6 ms·

As long as people are aware of the risks and are willing to take the chance, I actually support this. It doesn't make sense that society doesn't blink an eye w

As long as people are aware of the risks and are willing to take the chance, I actually support this. It doesn't make sense that society doesn't blink an eye when we send our youth off to war to die, but heaven forbid if someone dies in the pursuit of knowledge, everybody goes batshit insane. At least if someone dies taking this stuff, we learn a lot. And if it actually ends up working, it benefits society tremendously.

devnonymous 10y ago
Agreed... And its not just war but all the stuff that has proven to be bad for your health like tobacco, liquor, sugar etc is available for people to use at their own discretion, why not something that might actually help in the long run.
philipkglass 10y ago
I agree with you. I also think that the current balance of pharmaceutical regulation and ways to circumvent it is pretty good. I wouldn't want anyone to be able to hawk novel drugs to the general public without full FDA approved clinical testing. But if there is a self-selected population of risk-tolerant, educated, affluent people who want to experiment on themselves using concepts from scientific papers and manufacturing from contract labs... I wish them all the best of luck, and I look forward to any exceptional results (beneficial or harmful).
derefr 10y ago
> At least if someone dies taking this stuff, we learn a lot. We'd learn a lot more if they were being monitored as they took the stuff, though. And yet it's still considered unethical to run human trials without preceding animal trials, even when the alternative is people off doing those same trials to themselves without your assistance. We understand this problem in other domains—that's why "safe injection sites" for drug-addicts exist. So why has pharmaceutical research not cottoned on and begun offering "safe self-experimentation sites", complete with medical researchers + monitoring equipment to capture data, and nurses to help with bad reactions?
- astrange 10y ago
  Because nobody wants to experiment on themselves and your experiment doesn't follow any scientific protocols?
  - derefr 10y ago
    Er, the context of this subthread is about people who already do experiment on themselves. People in the "nootropics community." There are a lot of them. You could try teaching these individuals experimental protocols if you like, but if you enforce them, that means you're the experimenter. You're not allowed to be the experimenter. You just have to hope they're doing something useful. Probably you'd point a lot of automated instrumentation at each room, rather than having any human observers giving anyone (costly) individual attention, because most of the experiments would be too mired in sources of error to tell you much. But keep in mind that the point wouldn't be to capture subtle things like drug efficacy. The point would be to find out about side-effects that might otherwise not be found, by having people around when they suffer adverse reactions to the drug to help the person not-die, and then being able to pull reports directly from the people who helped the person not-die, to find out (in clear medical terms) what the adverse reaction was.
    - evgen 10y ago
      > Er, the context of this subthread is about people who already do experiment on themselves. People in the "nootropics community." There are a lot of them They are not "experimenting" on themselves, they are simply engaging in a chemically-mediated attempt at wish fulfillment. There are few, if any, actual experimentation protocols being used and whenever I check out the scene to see if it is any better Instill find a random collection of anecdotes and poorly gathered "data points." I see no baseline data, no blinding or controls, the worst sorts of confirmation bias in data gathering and assessment, and people entering these "experiments" with a random selection of pre-exisiting conditions for which they are attempting self-medication. This is just an exercise in generating noise, not data.
      - 10y ago
bhouston 10y ago
There are going to be side effects and probably severe ones. We just don't know them yet. Most newly invented drugs of various types never get approved because of either side effects or they are not actually effective in humans.
bronak1 10y ago
https://www.novusbio.com/products/foxo4-peptide_nbp1-77175pep https://www.novusbio.com/products/foxo4-peptide_nbp1-77175pe... If any one wants to take one for the team lol
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
alexpw 10y ago
I support the notion that the government shouldn't control what we put into our bodies, but the counter is the burden to society because of the medical costs. I'd bet insurance companies would fight hard to reject coverage for anyone who publicly takes a non-FDA drug. If society supported the use of them, then they'd also have to support the aftermath, just like veterans.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  But we don't really support our veterans.
  - jwatte 10y ago
    We spend a lot on our veterans; what you're thinking of is the fact that we could spend even more! (And/Or better)
saidajigumi 10y ago
It doesn't make sense that society doesn't blink an eye when we send our youth off to war to die, but heaven forbid if someone dies in the pursuit of knowledge, everybody goes batshit insane. That's a great soundbite, but it rather ignores the long and continuing history of exploitation via the sales of snake-oil cures and "enhancements". I absolutely have problems with the existing pharmaceutical industry and the economics around that. But it's foolishness to fail to understand how we got here: countless centuries of people peddling fake cures (and even outright poison) to people in need. Likewise, it's mostly really hard to do actual, legitimate human-studies science that has a solid chance of advancing human knowledge. Thus the presence of things like experiment design as a discipline, ethics review committees around studies on human subjects, etc. This article specifically mentions that human studies are in the works, by teams that presumably conduct them in ways that are 1) ethical and 2) have a hope in hell of yielding useful long-term knowledge. OTOH, I have about zero confidence that random internet self-experimenting yahoos will produce any knowledge ROI on their risk investment.
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
This is how we get the zombie apocalypse.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> At least if someone dies taking this stuff, we learn a lot. The expectation of course is that someone else will die. From my experience, very few people [edit: who know what they're doing] are willing to actually kill themselves for science, or, say, endanger their children on the off chance it would "benefit society tremendously". That's just not morally tenable, if I may be so bold. If there is some sort of benefit to be had, society will benefit in the long run and it doesn't make any difference if the benefits come right now or in a couple of generations. Dropping safety procedures is only ever going to benefit individuals- and probably not the ones who willingly (and foolishly) step up to be human guniea pigs for unregulated "trials".

