Thread by @antonioregalado

A defense “self-experimentation.”

It is co-authored by Brian Hanley (who did gene therapy on himself) and…surprise…@geochurch of Harvard.

(THREAD with some examples)
liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.108…

The authors surveyed some scientists. They say “Half …. performed self-experiments, and roughly 1/5th had conducted a serious self-experiment”.

What's the point of a self-experiment? It's to find something out using the a convenient consenting subject at hand ... yerself

"The history of scientific testing, where the primary or lead investigator used themselves as a research subject, goes back centuries. Allen Weisse documented 465 cases of scientific self-experimentation up to 2003, and 8 deaths from selfexperiments, though none after 1928[4]."

How often do scientists kill themselves in a self-experiment? Historically, the fatality rate is 1.72%, according to this paper.

"Comparable to the...mortality rate in orthopedic surgery."

Self-inflicted death by experimentation is no longer common. Last recorded was of Alexander Bogdanov in 1928, possibly from a blood transfusion with an incompatible blood type.

Bogdanov was "apparently hoping to achieve eternal youth" according to Wikipedia.

Here is a tally of self-experiments by Nobel Prize winners, including self-exposure to typhus, burns by mustard gas, self-catheterization.

Table 1 from Hanley et. al.

Btw, here's the citation for this paper:

Hanley, B. P., Bains, W., & Church, G. (2018). Review of Scientific Self-Experimentation: Ethics History, Regulation, Scenarios, and Views Among Ethics Committees and Prominent Scientists. Rejuvenation Research. doi:10.1089/rej.2018.2059

Now we come to "Self-experimentation in the 21st Century".

The 21st Century list is rather idiosyncratic, but what else would you expect.

It includes LSD experiments by @gwern , a pseudonymous internet personality often found here on Twitter.

The list of recent self-experiments includes the story of Phil Kennedy, who got electrodes implanted in his brain so he could collect data.

Author @adampiore told Kennedy's story exclusively here at Technology Review in 2015. technologyreview.com/s/543246/to-st…

One of the authors of this article, Brian Hanley, is the first well-documented case of self-experimentation using a gene therapy of his own design. We told that story here: technologyreview.com/s/603217/one-m…

George Church is a co-author of this new article on self-experimentation. A lot of people who want to self-administer gene therapy seem to end up on George's doorstep.

George doesn't self-experiment himself, except for a vegan diet. He doesn't take any drugs or pills.

Gene-therapy self-experimenters who Church has advised in some capacity include Hanley as well as Liz Parrish, who in 2015 claimed to have also undergone a DIY type gene therapy, although less evidence it happened.

here's that story
technologyreview.com/s/542371/a-tal…

More recently we wrote about plan by biohackers who Church knows to modify peoples testicles so they could have super-babies. If they ever carry it through, and do it to themselves, it would certainly enter the annals of self experimentation! technologyreview.com/s/612838/the-t…

As regards gene therapy, the technology path is towards easier access to progressively more effective reagents. Right now, you need expertise to carry off DIY gene therapy. Might not be the case in the future. I think @geochurch is interested in what that's going to look like.

Reader of this thread James Luther @DrJMLuther suggests some further reading.

The book is "Who Goes First: The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine" by famous @nytimes scribe Larry Altman, M.D.

reporter @paldhous notes George Church did once participate in an experiment which involved eating a synthetic diet lacking an amino acid. But he wans't the PI.

https://twitter.com/paldhous/status/1098972086381342720

I daresay, "experiments carried out on students" is probably just as relevant and more ubiquitous category as "self-experimentation."

Anyone have a link that recent case from Europe which involved infecting students via contact with a worm?

/END