Before Jenner, there were groups inoculating people with actual Smallpox (typically in the nose, because it was quicker to recover from). The Chinese started doing that 500 years ago, and it was even used by troops in the American revolutionary war. Some of those people would die of course, but the ones who recovered would have an immunity.
A lot of people may have died from many of these early tests, but so many people were dying it didn't quite matter.
We need testing. It's the only way we can have confidence in our medical system.
This is the old ethics question: There is a highjacked planebfull of passengers flying towards a football stadium. Should it be shut down?
Many contemporary societies lean towards not shooting as you can't compare deaths.
Regarding vaccines the current approach is to first try it out on animals and then do controlled clinical studies with healthy test subjects etc. Still some people do suffer from those for the greater good.
If the government is willing to suspend these[0] in order to fast track vaccine development, then why isn't this the default for all new drug development?
The answer is political expediency, of course.
[0]https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2020/08/14/57...
"sometimes I hide the fact that I have PhD because I don't want it to be a symbol of authority or intelligence for myself"
yet, at the top of the site "Josiah Zayner, PhD"."
well, which one is it Josiah?
makes sense that he would want to strengthen his credibility in an article like this, no?
The live-stream is no longer available. The main documentary output seems to be here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SracILuRbiZt4f7EVH2J...
Whether its good science or not is beyond my understanding of this particular subject. It's definitely not usable for any sort of premarketing approval.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q18Sh-67NigwabhxBQAtLfRq...
Same here, so I came here to check the comment section looking for someone better informed. Unfortunately the post has been flagged already, so we're unlikely to ever know.
Ethically, you are more than welcome to experiment on yourself. That's your prerogative. But, as has already been expressed here, the issue is once you start giving your creation to others. Even when the science is conceptually very simple, like in the case of nucleic acid vaccines, a huge number of variables can impact the safety and efficacy endpoints for the recipient. That's why trials and regulation are essential.
Are these regulatory systems perfect? Absolutely not (they are in dire need of reform). But they form an essential safety barrier for the general public. Decrying them as class warfare is incredibly naive.
Science is a social activity. So cooking things up in a kitchen all by yourself is consequently not.
The proper way to go forward would be to seek out the accepted forums and channels of his peers to get opinions on his work. That is as much a part of science as is experimenting.
Unrelated: Do I understand it correctly that his sample size is n=3? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17c7LtrUlnzadif63pR8G...
What I think this highlights is the perceived role and efficacy of regulation in society. Social media, for example, is going through a regulatory discussion, and given its growing role in matters of consequence I don’t think it beyond the pale to consider regulating it. We made that decision about medicine long ago, and I’d assert we are better for it.
1. It disparages the work of individuals/organizations unjustly, who have done society a great service throughout this trying time. An attitude which has the potential to feed anti-vax sentiment/scepticism. 2. It suggests and endorses, without the proper caveats, something which is potentially dangerous, that is injecting yourself with a homegrown vaccine.
Might be interesting to read a commentary on this individuals experience from a measured place (a practicing scientist for example breaking down the risks of what he/his group did), but the content as it stands doesn't deserve to be promoted in my opinion.
Seems incredibly dangerous. What if 3 years from now, he realizes the changes he made are crashing his immune system? There is no "undo" button.
(Actually from time to time a virus fail and it get copy to the DNA of the cells that produce sperms or eggs and it get copied in the next generations. We have a few of these virus, but it is not the usual outcome.)
> If one were to replicate the experiment from scratch, the total individual cost would end up being around $3500, the major costs being $1600 for DNA synthesis and $1200 for the kits to measure coronavirus spike protein antibodies.
Ah yes, fighting the good fight by spending several thousand dollars of disposable income on your hobby, to show people that the government-subsidized vaccine is class violence. :)
Also, the advantage of having it available 6-12 months ahead of the official one may be worth the cost to those at risk.
I think that a biohackers’ line of reasoning goes: the same way that some pills once existed as ground-up herbs, today’s biotech (and vaccines) started as ground-up biomaterial.
Of course people have been hurt from eating herbs and injecting biomaterial, so testing and quality control will always be a massive issue.
I still see a biohackers’ rebuttal, however: sometimes people are hurt by their own cooking, or restaurant food, so the issue of quality control among mass-distributed biomaterial is not totally new, and not insurmountable.
"I know it sounds a bit dramatic but there really is a class war going on. There is a group of people who are actively making choices that cause a disproportionate amount of deaths among those in lower social classes."
Thoughts?
