[HN Gopher] Making Vaccine
___________________________________________________________________
Making Vaccine
Author : di
Score : 253 points
Date : 2021-02-04 04:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com)
| Imnimo wrote:
| Without any evidence of efficacy, this article doesn't strike me
| as much different from "I went into the woods and gathered up
| some herbs and made myself an elixir that cures covid". I guess
| it's neat that you did all that stuff, but unless it actually
| helps, who cares? Doing it with science-y ingredients instead of
| herbs and ordered them online instead of harvesting them from
| plants doesn't magically mean it actually works.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| The difference however is that this article is based on the
| scientific method, and the go into the woods and gather herbs
| is based on mythology.
|
| Now the reasonableness of experimenting on yourself, even in a
| scientifically "valid" way, is certainly arguable. But the
| elements are all there; Theory of the Immune system, Hypothesis
| that it can be trained in this way, experiment that trains
| immune system in a known with with the experimental training
| element.
|
| As others have pointed out, the immune system is designed to
| kill cells it doesn't like. And it has been demonstrated in
| other scenarios that it can target cells that are vital to
| one's survival, resulting in death when the immune system
| targets and kills those cells.
|
| Thus the risk in the experiment is that it will successfully
| invoke an immune response, it just won't be the one that was
| anticipated.
|
| Not surprisingly, this is the whole point of animal trials to
| get a feel for what might happen.
| fabian2k wrote:
| It's hardly the scientific method when the outcome isn't
| actually measured. It is entirely unknown whether this whole
| procedure has done anything at all.
| habryka wrote:
| The author said he is going to try to do measurements to
| the best of what is easily possible:
|
| > So, we'll do (up to) two more blood tests. The first will
| be two weeks after our third (weekly) dose; that one is the
| "optimistic" test, in case three doses is more-than-enough
| already. That one is optimistic for another reason as well:
| synthesis/delivery of three of the nine peptides was
| delayed, so our first three doses will only use six of
| them. If the optimistic test comes back positive, great,
| we're done.
|
| > If that test comes back negative, then the next test will
| be the "more dakka" test. We'll add the other three
| peptides, take another few weeks of boosters, maybe adjust
| frequency and/or dosage - we'll consider exactly what
| changes to make if and when the optimistic test comes back
| negative. Risks are very minimal (again, see the paper), so
| throwing more dakka at it makes sense.
|
| > Consider this a pre-registration. I intend to share my
| test results here.
|
| Pre-registration for this kind of thing seems pretty good,
| and I am looking forward to seeing the results.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| TLDR: I attempted to make a COVID vaccine. It was cheap. I have
| no proof that it worked. Other risks are unknown.
|
| The story reminds me of Barry Marshall, but with less science
| behind it. https://jamesclear.com/barry-marshall
| [deleted]
| bawolff wrote:
| Honestly i'd be pretty shocked if this actually worked.
| wegs wrote:
| Why?
|
| In many cases, the hard part isn't so much making a working
| vaccine, as proving it works, scaling manufacturing, etc.
| bawolff wrote:
| Because if all it took to make a vaccine for a respiratory
| disease was stick some peptides up your nose, we would
| havev a lot more vaccines (and i dont mean just for
| covid.).
|
| Even if the other parts are harder (not sure if thats true.
| The reason proving things work is hard is because most
| initially promising candidates dont actually), it doesn't
| follow that every single vaccine candidate works.
| jcul wrote:
| The idea of personal science reminds me of Alexander Shulgin
| and his experiments in PHiKAL.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| The science is in the whitepaper: https://radvac.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/12/White-Paper-SA...
|
| That said, the interesting bits are:
|
| #1) Vaccine design at home. This is an application of what is
| known colloquially as "bio-hacking" and as a topic group is no
| less impactful than "computer hacking."
|
| #2) You can do something for < $1000 which wasn't possible
| before because of the industry that will print you rna
| sequences.
|
| Interesting stuff indeed.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The whitepaper also lists some possible short and long term
| side effects.
|
| I've TLDR'd most of them here for everyone:
|
| -Immune tolerance: diminished immunity resulting from
| exposure to an antigen
|
| -Vaccine-enhanced disease (VED): A small number of injected
| vaccines have led to enhancement of disease, meaning that
| infectivity is enhanced, or the disease is made more serious
| in people who have been vaccinated.
|
| -Adjuvant hyperstimulation or toxicity: ..certain adjuvants
| have caused hyperstimulation and other serious side effects.
| For example, alum produces a robust Th2 immune response, but
| an unbalanced ratio of Th2:Th1. A Th2 polarized response, and
| alum in particular, have been implicated in immunopathology,
| including ADE. Adjuvants can also be toxic. As one example,
| the intranasal use of a detoxified mutant form of Escherichia
| coli Heat Labile Toxin has resulted in transient Bell's
| palsy, or facial nerve paralysis.
|
| The whitepaper then argues the following: "And it becomes
| clear why the formulation described here has not been used in
| a commercial product; it is not lack of safety or efficacy,
| but other factors.."
