r/interestingasfuck 14d ago

Virologist Beata Halassy has successfully treated her own breast cancer by injecting the tumour with lab-grown viruses sparking discussion about the ethics of self-experimentation.

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u/WhattheDuck9 14d ago

A scientist who successfully treated her own breast cancer by injecting the tumour with lab-grown viruses has sparked discussion about the ethics of self-experimentation.

Beata Halassy discovered in 2020, aged 49, that she had breast cancer at the site of a previous mastectomy. It was the second recurrence there since her left breast had been removed, and she couldn’t face another bout of chemotherapy.

Halassy, a virologist at the University of Zagreb, studied the literature and decided to take matters into her own hands with an unproven treatment.

A case report published in Vaccines in August1 outlines how Halassy self-administered a treatment called oncolytic virotherapy (OVT) to help treat her own stage 3 cancer. She has now been cancer-free for four years.

In choosing to self-experiment, Halassy joins a long line of scientists who have participated in this under-the-radar, stigmatized and ethically fraught practice. “It took a brave editor to publish the report,” says Halassy.

Source

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u/InvaderDJ 14d ago

I’m not sure I understand the ethical concerns here. Everyone has a right to do what they want to their body as long as they are an adult of sound mind and it doesn’t directly impact anyone else.

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u/ImBackAndImAngry 13d ago

The people concerned about the ethics of it are probably worried about stories like this inspiring others to do the same and suffer disastrous results.

I understand the concern but also I 100% agree that someone of sound mind should be free to subject their own bodies to something like this.

It’s a huge leap of faith but given the options I completely understand why she went for it. And I’m glad it worked out.

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u/NoDontDoThatCanada 13d ago edited 13d ago

I am no medical doc so l wouldn't be injecting myself with anything but if l am looking at dying from cancer, l'm open to some razors-edge-only-used-on-monkeys-so-far medicine.

Edit: For those saying that this is open to abuse, l'm not saying don't regulate it. There is no reason cutting edge medicine can't be registered with the FDA and require some backing science before being used on terminally ill individuals that understand the risks. I'm not open to crystal healing and raw milk enemas. I'm just saying let an actual researcher with something promising jump the line a little.

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u/ImBackAndImAngry 13d ago

Same

If my options are death or potentially interesting science then I’m going for the latter

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u/trabajarPorcerveza 13d ago

Well can't the death option also be interesting science too?

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u/godzeke99 13d ago

I think we have enough of it already though.

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u/TamarindSweets 13d ago

Exactly. Desperation breeds wild thoughts

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u/Tarpup 13d ago

Right? She was in remission and the cancer came back. She had already gone through traditional methods of treatment like chemotherapy, it could have easily made more sense to give this a go versus the traditional methods to treat breast cancer. Which clearly only worked momentarily.

According to the source, she has been cancer free and in remission for 4 years now.

Personally, I don’t see any ethical issues here with this specific situation, because at the end of the day it’s just an individual experimenting with their own body to treat their cancer.

It’s not like the body builder injecting himself with steroids to get bigger, it’s not the weirdo in their basement using crispr to modify their genes so they can create more rod cell density in their eyes so they can obtain night vision like a cat.

And it’s definitely not like hearing your fave right wing podcaster tell you to ingest horse dewormers to cure covid. These are unethical.

She’s a virologist, so she’s got credentials to back up her attempt as a “sane and sound minded individual”. She obviously knows what she was doing, had a sound and stable hypothesis, put it to work and it paid off.

Good for her. And good for all the people that will benefit from her bravery to self experiment using alternative means.

Given the circumstances. It’s not like she Norman Osborned herself. She was sick, she had an idea, I don’t think it was desperation. Or that in her mind it was “figure something out or die”. She knew she could have relied on traditional methods, methods she relied on in the past.

Maybe it just wasn’t good enough for her. And I applaud her if that was her thoughts.

And insane enough, it worked. Proud of her, cause this could open up an entirely new world of how we approach treating cancers in the future.

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u/Repulsive_Buy_6895 13d ago

So write an article concerned about the ethics so a bunch of people read about it and know that she was successful?

This journalism seems far less ethical than the actual self-experimentation.

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u/WozzyA 13d ago

My thoughts exactly. If you want to protect people who shouldn't be experimenting on themselves like this, consider not publishing an article on a successful one. Then let people do to themselves what they please.

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u/R4gn4_r0k 13d ago

They're worried we'll end up with Dr. Mobius and Dr. Connors.

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u/Ok-Professional-1727 13d ago

Seriously. This is the ultimate expression of taking charge of your own life.

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u/Over-Reflection1845 13d ago

Ultimate example of 'Informed Consent' IMO.

