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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
The point is that the university is providing equipment and allows this to take place in their labs.
.... 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...
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?
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 short: who cares?
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
Not saying that makes it unethical, but the calculus is more complex than just whether they put others in direct risk.
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!
So if “ethicists” are questioning this, it says more about the “ethicists” beliefs and prejudices, than about the ethics.
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.