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| >as a topic group is no less impactful than "computer
| hacking."
|
| It's way less impactful. An amateur playing with computers
| might not achieve what a pro can, but it obviously has some
| effect. Computer programs are rarely a placebo.
|
| Little these so-called bio-hackers do is known to be
| effective. That's almost by definition.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's more difficult due to low observability of the system,
| low understanding of it, and long deployment cycle.
|
| Still, it's hacking molecular nanotechnology. Possible
| developments are far more interesting than what we do with
| computers now. Let's give it some time.
| timerol wrote:
| Similar to the author of the post, I'm surprised that I haven't
| seen or heard much about bio-hacking your own vaccine. Seems like
| an interesting trend to follow, though I will be waiting for an
| FDA-approved vaccine myself.
|
| I am a little worried that https://radvac.org/vaccine/ mentions
| that their vaccine has "the most extreme complication in some
| recipients of stuffy noses." I would expect a functioning vaccine
| to elicit an immune response. I would be more comforted if, like
| the mRNA vaccine, a sizeable percentage of people trying the DIY
| vaccine developed a short fever. Though according to them this is
| expected: "Intranasal delivery of chitosan-based vaccines have
| shown mild side effects and high levels of efficacy of both
| mucosal and systemic immunity, when delivered in a prime-boost
| regimen (in both animal models and human trials). "
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Because complying with GMP is tedious and expensive. One
| mistake and you could end up with blood poisoning or a brain-
| eating microbe. Lab grade material is not the same as
| pharmaceutical grade material. You can get a lot of expensive
| anti-cancer drugs too at bulk prices from lab suppliers. That
| does not mean they are rated for human consumption. What's good
| for the lab rat is not necessarily good for the _homo sapien_.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_manufacturing_practice
|
| Granted, more biohacking and bio experimentation is a good
| thing. Innovation should not be gatekept by institutions and
| the establishment.
|
| Here's a startup idea for whoever's interested:
|
| Take lab grade pharmaceutical drugs and turn them into human-
| rate drugs at a low cost.
| caveperson2102 wrote:
| Your comment made me think of something, I'll share it as a
| "PSA" in case it helps someone stay safe.
|
| Neanderthal DNA has been linked to severe outcomes from
| COVID.[0] To me that means I'll get vaccinated (and strain
| specific boosters that may have to happen), full stop. But if I
| have a choice of more than one type of vaccine available at the
| same time (unlikely? But still), then I will try to keep this
| in mind. Other than that it just means I will be extra careful.
|
| Disclaimer: not a scientist; and anything I say here is first-
| person (I'm in the demographic groups I'm referring to).
|
| My non-scientific speculation: there is a chance the stuffy
| nose could be a proxy for high neanderthal DNA. I say that
| because other sinus and nasal issues are among the things
| linked to genes inherited from Neanderthals. They had different
| anatomies in that regard. I've read it could have been an
| adaptation to cold.
|
| I've also read that the extinction of Neanderthals may have
| been related to viruses causing respiratory
| problems/diseases.[1]
|
| Anyways, the point is, that some of these genes could correlate
| with severe outcomes from coronavirus.
|
| If a reader knows their genetics, and/or knows people who have
| mentioned they have a relatively high amount of neanderthal
| DNA... You might want to think about it or mention it to them.
| Especially if they have other respiratory or sinus things going
| on.
|
| [0]:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2818-3
|
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/neanderthal-gene-fou...
|
| [1]:
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190919080755.h...
|
| ----
|
| [btw I accidentally posted this comment to the wrong thread
| then moved it. Not trying to spam or rant, I'm just bad at
| commenting because I rarely comment. Anxiety and so on...]
| koeng wrote:
| Josiah Zayner did one that looked fairly promising (believe it
| was either an mRNA or DNA vaccine), but unfortunately he got
| banned from a lot of media (like youtube) for it, so that may
| partially explain why you haven't seen or heard much.
| lxe wrote:
| Just to summarize for my own understanding/fascination: this
| person DIY's 500 doses of nasal-spray COVID-19 vaccine for $1000
| using ingredients and tools off of Amazon and easy-to-source
| synthesized peptides with minimal skill?
| habryka wrote:
| Yes, though the vaccine is likely to have substantially less
| efficacy than current mRNA based vaccines from Pfizer and
| Moderna, though I think it's promising enough that some level
| of efficacy (like idk. maybe 50%, who knows) doesn't seem out
| of the question (whereas Moderna and Pfizer are likely 90%+).
| SahAssar wrote:
| > 50% efficacy doesn't seem out of the question
|
| Is there anything at all to back up that figure? Like,
| seriously, anything at all? I'd be very interested to hear if
| there was, but again, are there any hard numbers from studies
| of success rates of this? Or even self-reported numbers?
| avs733 wrote:
| no.
|
| the actual efficacy on this isn't 50% or 100% or 0% is is
| unknown.
|
| The value of the vaccines is in part that there is evidence
| to backup that they work, they aren't dangerous, they are
| formulated properly and consistently.
| habryka wrote:
| I suggested 50% as more of an upper bound.
|
| My current guess is I would be very surprised if these have
| very high efficacy, based on a number of studies on kind of
| similar vaccines I remember reading. I think the most
| likely outcome is that these have 0% efficacy, though I
| also wouldn't put less than 10% probability on them having
| between 20% and 50%.
|
| But yeah, these are all just random guesses. Probably some
| biologists have better models here that could allow them to
| make better predictions, but there is no hard data.
| [deleted]
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| This person DIY's 500 doses of nasal-spray something-or-other.
| There is no evidence it's effective and little evidence it's
| safe.
|
| Want a good laugh? Here's the research team:
| https://radvac.org/researchers-map/
|
| See how many obviously fake identities you can find.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They exposed their nasal tissues to peptides from the virus.
|
| You could call it an inoculation. I think it is okay to reserve
| 'vaccine' for something a bit more fine tuned and tested.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Reflecting back on vaccinating my own animals, several of the
| vaccinations involved injecting a liquid into their noses. I
| don't recall which vaccinations exactly, it's been a long
| time. This was the method tested and approved by
| veterinarians.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Revisiting this, the difference in definition between vaccine
| and inoculation probably isn't so big. I think colloquially
| it is a good difference here.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well, if we assume that your immune system takes a look at
| something that showed up in your nasal membranes once, and
| never reproduced, and said "that looks like a big problem we
| should learn how to make antibodies against". It is entirely
| possible that your immune system is smart enough to take a look
| at that and say "that looks like a bunch of inert junk", and
| does nothing, because it doesn't need to.
| fabian2k wrote:
| If there is one thing I certainly wouldn't just play around with
| it's the immune system. It's incredibly dangerous and easily
| capable of causing all kinds of harm to yourself up to killing
| you outright.
