Is it ever OK for scientists to experiment on themselves?

November 18, 2024

Researcher using a pipette and a petri dish

(The Conversation) – Halassy is a success story of self-experimentation in medicine. She joins other examples, like Barry Marshall, who won the 2005 Noble prize in medicine following his work ingesting the Helicobacter bacterium to prove its role in gastritis and peptic ulcers. This work is estimated to have saved millions of lives.

Yet, self-experimentation is often viewed with suspicion. Concerns about self-experimentation are growing because it is no longer solely the domain of professional scientists. The availability of biotechnologies, and the prevalence of open-source science has led to the development of “bio-hacking” communities engaging in various forms of self-experimentation.

Does self-experimentation raise ethical concerns? To answer this question, it is useful to return to first principles of research ethics. (Read More)