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>Some scientists are self-administering an untested product. Is that legal? Yes, of course. Obviously. >Some scientists are self-administering an untested pr

by cwhiz 6y ago

>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."

adventured 6y ago
Some scientists are engineering a new, more potent version of smallpox, in their home lab; who cares? Some scientists are building a gene drive using a highly infectious airborne virus to deliver it, testing the ability to wipe out humanity; who cares? I do, I care. For the same reason I care if some scientists make the mistake of creating a lot of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that are more difficult to vaccinate against. Russia's potentially dangerously rushed vaccine is an example of this behavior in action by a very large state actor. Without proper large scale testing (and over enough time to make the necessary observations in the population) they could screw up and unleash a new dominant version of the virus that our in-development vaccines will not work well against, significantly setting back global vaccination efforts.
- castis 6y ago
  Surely you see the difference between developing and giving yourself a coronavirus vaccine, and engineering a new smallpox virus. Anyone can screw up, trained professionals in every field make mistakes.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  That's quite the sensationalist take. How did you travel from "doctors self injecting a covid vaccine" to "doctors may accidentally wipe out humanity?"
  - jfoster 6y ago
    An incomplete vaccine can apply evolutionary pressure on the virus. From my understanding that's probably not so likely if just a few scientists use their own vaccine (someone more knowledgeable please correct me if I'm wrong), but may be a valid concern regarding some countries rushing through vaccines that have had limited testing. (eg. the Russia example) I'm just repeating what I've heard, as I don't have specialist knowledge of this area, but one logical problem that occurred to me about this was whether the breadth of coverage of a vaccine is even testable. I would love to know how that gets tested in trials, because what I've heard about how vaccines are assessed has sounded a lot more primitive than anything that would indicate breadth of immunity.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      A dozen or so scientists trialing a vaccine on themselves is of zero concern. And you can't take this one-off self-trialing and apply the same level of scrutiny to a government actor acting on millions of people.
      - jfoster 6y ago
        Makes sense.
- AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
  Yes, obviously there's an ethical difference between a scientist experimenting in his basement with a new WMD and one experimenting with new body armor.
- jp555 6y ago
  FYI: 12 Monkeys was not a documentary.
elcomet 6y ago
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.
Angostura 6y ago
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.
- lukas099 6y ago
  Yes; I wish commenters would actually debate the point of the article.
pandatigox 6y ago
The comment about scientists self-administering reminded me of Barry Marshall drinking a vial of H. Pylori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall
- tarr11 6y ago
  That is covered in the article.
mr__y 6y ago
>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
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  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.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    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.
- raducu 6y ago
  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!
diffeomorphism 6y ago
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.
- jakehop 6y ago
  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.
  - blensor 6y ago
    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.
    - raducu 6y ago
      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?
      - marcosdumay 6y ago
        > .... 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-covid-19-vaccine-before-end-of-phase-three-trials/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/31/fda-willing-to-fast-track-covi...
        raducu 6y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
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.
- raducu 6y ago
  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.
EE84M3i 6y ago
>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.
- nsilvestri 6y ago
  "Legal" and "ethical" are not synonymous.
  - reificator 6y ago
    > "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.
  - EE84M3i 6y ago
    >"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.
xenonite 6y ago
I would say its borderline unethical in the sense of self-promotion and pushing the scientific career.

by cwhiz 6y ago

adventured 6y ago

Some scientists are engineering a new, more potent version of smallpox, in their home lab; who cares? Some scientists are building a gene drive using a highly infectious airborne virus to deliver it, testing the ability to wipe out humanity; who cares? I do, I care. For the same reason I care if some scientists make the mistake of creating a lot of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that are more difficult to vaccinate against. Russia's potentially dangerously rushed vaccine is an example of this behavior in action by a very large state actor. Without proper large scale testing (and over enough time to make the necessary observations in the population) they could screw up and unleash a new dominant version of the virus that our in-development vaccines will not work well against, significantly setting back global vaccination efforts.

castis 6y ago
Surely you see the difference between developing and giving yourself a coronavirus vaccine, and engineering a new smallpox virus. Anyone can screw up, trained professionals in every field make mistakes.
cwhiz 6y ago
That's quite the sensationalist take. How did you travel from "doctors self injecting a covid vaccine" to "doctors may accidentally wipe out humanity?"
- jfoster 6y ago
  An incomplete vaccine can apply evolutionary pressure on the virus. From my understanding that's probably not so likely if just a few scientists use their own vaccine (someone more knowledgeable please correct me if I'm wrong), but may be a valid concern regarding some countries rushing through vaccines that have had limited testing. (eg. the Russia example) I'm just repeating what I've heard, as I don't have specialist knowledge of this area, but one logical problem that occurred to me about this was whether the breadth of coverage of a vaccine is even testable. I would love to know how that gets tested in trials, because what I've heard about how vaccines are assessed has sounded a lot more primitive than anything that would indicate breadth of immunity.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    A dozen or so scientists trialing a vaccine on themselves is of zero concern. And you can't take this one-off self-trialing and apply the same level of scrutiny to a government actor acting on millions of people.
    - jfoster 6y ago
      Makes sense.
AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
Yes, obviously there's an ethical difference between a scientist experimenting in his basement with a new WMD and one experimenting with new body armor.
jp555 6y ago
FYI: 12 Monkeys was not a documentary.

elcomet 6y ago

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.

Angostura 6y ago

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.

lukas099 6y ago
Yes; I wish commenters would actually debate the point of the article.

pandatigox 6y ago

The comment about scientists self-administering reminded me of Barry Marshall drinking a vial of H. Pylori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

tarr11 6y ago
That is covered in the article.

mr__y 6y ago

>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

Pfhreak 6y ago
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.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  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.
raducu 6y ago
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!

diffeomorphism 6y ago

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.

jakehop 6y ago
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.
- blensor 6y ago
  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.
  - raducu 6y ago
    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?
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      > .... 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-covid-19-vaccine-before-end-of-phase-three-trials/ https://nypost.com/2020/08/31/fda-willing-to-fast-track-covi...
      - raducu 6y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

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.

raducu 6y ago
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.

EE84M3i 6y ago

>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.

nsilvestri 6y ago
"Legal" and "ethical" are not synonymous.
- reificator 6y ago
  > "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.
- EE84M3i 6y ago
  >"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.

xenonite 6y ago

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