|
| A vaccine is designed to produce an immune response of the right
| magnitude. Too low and it doesn't work, too high and it'll cause
| damage. At least one of the vaccine candidates in development was
| put back to the drawing board because the immune response wasn't
| strong enough. So this is not an area that is entirely
| predictable, you have to carefully test this to know if it works.
|
| I'd also be very careful about the inhalation route. Inhalable
| insulin is a well-known failure, in part because of side effects
| due to the inhalation. And that is a protein that isn't designed
| to activate your immune system.
|
| I also hope the synthesized peptides were carefully purified, you
| really don't want to inhale e.g. residual trifluoracetic acid.
| zests wrote:
| Can you provide more information about how vaccines can cause
| damage?
| bawolff wrote:
| For vaccines in general, i imagine it depends on the type a
| lot. Live vaccines for example have the obvious risk factor
| of maybe giving you the disease, but i dont know much about
| the topic.
|
| I imagine for this article the biggest risk is you make
| something other than you expect and poision yourself, or you
| just make something that does nothing. (IANAexpert)
| m-ee wrote:
| You can actually do much worse than nothing with antibody
| dependent enhancement. Let's say you make something that at
| first glance appears similar to the virus but is a little
| off. Maybe you chose the wrong proteins, or maybe you used
| an inactivated virus and the inactivation step damaged some
| key part of the virus. You inject the vaccine and your body
| learns how to make antibodies for this particle.
|
| Now the real virus shows up, your body goes "Aha! I've seen
| this before let me make those antibodies." But it wasn't
| trained on the real virus, so the antibodies it makes
| aren't actually effective against the real thing. The virus
| replicates and your body makes more and more antibodies but
| they do nothing to stop it. Meanwhile the the antibodies
| are running rampant in your body causing inflammation and
| blood clots.
|
| This has happened before with vaccine candidates, and is
| analogous to what goes in on severe covid. The body tries
| to respond to the invading virus but does so ineffectively
| and causes potential deadly damage.
| dante_dev wrote:
| I think he was referring generically to any bad crafted
| vaccine. Not the one approved by authorities. Indeed any
| improvised drug can be harmful.
| wiml wrote:
| Some vaccines in the past have been withdrawn for causing
| autoimmune disorders, eg arthritis.
| m-ee wrote:
| The goal of the vaccine is to train the immune system to
| recognize the real virus when it shows up. If you get it
| wrong, the vaccine may not simulate the virus very accurately
| which can lead to a number of issues. You may not mount an
| immune response when the virus shows up, or worse the vaccine
| may have improperly trained your immune system and you create
| antibodies that are ineffective against the virus but wreak
| havoc on your body. This has happened before with vaccine
| candidates like RSV or Dengvaxia. It can be deadly.
|
| That's not even getting into the issues that may arise from
| skipping all the GMP/GLP guidelines. They can be tedious but
| exist for a reason.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/14/cutter-
| pol...
| fabian2k wrote:
| I said that the immune system can cause damage. Vaccines have
| a very high safety standard as they are given to large
| numbers of healthy people, so the tolerance for serious side
| effects is very low. So the development there is very
| careful, and anything that looks too dangerous is hopefully
| caught in animal experiments or at worst at phase I.
|
| A well known example of how dangerous the immune system can
| be is the following phase I trial:
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa063842
|
| That drug caused a cytokine storm in the participants in the
| phase I trial.
|
| Allergies are another example of how dangerous the immune
| system can be if it is triggered against the wrong targets.
| zests wrote:
| I have no doubts about the safety of vaccines in healthy
| people. I have some harmless curiosity about people who are
| not known to be healthy. How do you actually determine if
| someone is "too immunocompromised" for a vaccine?
|
| This must be a question with no good answer.
| majormajor wrote:
| > I have no doubts about the safety of vaccines in
| healthy people. I have some harmless curiosity about
| people who are not known to be healthy. How do you
| actually determine if someone is "too immunocompromised"
| for a vaccine?
|
| My understanding is that being too immunocompromised for
| a vaccine happens in two different ways:
|
| 1) the vaccine contains live virus and so there's danger
| that the weak immune system couldn't fight this off
|
| 2) the vaccine isn't live, so it's not dangerous on its
| own, but the immune system is too weak to recognize it,
| so it doesn't build any immunity to the real thing. (One
| doctor I was talking to said the mRNA ones should be good
| here, because your own body produces so much of the
| lookalikes that even a weak immune system should notice
| it - and then you're much better prepared to fight the
| real thing off faster.)
|
| Only the first is immediately dangerous, so the standard
| seems to be to just stay away from those.
|
| I'm not sure if much is commonly done for the second, in
| terms of looking for response, but you can get tests for
| measles antibodies and such, so that would probably be
| how?
| gus_massa wrote:
| The MMR vaccine has live virus, and before injecting the
| kids the nurse make a few additional questions about the
| health of the children and IIRC about the people that
| live with the children. (Like: Does someone in the family
| have cancer or is immunosuppressed? I don't remember the
| details.) It's safe, but they must check that the nearby
| persons are healthy.
| jerf wrote:
| I have suspected for much of the last year that a lot of
| people are running on an unexamined "Only crazy people
| think vaccines cause autism -> Only crazy people think
| vaccines are ever dangerous in any way -> All vaccines are
| perfectly safe" psuedo-syllogism.
|
| This is false.
|
| Put another way, the very fact that we run such massive
| tests on them before deploying them is itself evidence that
| the wrong ones can be very dangerous. (Mostly, as I
| understand it, "very dangerous" to a small set of people
| who will have very large reactions, even if most people are
| fine. The ones that are very dangerous to everyone never
| gets past the initial phases at all, of course.) We're not
| doing that because vaccines are all perfectly safe under
| all conditions, but we just want to hold them back for a
| year for no reason. We're doing it because we need to be
| very careful with them.
