Rough comments here... I admire the spirit of DIY in his project. He asked for and received good data, consumed the process and risk, and proceeded. He wasn't trying to save the world, he took a calculated risk on himself, and wrote a blog post about it. I'm most happy to have the process demystified for me. I don't think the world would be a better place if more people made their own vaccines unless there was some ubiquitous, reliable material testing procedure that we can't imagine yet. I do think I'd like a person like that to be my neighbor if society were to collapse, or maybe in general that would just be a good time.
Making Vaccine
251–260 of 378 posts
Re: Making Vaccine
#252This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…
From https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-... > When [an outsider] asserts an opinion, he has only one thing he's optimizing for - being right. > When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does.
This is a complete straw man, we’ve no idea of the complex layers and motivations of person one and two. The outsider could be a troll and the Director of the CDC probably got there on merit, looking after their power might not be an issue at all; people could just respect and like her as a talented leader. You just don’t know, but simplifying things like this does make “proving” yourself right a lot easier.
Re: Making Vaccine
#253Many of the negative comments here seem to have missed something important: > Consider this a pre-registration. I intend to share my test results here. How about, instead of totally dismissing this - in classic HN fashion - with "this can never work" or "this is magical thinking", we let the guy share his results? If it works, that will be a massively important result. If not, it won't be surprising, but _at least he…
> If it works, that will be a massively important result. If not, it won't be surprising, but _at least he will have tried_. I for one think the expected value leans overwhelmingly in favor of at least one person actually trying.
It won't be an important result, at all.
Vaccines are tested on the thousands, one person having a positive response isn't interesting at all, especially when you already have effective vaccines rolling out globally.
Re: Making Vaccine
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 da…
Only crazy people think vaccines cause autism. Nobody thinks vaccines are 100% safe. That’s a red herring. Vaccines that go through proper testing have a very high bar for safety but nothing is 100%.
> Only crazy people think vaccines cause autism.
This is simply not true. I've talked to a psychologist who treated kids with autism about this. Autism is usually diagnosed at a young age when children develop and also get vaccinated. This leads to bias in some of their parents who are looking for someone or something to blame for their misfortune. Combine this with the fact that in the last two decades diagnostic for autism was extended to other less severe disorders such as Asperger's. If adults would develop autism after getting vaccinated, then it would support this crackpot theory, but they don't.
Re: Making Vaccine
#255This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…
The truly rational (and ethical) way to get a vaccine early would have been to volunteer in an early-stage trial. You'd even get paid! The risk would be lower, and the likely efficacy would be higher, because even an unproven candidate is more likely to work than something you cooked up in your kitchen. In some early stages there isn't even the risk that you would be in the placebo arm. And of course there's the extr…
I don't think it was that easy to get in. There are usually only a few thousand in early stage trials and millions who would be up for it.
Re: Making Vaccine
#256If the goal is immunity to Covid-19, isn't it simpler to just: catch it?
To be on the safe side, they could have lowered the risks of a bad outcome by things like (1) catching a smaller viral load (2) actually prepare for it and catch it at a convenient time etc. (Someone who's actually interested would research this longer.)
Surely it's safer than the home cooked vaccine, and surely the favorable option on a risk vs potential benefit analysis. Would make for a boring blog post though.
Re: Making Vaccine
#257Besides the obvious safety concerns, I also have some serious doubts about the efficacy. It's quite well known that the glycosylation of the spike protein ("decorating" sugar structures) contributes significantly to immunerecognition (see e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71748-7).
By chemically synthesizing naked (non-glycosylated) protein fragments, you likely end up with the wrong antigen.
Re: Making Vaccine
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
From https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-... > When [an outsider] asserts an opinion, he has only one thing he's optimizing for - being right. > When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does.
This is a complete straw man, we’ve no idea of the complex layers and motivations of person one and two. The outsider could be a troll and the Director of the CDC probably got there on merit, looking after their power might not be an issue at all; people could just respect and like her as a talented leader. You just don’t know, but simplifying things like this does make “proving” yourself right a lot easier.
> looking after their power might not be an issue at all; people could just respect and like her as a talented leader
This does sound good, though I have seen zero examples of this fairy tale coming true in the real life around me.
Re: Making Vaccine
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What happens if a sub-sequence of peptide matches with one of our own's body proteins and our immune system starts building antibody against it? The peptide sequences are listed on the whitepaper, so it’s a matter of BLASTing[1] them against the human proteome to check for possible matches. I just did it and there doesn’t seem to be any statistically significant hit. [1]: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
Ok great to know. But my intention here is to convey that it is dangerous to biohacking a molecule/compound that a user is going to put in his/her body. The peptides after synthesis needs to be rigorously tested(QC/QA) for the desired sequences and to make sure the absence of any undesired epiotopes mixed.
I agree on those points. That’s why I only focused on the cross-reactivity part of your post. Call it a nitpick, if you want.
Re: Making Vaccine
#260This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…
> can therefore harness the power of science to make a vaccine
The title is misleading. He didn't really make the vaccine. The peptide sequences were designed by people with real biology credentials [1,2]. He ordered the peptides online. All he did himself was mix the peptides with some liquids [3] and spray his nose.
[2] e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Estep, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Church_(geneticist)
[3] Ok, now I am misleading. There is also chitosan, vinegar, activated charcoal, and more steps than just mixing proteins with liquids.