devnonymous 10y ago

Agreed... And its not just war but all the stuff that has proven to be bad for your health like tobacco, liquor, sugar etc is available for people to use at their own discretion, why not something that might actually help in the long run.

philipkglass 10y ago

I agree with you. I also think that the current balance of pharmaceutical regulation and ways to circumvent it is pretty good. I wouldn't want anyone to be able to hawk novel drugs to the general public without full FDA approved clinical testing. But if there is a self-selected population of risk-tolerant, educated, affluent people who want to experiment on themselves using concepts from scientific papers and manufacturing from contract labs... I wish them all the best of luck, and I look forward to any exceptional results (beneficial or harmful).

derefr 10y ago

> At least if someone dies taking this stuff, we learn a lot. We'd learn a lot more if they were being monitored as they took the stuff, though. And yet it's still considered unethical to run human trials without preceding animal trials, even when the alternative is people off doing those same trials to themselves without your assistance. We understand this problem in other domains—that's why "safe injection sites" for drug-addicts exist. So why has pharmaceutical research not cottoned on and begun offering "safe self-experimentation sites", complete with medical researchers + monitoring equipment to capture data, and nurses to help with bad reactions?

astrange 10y ago
Because nobody wants to experiment on themselves and your experiment doesn't follow any scientific protocols?
- derefr 10y ago
  Er, the context of this subthread is about people who already do experiment on themselves. People in the "nootropics community." There are a lot of them. You could try teaching these individuals experimental protocols if you like, but if you enforce them, that means you're the experimenter. You're not allowed to be the experimenter. You just have to hope they're doing something useful. Probably you'd point a lot of automated instrumentation at each room, rather than having any human observers giving anyone (costly) individual attention, because most of the experiments would be too mired in sources of error to tell you much. But keep in mind that the point wouldn't be to capture subtle things like drug efficacy. The point would be to find out about side-effects that might otherwise not be found, by having people around when they suffer adverse reactions to the drug to help the person not-die, and then being able to pull reports directly from the people who helped the person not-die, to find out (in clear medical terms) what the adverse reaction was.
  - evgen 10y ago
    > Er, the context of this subthread is about people who already do experiment on themselves. People in the "nootropics community." There are a lot of them They are not "experimenting" on themselves, they are simply engaging in a chemically-mediated attempt at wish fulfillment. There are few, if any, actual experimentation protocols being used and whenever I check out the scene to see if it is any better Instill find a random collection of anecdotes and poorly gathered "data points." I see no baseline data, no blinding or controls, the worst sorts of confirmation bias in data gathering and assessment, and people entering these "experiments" with a random selection of pre-exisiting conditions for which they are attempting self-medication. This is just an exercise in generating noise, not data.
    - 10y ago

bhouston 10y ago

There are going to be side effects and probably severe ones. We just don't know them yet. Most newly invented drugs of various types never get approved because of either side effects or they are not actually effective in humans.

bronak1 10y ago

https://www.novusbio.com/products/foxo4-peptide_nbp1-77175pep https://www.novusbio.com/products/foxo4-peptide_nbp1-77175pe... If any one wants to take one for the team lol

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

alexpw 10y ago

I support the notion that the government shouldn't control what we put into our bodies, but the counter is the burden to society because of the medical costs. I'd bet insurance companies would fight hard to reject coverage for anyone who publicly takes a non-FDA drug. If society supported the use of them, then they'd also have to support the aftermath, just like veterans.

sqeaky 10y ago
But we don't really support our veterans.
- jwatte 10y ago
  We spend a lot on our veterans; what you're thinking of is the fact that we could spend even more! (And/Or better)

saidajigumi 10y ago

It doesn't make sense that society doesn't blink an eye when we send our youth off to war to die, but heaven forbid if someone dies in the pursuit of knowledge, everybody goes batshit insane. That's a great soundbite, but it rather ignores the long and continuing history of exploitation via the sales of snake-oil cures and "enhancements". I absolutely have problems with the existing pharmaceutical industry and the economics around that. But it's foolishness to fail to understand how we got here: countless centuries of people peddling fake cures (and even outright poison) to people in need. Likewise, it's mostly really hard to do actual, legitimate human-studies science that has a solid chance of advancing human knowledge. Thus the presence of things like experiment design as a discipline, ethics review committees around studies on human subjects, etc. This article specifically mentions that human studies are in the works, by teams that presumably conduct them in ways that are 1) ethical and 2) have a hope in hell of yielding useful long-term knowledge. OTOH, I have about zero confidence that random internet self-experimenting yahoos will produce any knowledge ROI on their risk investment.

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

This is how we get the zombie apocalypse.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> At least if someone dies taking this stuff, we learn a lot. The expectation of course is that someone else will die. From my experience, very few people [edit: who know what they're doing] are willing to actually kill themselves for science, or, say, endanger their children on the off chance it would "benefit society tremendously". That's just not morally tenable, if I may be so bold. If there is some sort of benefit to be had, society will benefit in the long run and it doesn't make any difference if the benefits come right now or in a couple of generations. Dropping safety procedures is only ever going to benefit individuals- and probably not the ones who willingly (and foolishly) step up to be human guniea pigs for unregulated "trials".