|
| Though I'd also observe a non-trivial component of that
| danger is also because we're injecting them. Bypassing the
| body's co-evolved with the environment's defenses is not to
| be done lightly. This sort of inhaled vaccine is likely to
| be much _less_ dangerous. I won 't say "safe", but _less_
| dangerous; the body already has to deal with essentially
| arbitrary small amino acid sequences being inhaled all the
| time. I 'd still be a bit worried about sythesizing things
| that we haven't co-evolved with.
|
| (If you don't know what co-evolution is, I'd suggesting
| taking a moment to learn about it:
| https://www.britannica.com/science/coevolution It's a very
| important part of understanding the disease landscape
| holistically.)
| bawolff wrote:
| [Deleted. I didn't fully read the parents post, and
| responded emotionally. That was wrong of me and I
| apologize]
| yters wrote:
| I personally know very intelligent and highly educated
| people who went to top universities who are convinced
| vaccines caused mental retardation in their children.
| They may be wrong, but I would not call them nutjobs.
| pwython wrote:
| > "very intelligent and highly educated people who went
| to top universities"
|
| Imagine trusting a "rocket scientist" to even weigh in on
| medical topics because they are "very intelligent" in
| their totally unrelated field. This is an unfortunate
| misconception that plagues conspiracy theory extremists
| who reference PhD graduates in their arguments against
| things like 5G brain control.... pointing to people with
| doctoral degrees in Music or something.
| bawolff wrote:
| Being smart and being crazy are not mutually exclusive
| macintux wrote:
| I think it's more accurate to say that intelligence is
| not adequate defense against trusting the wrong sources
| of information, and people are _extremely_ resistant to
| changing their minds once they've placed a stake in the
| ground.
| bawolff wrote:
| I'd go with both. There are plenty of smart people who i
| would consider delusional. Which is separate from people
| stuck in their views.
|
| However, as the saying goes, science advances one funeral
| at a time.
| jerf wrote:
| If you think carefully, you may realize that what you
| said is actually entirely unrelated to what I said.
|
| Perhaps you are not one of the people running on the
| unexamined assumption. I still say it's clearly operative
| in many people.
|
| I call it "unexamined" precisely because once pulled up
| the conscious level, it is obviously false. Nevertheless,
| pulling such things up to the conscious level is not easy
| and usually takes effort. Or, to put it another why,
| while I cringe every time I adopt this terminology,
| Kahneman's System 1 is pretty sloppy about such things.
| System 2, when presented with a problem directly, can
| often see quickly that System 1 is being irrational...
| but it first must be presented with the problem directly.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes you are right. I like to think im better than that,
| but in this instance i clearly wasn't.
|
| If i can quibble though, i think "all" can be a bit of a
| loaded word in this context, because people often use it
| to mean, all well known ones or something along those
| lines and not all potential ones including random stuff
| people make in their backyards.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| I recall a researcher talking about previous attempts at
| creating coronavirus vaccines. How they resulted not in
| immunity, but in training the immune system to _over_ respond
| when a real infection came along.
|
| After a bit of digging I found this:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/
|
| > An early concern for application of a SARS-CoV vaccine was
| the experience with other coronavirus infections which induced
| enhanced disease and immunopathology in animals when challenged
| with infectious virus
|
| I didn't dig deep enough to see if any experimental vaccines
| caused similar issues, but it definitely appears to be a
| concern.
|
| So yeah, I'd be _very_ cautious with any homebrew vaccine. You
| might accidentally train your immune system to self destruct
| when you get exposed to a real SARS-CoV-2.
|
| That said, I have little to no experience with biology, so it's
| entirely possible that radvac based vaccinations have already
| been demonstrated not to have this particular problem.
| ufo wrote:
| A recent attempt at a dengue vaccine faced a similar problem.
| The most dangerous kind of dengue fever happens when you are
| infected a second time, by a different variant than you were
| infected the first time. It turns out that the vaccine ended
| up having a similar effect as catching dengue for the first
| time. People who never had dengue and got vaccinated had a
| lower chance of catching the disease in the future. But if
| they did catch it there was a higher risk of it being the
| more dangerous version. The end result is that the vaccine is
| now only recommended for people who already had dengue
| before.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengvaxia
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| What is the rationale for doing this?
| CivBase wrote:
| Nations have spent thousands of dollars per person on just
| mitigation efforts and economic stimulus. Meanwhile we have had
| the ability for months to vaccinate an entire household for a
| measly $1k?
|
| What's the catch? Is it significantly riskier than the Pfizer or
| Moderna vaccines? Is it easy to make a mistake while producing
| this and end up with something ineffective or harmful? Is it just
| not particularly effective?
| bawolff wrote:
| Any evidence that this "vaccine" actually works and does
| anything.
| avs733 wrote:
| Quality control. Precision. Repeatability. Certification.
| Knowledge. Distribution. Efficacy. Evidence.
|
| It's like the difference between heroin and opioids
| asitov wrote:
| Are you saying you wouldn't take the heroin version of a
| covid vax?
| bawolff wrote:
| Heroin actually gets the job done and you can tell if its
| working. Not so with this.
| xxpor wrote:
| It's kind of funny, pharmaceuticals have similar economics to
| software now that I think about it: extremely high upfront
| fixed costs, minimal marginal costs.
| kazinator wrote:
| Yes; there are similar risks. Working on something for
| years that might not work, or not pass clinical trials or
| whatever.
|
| The only difference is that the researcher's limit for not
| understanding the code might be 150,000 lines, but only 50
| atoms for not understanding the molecule. :)
| _Microft wrote:
| They could not even test themselves to see whether they
| developed immunity against SARS-Cov2. All we know is that
| someone sprayed something up their nose and hoped that it
| actually had the effect that they wanted. This is the catch.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| But the point is, even if there's a 1% chance that this
| plausibly works, the government should be _throwing_ money at
| bio-hackers like this. Or at the very least exempting them
| from the regulations that stand in their way. Very likely
| these moonshots won 't work. But they're still dirt cheap
| relative to the economic impact of Covid. If there's a way to
| disrupt the current slow approach to vaccine production, we
| should be exploring it.
