12 Aug Self-Experimentation in the Time of COVID-19

Scientists are taking their own vaccines, an ethically murky practice that has a long and sometimes celebrated history in medicine.

In the history of medicine, self-experimentation has certainly been a well-recognized tradition. Jonas Salk first tested his polio vaccine on himself and his children in 1952 before giving it to strangers. Marina Voroshilova and Mikhail Chumakov, a married pair of Russian polio experts, likewise self-administered a potential vaccine in 1959 before giving their three sons sugar cubes laced with weakened poliovirus.

Likewise, in our #covidー19 times, researchers in the US, China and Russia have again begun sharing their experiences of testing their own #vaccines

MIT Technology Review reports that Preston Estep cofounder of the citizen science initiative Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVac) developed a nasal coronavirus vaccine and joined at least 20 other researchers. https://lnkd.in/g6NtBQC

Similarly, the director of the Moscow-based Gamaleya Research Institute, Alexander Gintsburg, made headlines when he claimed to have tested a new COVID-19 vaccine on himself ahead of the start of human #clinicaltrials