they can dive 500 feet underwater. Pretty much for no other reason than it's cool. Why not let scientists do the same if it might cure a pandemic that's killed millions?

free solo climbing in the office building?

The point is that the university is providing equipment and allows this to take place in their labs.

In terms of ethics, practically every religion and system of ethics in the past has defined deliberately putting oneself in harms way to benefit others as the one of the most ethical acts: “No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

So if “ethicists” are questioning this, it says more about the “ethicists” beliefs and prejudices, than about the ethics.

But that is only partially correct -- the italian priest who refused a ventilator in order for a younger guy to get it, yeah, he fits the bill 100%.

The scientist who self administers that vaccine... in order to what exactly, I'm not sure, but it is hinted in the article -- to survive the pandemic -- yeah, those are completely different things, apples to oranges.

>Some scientists are self-administering an untested product. Is that legal?

There are many things that it's illegal to cook up in a lab and inject into yourself, including many where the act of cooking it isn't the problem, it's the injection.

"Legal" and "ethical" are not synonymous.

> "Legal" and "ethical" are not synonymous.

I'm not sure anyone in this thread is confused on that point. The parent appears to be responding to this section of the grandparent:

> > Some scientists are self-administering an untested product. Is that legal?

> Yes, of course. Obviously.

>"Legal" and "ethical" are not synonymous.

The GP and the OP ask both questions. I was specifically replying to the GP's claim that it's obvious that it is legal.

I would say its borderline unethical in the sense of self-promotion and pushing the scientific career.

Good lord

- we have an opiod crisis - thousands overdosing and commercial providers making billions and a larger drug and alcohol abuse problems (plenty of folks injecting and drinking things they shouldn't).

- we have a pandemic - thousands dying and millions impacted. Thousands not even wearing masks, going to covid parties etc.

And we get this - legal and ethical issues around someone taking some pretty innocuous stuff that may or may not reduce various risks around exposure where there are public benefits - and taking it themselves.

Has the US become the country of can't do news writers, outraged and offended at everything. We get it - don't wear masks - they don't help, take off your mask if healthy, don't get tested unless you traveled to china. How about trying out some of these ideas (testing, mask wearing, vaccines)?

Also notably in this article; major life saving discoveries would have been delayed. Maybe we'd still be arguing if bacteria cause gastritis and peptic ulcers.

"Improving" the ethics of medical research will have a cost of 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives. Maybe more. Entire towns worth of people condemned to disease and suffering. I disagree with any ethics system that thinks that is a good outcome.

I distinctly remember that Scientists researching Ebola ended up getting Ebola - and perhaps the same for Zika too. I also know many people who work in the field of Psychology whom have the condition they research to some degree.

I have zero idea how ethical any of it really is, but, it exists out there. It seems like something that should at least be declared in any research outcomes.

I'd like to suggest a title change to somehow illuminate the fact that scientists are the ones doing it themselves, not the general public.

There are "non-scientists" who are doing this too, though they aren't highlighted by the article.

Zayner: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-25/one-bioha....

Justin Atkin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjDH6bXF4ow&t=67m47s

TLDR: gasbags oppose scientists brewing their own vaccines for specious reasons.

"A second misconception is the idea that this is research that could benefit others."

"Senior scientists benefit from many layers of privilege: investment in their education, expertise in specialized areas, and access to information or materials. Arguably, these privileges come with a responsibility to use expertise for the benefit of society. "

Seriously, while there may be good reasons this behavior is unethical or bad or whatever, the clowns who wrote this disjointed nonsense are apparently unable to discover them.

I guess you didn't get the memo that only approved experts can do "science" now[0]. Return to your pod and await further instruction from the authorities.

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-...

The levels of insanity among "muh experts" is really reaching some kind of escape velocity of stupid. On a given subject we've traditionally delegated to "experts" I might as well ask a fry cook or stevedore.

Good of them to do it, and I admire the risk taking aspect of it. however, it's a gambit and a forcing function, where it comes down to the researchers word they tested on themselves, presumably to achieve a fast tracking of some sort, or to force a decision point. I can think of a lot of people whose word they tested something on themselves would be suspect, especially in a situation where it was in a situation with a high cost to reverse the decision they were forcing. In negotiations, it's called a commitment ploy. So some scientists would I take their word, sure. Most? Absolutely not.

whoa, detail from: 'Many cardiac procedures are based on a 1929 experiment by a German doctor who inserted a catheter into his own heart'

> In 1929 the physician Werner Forssmann saw a picture in a book showing how a tube was inserted into the heart of a horse through a vein. A balloon at the other end of the tube showed changes in pressure. He was convinced that a similar experiment could be carried out on people. Despite the fact that his boss forbade him, Werner Forssmann conducted the experiment on himself. From the crook of his arm he inserted a thin catheter through a vein into his heart and took an X-ray photo. The experiment paved the way for many types of heart studies.

nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1956/forssmann/facts/

> He persuaded the operating-room nurse in charge of the sterile supplies, Gerda Ditzen, to assist him. She agreed, but only on the promise that he would do it on her rather than on himself. However, Forssmann tricked her by restraining her to the operating table and pretending to locally anaesthetise and cut her arm whilst actually doing it on himself [more]

reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/hbjm5w/til_the_first_man_to_perform_a_cardiac/fv96mpo/

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/29/1005720/george-c...

This article gives more details

Based on my understanding of immunology I don't think this peptide nasal spray is very likely to be an effective vaccine. In order to actually trigger an immune response, the peptides would need to get taken up by cells and displayed on MHCs. I don't think simply spraying them into the nose will be good enough. It's an interesting idea but I think they should test it on animal models before dosing humans.

Well, I think they're trying to stimulate mucosal immunity, rather than trigger MHC presentation. But yes, more research is needed to determine effectiveness.

"This highlights one important advantage of an intranasal vaccine: a robust mucosal immune response should greatly reduce or prevent this systemic response by abrogating initial infection."

Here's my own personal vaccine for Covid-19:

A daily dose of zinc plus a zinc ionophore, as been shown to prevent or lessen the effects of coronavirus (not just Covid-19)[0]

An ionophore is a fat-soluble substance that can transport non-fat soluble elements across the cell membrane. Zinc-ionophores are zinc transporters in and out of the cell and can increase the effects of zinc in the cell.

There are several zinc ionophore options:

Prescription: Ivermectin, (Hydroxy)Chloroquine

Over the counter: Quercetin, EgCg (Epigallocatechin Gallate), Reservatrol

Personally I take quercetin and zinc every day and wear a mask in public just so others feel comfortable.

[0] Just google coronavirus and zinc ionophore

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