|
| Find a few thousand smart, maybe insane, biohackers. Give
| them each a $100k grant. Give them total immunity from FDA
| regulation. Free them from all the bureaucratic and ethical
| shackles that slow down establishment science. At a cost of
| $300 million, even a 1% chance that one of them figures out a
| way to double the rate of vaccination, constitutes a 1000%+
| return on investment.
| jiofih wrote:
| If they have total immunity from FDA regulations, how are
| you going to be confident it actually works and is safe at
| scale? The regulations are there for good reasons.
|
| I haven't heard of a single one of the available vaccines
| being held back by regulations, only the speed at which
| they could go through human trials.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > I haven't heard of a single one of the available
| vaccines being held back by regulations, only the speed
| at which they could go through human trials.
|
| The vaccine trials were drastically slowed down by the
| regulations against human challenge trials.
| Avshalom wrote:
| 1% is not the lowest percent.
| _Microft wrote:
| Everyone loves an underdog but I can not imagine that this
| could possibly work. Why do you think bio-hackers could
| come up with something that thousands of smart people in
| the industry could not? The money would almost certainly be
| better spent on upgrading production facilities in advance
| and starting vaccine production long before approval.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The mRNA vaccines were completed within a week or two with
| modern technology. It took nearly a year to test: prove that it
| was safe, prove that it was effective (preventing deaths,
| preventing hospitalizations, preventing symptoms).
|
| This blogpost completely ignores the difficult proof issue.
| nostromo wrote:
| We could have tested it in two weeks with paid volunteers.
|
| The pay for brave vaccine testers could have literally been
| $1m and we'd have saved several trillion bucks and
| potentially over a million lives. Hell, make it $10m or $100m
| and you'd still save a ton of money.
|
| We've done this for several other viruses:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study
| aqme28 wrote:
| I don't think that's true. You still need to study the
| testers over a period of time. With a human challenge study
| you can get by with fewer testers and a little less time,
| but it won't be that different.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| We could test that it's safe, yes. Effective, no. You have
| to have the people out in the community, for both the
| vaccinated group and the control group, and then compare
| who gets infected in each group. The testing actually took
| less time than they expected due to the unfortunately-high
| prevalence of COVID-19 in the community.
| nostromo wrote:
| No, the testers would be directly exposed as part of the
| trial, which is why they'd be compensated -- as opposed
| to waiting around for 9 months for some percent of people
| to be exposed.
| dragontamer wrote:
| And the control / placebo group?
|
| You're really going to force testers to potentially pick
| up the placebo, and then inject them with COVID19
| forcefully? I mean yeah, it'd work, but its generally
| considered immoral under today's philosophy of science.
| bmj wrote:
| Remember that in, say, a cancer treatment trial, patients
| are signing up to potentially _not_ receive the treatment
| depending on the run-in and randomization phases. I 'm
| not suggesting these patients are forced into that
| decision; rather, I'm just pointing that controlled,
| randomized trials have some ethical fuzziness around
| them.
| dragontamer wrote:
| But they already have cancer, and the treatment may (or
| may not) help them.
|
| What's being proposed here is for people to sign up and
| then inject a potentially deadly disease into them.
| gojomo wrote:
| But until treatments/vaccines were developed, everyone on
| Earth had the disease-equivalent, sometimes-fatal status
| of "no prior immunity to COVID".
|
| Sure, the scale is massively different for a young
| helathy person: "susceptible to COVID" would mean a
| moderate chance of catching (growing over time) the
| disease, and then a small chance fo death or previous
| complications. But the "susceptibility" is a "health
| condition" with nonzero risk-of-death.
|
| And for society as a whole, COVID passed cancer as a
| cause of death last year, and in January 2021 has been
| killing about twice as many people as all cancers
| _combined_.
|
| So "diagnosed-with-cancer" versus "susceptible-to-COVID"
| shouldn't be _that_ different in terms of the kinds of
| risks we 'd let informed people take to address that
| danger.
| mysterypie wrote:
| Not forcefully. He said paid volunteers. Why does the
| idea of challenge trials cause a furious reaction? Let's
| compare it to the space shuttle: 135 missions with 2
| missions in which everyone died. That's a case fatality
| rate of 1.5% -- in the neighborhood of the Covid CFR. And
| I'd expect a challenge trial on young healthy volunteers
| to have a _much_ lower CFR. Why is risking people for the
| shuttle OK, but risking people for a vaccine that
| benefits all of humanity not OK?
| nostromo wrote:
| For this age range, the survival rate for everyone is
| 99.98%. It'd be even higher if your screened aggressively
| for comorbidities / general health and provided everyone
| with top notch healthcare _knowing in advance they have
| been exposed_.
|
| I would sign up for this in a heartbeat. Not only for the
| cash payment -- but you'd be a local hero.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Why wouldn't they be willing volunteers?
|
| It would be quite possible for it to clearly be informed
| consent also, at least to the extent the disease was
| characterized at that point in time.
|
| The reason people keep bringing it up is that the
| consequences of the pandemic have been much worse than
| the consequences of allowing a few thousand people to
| intentionally expose themselves to an infection in a
| controlled setting1. It's not guaranteed that challenge
| trials would have mitigated the pandemic, but it's weird
| to just outright circumscribe the possibility when the
| ongoing downside is huge.
|
| 1. I use the odd phrasing here because lots of people
| pretty much choose to expose themselves to the infection
| anyway; maybe not explicitly, but close enough.
