this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Ethically speaking, we should not be experimenting on humans, even with their explicit consent. It's not allowed by any credible review board (such as the IRB) and in many countries you can be held legally liable for doing experiments on humans.
With that being said, there have been exceptions to this, in that in some countries we allow unproven treatments to be given to terminal patients (patients who are going to die from a condition). We also generally don't have repercussions for folks who experiment on themselves because they are perhaps the only people capable of truly weighing the pros and cons, of not being mislead by figures of authority (although I do think there is merit of discussing this with regards to being influenced by peers), and they are the only ones for which consent cannot be misconstrued.
N=1 self studies are somewhat common historically though, right? Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD in his lab and took the first documented LSD trip. More recently, I seem to recall that one of the Modena founders took their Covid vax the moment they synthesized it in early 2020 (having trouble finding a citation on that, though).
Yes, but if a review board were to sign off on them and then someone managed to significantly hurt or damage themselves, one could theoretically apply some of the blame to the review board for not doing their job to ensure that a study was safe. The whole idea of having ethics as a part of the review board was born of some of the studies they used to sign off on that were ultimately problematic and resulted in seriously damaging some individuals, such as minorities and kids.
So it's a "ask forgiveness, not permission" sort of thing?
Unless you cause harm to others (like accidentally starting the next pandemic), how could you ever punish someone for treating themselves? 🤣
We don't, as far as I know, make cutting your own arm off illegal and I fail to see how this is different.
PS: I'm not arguing against you, just noodling philosophically.
i feel you are confused. internal review boards, of which there are many, regularly allow human trials. they are necessary for the fda's approval as well. there are tons of ways for patients to access ethically reviewed experimental treatments, but terminal patients are extremely likely to. you are correct that experimenting on onesself is often far less troubling though
Sorry by experimental what I meant here is something which is not ready to be tested in humans - this scientist was skipping a bunch of the necessary steps to show this is a safe thing to do (in lab grown cells first, for example) to proceed to human experimentation.