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Do drug R&D departments do off the books clandestine testing of compounds to screen them before moving onto the official testing steps? With the expense of tes
by cwkoss 6y ago
Do drug R&D departments do off the books clandestine testing of compounds to screen them before moving onto the official testing steps?
With the expense of testing being so huge, it seems like there would be huge economic incentive to be able to fail fast.
I wonder what percentage of pharma researchers are bold (and unmonitored) enough to test their creations on themselves - based on the chemists I've met, it almost certainly must be nonzero...
- whymauri 6y agoI like to think that medicinal chemists are self-aware enough to not ingest anything they design, lol. There'd certainly be a lot more corpses than drugs in the market with self-testing. In either case, I've definitely considered injecting myself with optogenetics expressing virus to skip a few decades of R&D.
- Ovah 6y agoThis guy CRISPR'd himself.. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/diy-dna-hacks-wounds-take-longer-to-heal-at-night-why-daydreams-are-good-quirks-bombs-and-more-1.4395576/meet-the-human-guinea-pig-who-hacked-his-own-dna-1.4395589 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/diy-dna-hacks-wounds-take-lo...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- totony 6y agoAFAIK a lot of drugs can be fairly assumed to be mostly safe (aka won't kill you), although they may have long-term/non-lethal effects. So testing your own drugs wouldn't be creating that much corpses as long as you know what you're doing.
- 1986 6y agoHey, it worked for Albert Hofmann!
- COGlory 6y agoThen there's Alexander Shulgin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL
- maxerickson 6y agoThe early official testing steps are in cell lines and animals. And then to do a one off test of a compound that inhibits a virus you have to expose yourself to the virus. I don't particularly doubt your speculation that there are cowboys, but I'm not sure what they would expect to learn by administering these complex compounds to themselves.
- ramraj07 6y agoI have definitely heard of rumors of such things happening in the 90s in some centers in India but never substantiated. I’d be surprised if nothing like that happened though!
- refurb 6y agoIf you ever did this at a pharma company you’d find yourself without a job pretty quickly. When it comes to proper testing, drug companies tend to stick to the rules lest they incur the wrath of the FDA. The FDA won’t think it’s bold when employees start testing on themselves. Plus, R&D folks gets to hear all the stories of side effects in lab animals like necrosis of the testicles and such. Tends to give cowboys 2nd thought to self-testing.