| marvin wrote:
| Would it be immoral if they were offered a million
| dollars?Honest question, because it feels like the
| philosophy might not match up with common experience. It
| feels like an interesting question. People voluntarily
| risk worse for less pay in other fields, e.g. the
| military.
|
| And if it wasn't immoral, what is the dollar limit?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Money is worth different amounts to different people.
|
| Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos will never risk their life for
| "only" a million bucks. Find a depressed + suicidal dude
| somewhere else, and they may be personally willing to
| risk their life for just $100.
|
| Making an industry of people who are willing to harm
| themselves for money is... probably not the business we
| should be encouraging. And that's assuming everyone is
| "playing nice". At a minimum, it means that we'll be
| inclined to start experimenting upon the poor and
| depressed (and then shedding away moral qualms because
| they signed a piece of paper).
|
| Historically speaking in the USA, we have legacies like
| the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where African Americans were
| chosen as the control group and lied to about getting a
| Syphilis treatment: leading to a generation+ long
| distrust in science.
|
| Yeah yeah, we can't "assume" scientists will be racist
| jackasses today. But... we still have to account for what
| happened in our history and why certain testing
| methodologies have become taboo.
| namesbc wrote:
| In order to use this method to test a vaccine for
| deployment to people over 65, you need people over 65 in
| your control group.
|
| This means you are choosing people to murder.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| A ridiculous exaggeration; you're asking for volunteers
| to take a risk. Not killing them.
|
| People can decide for themselves to take risks. You may
| not agree with the choices they make and that is your
| problem. Not theirs.
| reillyse wrote:
| Total ethical failure here. You are supposed to not make
| people ill.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Disregarding a way to accelerate vaccine development by
| months, and save literally hundreds of thousands of lives
| along the way, because one thoughtlessly applies cliches
| like "you are supposed to not make people ill", even
| though the people who you make ill are all volunteers,
| well aware of the risk, and handsomely compensated for
| it, is the real total ethical failure.
|
| It's as if when there are some "professional" ethicists
| in the area who give "professional" ethical guidance,
| people lose their natural moral sense, and defer to their
| "professional" guidance no matter how silly it is if you
| apply even modicum of scrutiny.
| nostromo wrote:
| 2,000,000+ people are dead because we didn't take this
| path.
|
| The risk to testers under 40 would have been negligible.
| I'm not being flippant about other peoples' lives -- I
| would have signed up myself if the compensation was high
| enough.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > The risk to testers under 40 would have been
| negligible.
|
| Luke Letlow (age 41) says otherwise, since he's dead.
| Okay, he's above 40, but he's high-profile and easy for
| me to remember. Plenty of sub 40 year olds have died.
|
| Even among the survivors... plenty of young and healthy
| 20-30 year olds are having month-long recoveries, unable
| to breath at their old capacity.
|
| Purposefully damaging the control group (who by
| definition, must NOT receive the vaccine) is immoral.
| Whether people in the control group believe in the
| potential harms of the disease or not.
| [deleted]
| nostromo wrote:
| "One person died" isn't a refutation, it's just appeal to
| emotion.
|
| Under 40 the survival rate is 99.98% for everyone --
| including the already ill. If you screened for
| comorbidities and gave people great healthcare, you could
| get that 99.999% or higher. And save millions of lives
| (and trillions of dollars) by doing so.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Under 40 the survival rate is 99.98% for everyone --
| including the already ill
|
| I doubt that. But I'm not entirely sure how to calculate
| the numbers you just said.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
|
| I realize this page changes, so I've taken a screenshot
| here: https://imgur.com/0iM5FHC
|
| This is the chart of who died in January 2021. Yes, most
| deaths are aged 65+, but there's been deaths in all age
| categories. I doubt its 99.98% as you suggest (especially
| since the current case-mortality-rate is ~2.5%, at least
| for my state)
|
| The official CDC numbers are stratified from 35 to 44,
| I'm not entirely sure who you are citing to get "below
| 40" age groups.
| aqme28 wrote:
| I'm amazed at the price here. $1k for 500 doses, and the author
| stated in the comments that they could have saved a lot more per
| dose if they bought in bulk.
|
| It seems like a failure of the system that no one is trying for
| FDA approval or industrialization.
| [deleted]
| hannob wrote:
| The prices for Astrazeneca vaccines are within the same range.
|
| There are also efforts for some simple to produce vaccines
| underway, it's just not the ones you'll likely see used widely
| in industrialized countries. An example is the chinese
| Coronavac vaccine.
|
| Though keep in mind making vaccines isn't just producing them,
| it's also running trials. It pretty much doesn't matter how
| cheap your production is, it will hardly affect the cost of the
| trial. And after all they're there so you actually know whether
| your vaccine works - and that part certainly shouldn't be
| skipped.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| They couldn't have bought in bulk "The only unusual hiccup was
| an email about customs restrictions on COVID-related peptides.
| Apparently the company was not allowed to send us 9 mg in one
| vial, but could send us two vials of 4.5 mg each for each
| peptide."
|
| The big problems with COVID vaccines is making sure they are
| safe and effective, and logistics. The author doesn't do any of
| these. There is a scale difference of 7 orders of magnitude
| compared to what we need. And he is taking risks that would be
| unreasonable for a commercial vaccine and efficiency is "let's
| see if it does something".
|
| It is an experiment and it has scientific value, maybe some of
| the mainstream vaccine candidates started out like this. But it
| cannot be compared to current widespread vaccination efforts.
|
| As for the money, it is a common fallacy to think that throwing
| money at a problem will solve it. Same as an often seen
| argument "it will take $X billion to end world hunger". World
| hunger is solved with food, not money, people don't eat money.
| On a small scale, you just have to go to the grocery store and
| spend money to feed a starving person. On a large scale there
| simply not enough food available unless we do some major
| changes regarding agriculture and distribution, throwing in
| money will just cause price inflation. Same thing with
| vaccines.