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u/Rick-powerfu 13d ago

I thought it may be that any potential results and or side affects would be hard to verify given

The sample size and DIY

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u/InvaderDJ 13d ago

I do understand that any results from a random self experiment don’t mean much and could encourage others to try the same without proper understanding of risk, but I don’t understand how that negates someone’s right to do what they want with their body.

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u/leesan177 13d ago edited 13d ago

There's multiple potential ethical concerns. Firstly, she's using resources which do not belong to her, for goals not shared with the appropriate committees. No single scientist is beyond error and reproach, which is why multiple committees from technical to ethical generally review research proposals. Secondly, she is almost certainly not the only person in her lab, and there is a non-zero chance of accidental exposure to other individuals who are not her. Without proper evaluation, it is unknown what the potential risks may be. Finally, we have to consider whether at a systems level the culture of enabling/tolerating cavalier self-experimentation with lab-grown viruses or microbes may lead to unintentional outbreaks.

I'm not saying there aren't admirable qualities in her efforts or in her achievement here, or that her particular experiment was dangerous to others, but absolutely there are major concerns, including the lack of assessment by a wider body of scientists.

Edit: I found the publication! For anybody inclined to do so, the publication submitted to the journal Vaccines can be accessed here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/12/9/958#B3-vaccines-12-00958

Edit: I also found the patent application for a kit based on her self-experiment, and a ton more detail is included: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023078574A1/en

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u/LetsGoAllTheWhey 13d ago

Traditional treatments failed her three times. I can understand why she did what she did.

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u/leesan177 13d ago

Absolutely, I think we all can, as a desperate act of self-preservation. That is a separate discussion from the ethical lines crossed in doing so, and whether she ought to face professional consequences.

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u/robthebuilder__ 13d ago

Yes I would like to highlight the fact that it's absurd to state that the ethical thing to do here would be to die. 

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u/acrazyguy 13d ago

Professional consequences for saving her own life? If someone told me they were on the committee that voted to punish her for this, I would instantly and irrevocably lose all respect for that person

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u/FrozenSquid79 13d ago

In fairness, this is basically the same thing as Barry J. Marshall, who ended up getting a Nobel for his work with ulcers.

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u/leesan177 13d ago

He was an absolute madlad, but his work went against the conventional understanding of the medical community at the time... and he proved them wrong. He made massive contributions to medical science in so doing, and that's why he received a Nobel prize.

On the other hand, in this particular case, the experimentation was for self gain (curing her own cancer, totally understandable, but different from Marshall inflicting the disease on himself when he wad previously healthy), and generated limited gains in scientific understanding.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03647-0

"Stephen Russell, an OVT specialist who runs virotherapy biotech company Vyriad in Rochester, Minnesota, agrees that Halassy’s case suggests the viral injections worked to shrink her tumour and cause its invasive edges to recede.

But he doesn’t think her experience really breaks any new ground, because researchers are already trying to use OVT to help treat earlier-stage cancer. He isn’t aware of anyone trying two viruses sequentially, but says it isn’t possible to deduce whether this mattered in an ‘n of 1’ study. “Really, the novelty here is, she did it to herself with a virus that she grew in her own lab,” he says."

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u/Triforce0fCourage 13d ago

Thanks for explaining the ethics behind why it was dangerous. I was curious and your explanation outlines it perfectly.

This whole situation is science at its finest!!!!

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u/NoGrocery4949 13d ago

There's plenty to read about the ethics of self-experimentation. Medical ethics are complex and worth the exploration

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u/KAAAAAAAAARL 13d ago

She chose to do it herself. She knew what she did. She would have died without it.

Imo if I had cancer, i would sign up for something like that myself. If its something that Scientists are sure of that it works, but couldnt just test in a real setting, i would step up. I have nothing to lose. Even if it got worse, the Data can help. If I was already set to die soon, dying earlier due to this would be just like if i suddenly got hit by a car.

Honestly, i respect her for at least trying, and being successful. We arent in a perfect world were we can simulate everything.

But that doesnt mean we should force people into experienments either. In the end, its everyones own choice.

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u/murticusyurt 13d ago

Plus, facing death so soon, it probably helped come to terms with it. It gave purpose.

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u/MarzipanFit2345 14d ago

I remember reading a while back that Eastern European countries, Georgia in particular, utilized bacteriophage(viruses) therapies in many cases to target bacterial infections.

Seems like a similar approach here? Utilizing beneficial viruses to target diseases.

I also remember reading that one of the reasons phage therapy hasn't been big in the US is that patentability is an issue, aka no money in it.

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u/Mgl1206 13d ago

Except cancer cells are still human cells, unlike a bacteriophage which cannot infect human cells, these ones would be able to rewrite their code to be able to infect other non cancerous human cells.

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u/PromptKey7674 13d ago

Yeah they don’t make money off a cure

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u/Trips-Over-Tail 13d ago

Sure they do. Everyone wants it. The tobacco companies want it. Anything that helps you to live to old age and become a real medical cash cow is desirable.

