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I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

josiahzayner.com

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Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#11

Post by johannes1234321 »

djsumdog wrote: post #6
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #2

The limiting factor in drug development is not creating the drug, but in testing it. I'd like to see a biohacking approach to drug testing.

When Jenner created (really discovered) the original SmallPox vaccine, he basically just inoculated people with Cowpox and Horsepox. That was over 180 years ago. There were no phases, clinical trials or testing standards back then. Real medicine and snake oil were difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish. Before Jenner, there were groups inoculating people with actual Smallpox (typically in the nose, because it w…

> A lot of people may have died from many of these early tests, but so many people were dying it didn't quite matter.

This is the old ethics question: There is a highjacked planebfull of passengers flying towards a football stadium. Should it be shut down?

Many contemporary societies lean towards not shooting as you can't compare deaths.

Regarding vaccines the current approach is to first try it out on animals and then do controlled clinical studies with healthy test subjects etc. Still some people do suffer from those for the greater good.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#12

Post by gwilikers »

> I know it sounds a bit dramatic but there really is a class war going on. [...] Your life, your child’s life, your mother, your loved one depends on how much money you make. The government and Pharma companies aren’t going to help you when you can’t afford it either.

> If one were to replicate the experiment from scratch, the total individual cost would end up being around $3500, the major costs being $1600 for DNA synthesis and $1200 for the kits to measure coronavirus spike protein antibodies.

Ah yes, fighting the good fight by spending several thousand dollars of disposable income on your hobby, to show people that the government-subsidized vaccine is class violence. :)

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#13

Post by colincooke »

StavrosK wrote: post #7

This was flagged (I don't know why), but it seems like a very interesting article to me and would like to read the discussion here, so I vouched for it. I don't know enough about the science to opine on the content, but I think it's worth a second chance.

The article checks two bad boxes for me.

1. It disparages the work of individuals/organizations unjustly, who have done society a great service throughout this trying time. An attitude which has the potential to feed anti-vax sentiment/scepticism. 2. It suggests and endorses, without the proper caveats, something which is potentially dangerous, that is injecting yourself with a homegrown vaccine.

Might be interesting to read a commentary on this individuals experience from a measured place (a practicing scientist for example breaking down the risks of what he/his group did), but the content as it stands doesn't deserve to be promoted in my opinion.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#14

Post by stavros »

colincooke wrote: post #13
StavrosK wrote: post #7

This was flagged (I don't know why), but it seems like a very interesting article to me and would like to read the discussion here, so I vouched for it. I don't know enough about the science to opine on the content, but I think it's worth a second chance.

The article checks two bad boxes for me. 1. It disparages the work of individuals/organizations unjustly, who have done society a great service throughout this trying time. An attitude which has the potential to feed anti-vax sentiment/scepticism. 2. It suggests and endorses, without the proper caveats, something which is potentially dangerous, that is injecting yourself with a homegrown vaccine. Might be interesting…

Those bad boxes were checked for me too, but the realization it gave me that "wait, I can actually synthesize a vaccine myself" trumped the first two.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#15

Post by mam2 »

djsumdog wrote: post #3

> All three of us developed SARS-CoV2 spike protein neutralizing antibodies. I still can't fucking believe it. Not only did we create and test a successful vaccine, we showed that we could get a gene therapy to work (a DNA vaccine changes the DNA in your cells and so is a gene therapy also) Seems incredibly dangerous. What if 3 years from now, he realizes the changes he made are crashing his immune system? There is n…

I mean it's just a protein and a basic immune system response.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#16

Post by colincooke »

stavros wrote: post #14
colincooke wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article checks two bad boxes for me. 1. It disparages the work of individuals/organizations unjustly, who have done society a great service throughout this trying time. An attitude which has the potential to feed anti-vax sentiment/scepticism. 2. It suggests and endorses, without the proper caveats, something which is potentially dangerous, that is injecting yourself with a homegrown vaccine. Might be interesting…

Those bad boxes were checked for me too, but the realization it gave me that "wait, I can actually synthesize a vaccine myself" trumped the first two.

Good point, could have been a great article if it took a more careful tone and just demonstrated how cool it is that the tech now exists to do this yourself (with sufficient means + skills), without adding the other negative elements/suggesting that folks should do this themselves.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#17

Post by gayprogrammer »

I think he wants to spread awareness that people in power can use technology and medicine to widen the class divide, and biotechnology shows signs of going that direction.

I think that a biohackers’ line of reasoning goes: the same way that some pills once existed as ground-up herbs, today’s biotech (and vaccines) started as ground-up biomaterial.

Of course people have been hurt from eating herbs and injecting biomaterial, so testing and quality control will always be a massive issue.

I still see a biohackers’ rebuttal, however: sometimes people are hurt by their own cooking, or restaurant food, so the issue of quality control among mass-distributed biomaterial is not totally new, and not insurmountable.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#18

Post by gayprogrammer »

jmercouris wrote: post #5

Here is where I immediately have a red flag from the author: "sometimes I hide the fact that I have PhD because I don't want it to be a symbol of authority or intelligence for myself" yet, at the top of the site "Josiah Zayner, PhD"." well, which one is it Josiah?

That’s a very nit-picky thing to critique, while ignoring everything the post is writing about.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#19

Post by lrossi »

Is the immune response as strong as in individuals receiving one of the approved vaccines? From what I’ve read about the mRNA one, what stood out was the fine tuning they applied to the sequence so that the effect is much stronger than what would be obtained by just using the virus sequence directly. Sounds like that would be lacking here.

Re: I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in My Kitchen and It Worked – Science Still Sucks

#20

Post by gus_massa »

stavros wrote: post #14
colincooke wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article checks two bad boxes for me. 1. It disparages the work of individuals/organizations unjustly, who have done society a great service throughout this trying time. An attitude which has the potential to feed anti-vax sentiment/scepticism. 2. It suggests and endorses, without the proper caveats, something which is potentially dangerous, that is injecting yourself with a homegrown vaccine. Might be interesting…

Those bad boxes were checked for me too, but the realization it gave me that "wait, I can actually synthesize a vaccine myself" trumped the first two.

You can synthetize a vaccine candidate yourself. The problem is to be sure that it creates enough immunity and that is safe enough.
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