| readams wrote:
| Food supply is not the problem with world hunger. There's
| more than enough food to go around, and if there weren't
| that's actually a problem that money would solve very well.
| The problem is getting the food to the people regardless of
| circumstance, such as war, repressive regimes, natural
| disasters, and other problems.
|
| Vaccines are similar: vaccinating the world will be
| logistically very very hard. But vaccinating first-world
| countries is a lot easier, and supply of vaccine in rich
| countries absolutely is a problem that can be solved with
| more money and resources. The fact that we've had so much
| trouble solving it is a political problem.
| goatcode wrote:
| > FDA approval
|
| Of what?
|
| Edit: I get it now, sorry. I think FDA approval would bump up
| the price quite a bit.
| palcu wrote:
| This Lesswrong thread has a good discussion about the subject.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/niQ3heWwF6SydhS7R/making-vac...
| fredgrott wrote:
| it's not you are implying.. they use peptide..real vaccines use
| mRNA thus more effective than this one at say about 10%
| effectiveness..
|
| Sorry for being brief as it would take a more in depth hour
| explanation of why the difference in effectiveness..
|
| CDC had a recent article on the differences between this
| approach and the approach they and pharms chose namely mRNA
| raylad wrote:
| >real vaccines use mRNA thus more effective than this one at
| say about 10% effectiveness..
|
| Not true. Novavax is just peptides and is 96% effective
| against the original Wuhan covid-19 strain.
| sct202 wrote:
| Novavax is growing whole modified spike proteins and
| sticking a dozen of them on to a nanoparticle. The article
| mentions their peptide is only a small fraction of the size
| of the spike protein.
| goatcode wrote:
| > In principle one can run a similar antibody test on a mucus
| sample, but <reasons>
|
| I'd really like to know what those reasons are. It seems like a
| pretty important detail.
| pas wrote:
| tl;dr a partial/localized immune response just in the nose; and
| to confirm the vaccine worked you want to be sure
|
| It seems "the basic issue is that immunity response in the
| mucus lining (i.e. nose, lung, airway surfaces) can occur
| independently of response in the bloodstream".
|
| Which I guess means a false positive for post-vaccination
| verification. (The sentence you have copied is shortly after
| this: "The key problem is how to check that the vaccine
| worked.")
|
| If your question is why it's possible to have a partial immune
| response, then it's because the immune system was not activated
| fully. The immune response might only consist of "sIgA
| antibodies in nasalwash and saliva", sIgA is secreted IgA, and
| IgA "is an antibody that plays a crucial role in the immune
| function of mucous membranes".
|
| So if mucous membrane successfully "handles" the vaccine, then
| -- layman speculation -- it's possible nothing [not enough]
| gets into the bloodstream/lymph.
| [deleted]
| trash_cat wrote:
| This is actually super exciting. However, there is literally 0
| evidence that this works. Am I missing something?
| gregwebs wrote:
| All the current vaccines being rolled out give non-sterilizing
| immunity. This means the vaccinated still get infected in the
| upper respiratory tract and still transmit the virus (but perhaps
| 50% less transmission). The vaccine protects them from developing
| a severe infection (COVID). The implication of this is that we
| will still be dealing with this virus for many years to come.
|
| I hope the drug companies are working on a vaccine similar to the
| one in the article that has the potential to provide sterilizing
| immunity since it works in the upper respiratory tract.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They did not study it, there is not data to make conclusive
| statements. There really isn't data to state a quantified
| reduction in transmission (None!).
| fpgaminer wrote:
| I know some people object to biohacking like this, but I'm not
| convinced that we should be concerned. In general I believe that,
| in a free society, people should be allowed to do as they please
| as long as their actions don't endanger or harm others. There's a
| lot of nuance and caveats there, though. Perhaps this is one?
|
| I guess I don't see an inherent problem with vaccine hacking. I'm
| reminded of the person who biohacked their lactose intolerance by
| doing gene modification on their gut. Even though it's not
| something I'd experiment on myself with, I was happy to learn
| from someone else's experience. And they're only endangering
| themselves; that experiment didn't pose a threat to anyone else
| or society.
|
| There's perhaps an argument that these kinds of things do have an
| impact on others, because it might convince others to follow the
| author's footsteps. Well I highly doubt any joe or jane shmo is
| going to homebrew a vaccine. This is so niche that only a scarce
| few would even have the capability to do it. And again, if
| someone wants to do something stupid to themselves, who am I to
| stop them?
|
| The only real danger is these homebrew vaxxed people mixing with
| herd immunity. But that's easily handled by only recognizing
| government approved vaccines. You're welcome to vax yourself, but
| if you want access to restricted public activities you'll need an
| official vaccine. Or if we mandate vaccination (for example the
| required immunizations at school), again you need an official
| vaccine.
|
| But if you want to homebrew vaxx yourself against the yearly flu,
| or even want to homebrew vax COVID-19 and get the official one
| later when it's more available, I don't see the problem with any
| of that.
|
| I'm mostly curious for rebuttals to this logic. Are there serious
| concerns about biohacking like this that I'm missing? Or is this
| one of the caveats where, even though it doesn't pose a danger to
| others, it's a serious enough danger to self that we should
| intervene?
|
| P.S. As a side note, while reading this article I couldn't help
| but imagine a future where every hospital has a "vaccine machine"
| which gets fed raw materials and spits out the vaccine de jure on
| demand. That seems doable with this radvac protocol. It can
| download the latest approved peptide sequences, assemble and
| purify the peptides and mix up a vaccine. A vaccine 3D printer of
| sorts. Or maybe mRNA vaccines can be made this way? You come in
| once a year, the machine looks up your records and downloads a
| list of virus genomes from the past year that you hadn't been
| vaccinated against. Prints out the custom set of mRNA sequences,
| mixes it up, and you inject it. That's the future I'm far more
| interested in than a future where everyone biohacks themselves
| with instructions downloaded from vaccinebay.
| Aachen wrote:
| One rebuttal for this logic could be that everything you do has
| side effects. Messing up your health costs society tons of
| money in lost tax income and the burden on healthcare.
|
| But as a starting point, I've thought the same in the past and
| I don't think it's bad. Just that crossing a red light, even if
| no one was harmed that particular instance, may still be judged
| to be reckless and fineable, and even if it's only about your
| own dead body (let's say you didn't run in front of a cyclist),
| that's still an impact in the way described above.
| Nevertheless, if you use "don't bother others" as a general
| rule for what should probably be legal and then define
| exceptions for particular situations and reasons, or even if
| you just look for those side effects, it might be useful.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| This seems to be a form of magical thinking cloaked in science.
| It might even screw up them getting the real covid vaccine later.
| namesbc wrote:
| This is like a person writing a 100 line python program to search
| a text file, and claiming they finished a competitor for Google.
| [deleted]
| angry_octet wrote:
| Even if no one dies from this, he and the contrarian happy
| clappers on lesswrong deserve a special recognition for ingenuity
| at the Darwin Awards. The field is crowded for 2020, what with
| HCQ and ivermectin truthers, statistical frauds, denialists and
| blind optimists, but there is a chance they'll dominate the anti-
| vaxxers in 2021.
| jancsika wrote:
| > contrarian happy clappers on lesswrong
|
| I don't understand why, but that insult apparently smells
| correct to a guard dog in my brain.
|
| Do you have an ELI5 for what the insult means?
| traverseda wrote:
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Happy%20clap.
| ..
| angry_octet wrote:
| Unquestioning joy at the truth of the sermon, convolved with
| belief that their own brilliance has been ignored and they
| can see truth more clearly.
|
| ELI5: a cult that believes that they know the secrets of the
| world and everyone else is dumb.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| This is a nice analogy to the people who in software propagate
| the 'enterprise' mindset. In their minds, their way is the only
| way and everyone should and will just conform to their needs.
|
| Reality shows that's not always true, witness for instance the
| death of the irreplaceable technologies Internet Explorer and
| Flash.
|
| Argue all you want but these vaccines have been taken by
| hundreds of people with no ill effect already. So for the
| people in the article the risks are not worse than the people
| in the trials for the commercial vaccines.
|
| I don't know about the scarcity of the ingredients in this
| vaccine but if I was in government I'd have directed an
| institute to run a report on theoretic safety and then a trial
| on volunteers. That's a better option than locking up the
| population for over a year while we wait for the commercial
| vaccines.
| t_serpico wrote:
| It would probably be safer for him to actually get covid than
| develop your own diy vaccine...
| flr03 wrote:
| I'm not suprised to see this post so popular on Less Wrong/the
| rational community. I can easily imagine the fascination they
| have for crazy scientists doing experimentations on them
| selves, cutting all the corners and operating at fair distance
| of ethical concerns. I'm not very convinced by the
| "Motivations" section of the article by the way, but that's a
| nice stunt nonetheless, and quite fascinating indeed.
| angry_octet wrote:
| They've romanticised the stories of scientists self-testing
| and mixed it with the stories of Jenner and Fleming,
| misinterpreting their unethical (Jenner) and credit grabbing
| (Fleming) ways as brilliant contrarianism.
| kneel wrote:
| Curious whether short peptides are sufficient to generate a
| formidable immune response.
|
| Looking at the paper cited, it's not trivial to detect T-cell
| immunity so I'm not sure a general antibody test would be able to
| pick up an immune response.
|
| It's probably better than doing nothing, but it's not clear
| whether it's even in the same ballpark as a Pfizer vaccine.
|
| edit: I'm not sure about t-cell vs b-cell responses in
| immunoassays, can anyone with experience point out what is going
| on with these peptides?
| jfjrkrkfjf wrote:
| Not an expert, but I've read that the antigen presenting cells
| break down the antigen into short peptides too (8-20 amino
| acids) when creating antibodies.
|
| One might however still ask if the body is better at selecting
| exactly which portions are cut and chosen than however these
| were selected.
|
| Also, if the antigen is small from the start, that might have
| implications too (like being ignored).
| deadlyvaccine wrote:
| I really hope no vaccine will work and all over-80 people will
| pay for all the suffering they have done for 98% of the
| population. People are living in conditions similar to jail
| second year in a row!
| [deleted]
| jiofih wrote:
| > Doing it for ourselves doesn't capture all the benefits - lots
| of fun stuff is still closed/cancelled - but it's enough to go
| out, socialize, and generally enjoy life without worrying about
| COVID.
|
| Yes, I look forward to having random people skirt the social
| distancing rules because they sniffed their own homemade vaccine
| over the weekend.
| Aachen wrote:
| They spent a thousand bucks on this and many weeks and blood
| tests. I agree with your general point but do give them some
| credit.
| jiofih wrote:
| No mention of blood test results in the post.
| Aachen wrote:
| Yeah, the results aren't in yet.
|
| > Consider this a pre-registration. I intend to share my
| test results here.
|
| Of course, without checking/testing this would be a
| completely useless exercise. Or if you test in the wrong
| way, like a nose swab after doing nose spray vaccination.
| OP instead will do blood tests and does seem to have
| thought this through to an extent that I find reasonable.
|
| However, henceforth considering yourself safe indefinitely
| and normalizing socializing during the pandemic and
| normalizing the homebrewing of vaccines... that's where I'm
| not certain about the conclusion (iff it proves effective
| in the first place - e.g. I also see no mention of false
| positive rates in the test they'll use).
| tinus_hn wrote:
| He could use the anal test introduced in China
| devilduck wrote:
| Why am I supposed to take this seriously? LessWrong is not
| exactly known for being a sane place (as much as many of them
| would love to believe they are smart) and this guy states it as a
| "fun project" which make it sound extremely suspect.
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