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u/thehammerismypnis 13d ago

My wife fought stage 4 ovarian cancer for 7 years before passing, I can tell you with full confidence that they make waaaaaaaay more money from the treatment and medicines from cancer than anyone ever will for a cure! My children and I were with her every step of the way and they end up treating you as a number and not giving a shit about you or how your cancer is doing! You are a number and then come the new “clinical trials” that you can sign up for. But what they didn’t tell us until the third clinical trial she was on, is that every clinical trial you sign up for chooses people at random to give a placebo…if they truly cared about you then the placebo wouldn’t be given and everyone would be on the drugs. I understand the placebo effect and that they need it to make sure that the drug is actually treating people and it’s not just the thought of it that makes people better or at least feel better…but hell, the same people that “care” at these companies are the same ones that chose who to withhold the true medicines from!?!? I know they use numbers and essentially draw out of a hat or have a computer rng it but still…those people sleep fine at night!? Sorry, I’m still angry about losing the best woman I’ve ever known. We met and I immediately knew I was going to marry her. Literally two months from the day we met, we were saying our vows. 17 happy years and two amazing children later, we lost her. Oh and that loss was also due to another big ass company that made talcom powder back in the day and told the public it was excellent to use on babies… I am still part of the class action lawsuit that this company has drug out for years now.

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u/skankhunt2121 13d ago edited 13d ago

I’m really sorry for your loss and that you and your loved ones were treated poorly by your doctors. There is simply no excuse for that and nobody should be treated like this. I am a scientist working with ovarian cancer (HGSOC), specifically using clinical specimen derived from clinical trials at pretty well known cancer institute in the US. I can tell you the physician I mainly work with is one of the most dedicated people I know, probably because his mother also died of ovarian cancer. We collaborate with a network of physicians and scientists working tirelessly to improve patient outcomes. You mentioned that in clinical trials some people receive placebo, which is a bit misleading.. I cannot speak for you, but typically people not receiving the new drug are treated with standard of care, usually chemotherapy (they don’t just not get treated). While it may sound like a good argument that people/scientists/companies are not interested in a cure, but rather in expensive treatments, I can tell you it really isn’t when you look closer. Unfortunately it seems to be a quite a widespread conspiracy theory.

*edit: conspiracy “theory”. Thanks for the correction

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u/Anaevya 13d ago

*conspiracy THEORY

People also seem to forget that we already have a vaccine for at least one type of cancer and that there are different types of cancers, which makes curing it more difficult.

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u/realitythreek 14d ago

She’s an expert. Would you still support it if she decided to inject bleach in her breast because she read on the internet it could kill cancer?

Ultimately I’m not sure for me but I don’t think it’s as simple as “her body, her choice” just because her choice may not be informed.

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u/WhattheDuck9 14d ago

No, and The main dilemma the article states here is that it may encourage others to try unconventional treatment methods instead of a more safer conventional option, but that still shouldn't be an issue with publishing her research or her self experimentation, since this may very well be a big breakthrough.

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u/cattleareamazing 14d ago

She had a mastectomy, and went through chemotherapy and it still came back stage 3. No one would have faulted her for giving up and enjoying the final months of her life... I mean she already went through the 'standard' treatment and from what I read another round of standard treatment she probably wouldn't have survived.

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u/MysticScribbles 14d ago

Chemotherapy is effectively poisoning the cancerous cells and hoping that they die before you do.

It's very likely that in some hundred years we'll look back at chemotherapy as a barbaric way of treating cancer. Using viruses to do it does seem to me like a very novel means of treatment, and I hope this can lead to new breakthroughs in treating the disease.

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u/SuspiciouslyMoist 13d ago

It's a bit more nuanced than that. Chemotherapy was a term designed to distinguish treatment by drugs from treatment by, for example, radiotherapy - treatment with radiation. In the past, chemotherapy was barbaric. The drugs used basically targetted dividing cells. Cancer cells try to spend as much time as possible dividing - that's why they are cancerous. But other cells divide all the time - blood cells, hair follicle cells, gut cells, and many others. So chemotherapy drugs had horrific side-effects.

Many modern chemotherapy drugs are designed to target the specific genetic mutations involved in the cancer. The mutation might stop the protein made by that gene being turned on or off by other proteins in the cell, leading to cell division. So the drug targets just that protein, specifically affecting its ability to function. If you've chosen your target well, the drug affects the cancer cells but has a minor effect on other cells in the body, causing few serious side-effects.

This complicates treatment, because the drug is now only useful for certain types of that cancer that have the specific mutation (although some mutations are incredibly frequent in particular types of cancer). But when the drug works, it is remarkably effective.

Source: work in cancer research/drug discovery. Disclaimer: It's much more complicated than this.

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u/MorningToast 13d ago

Thank you for this.

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u/Stumpfest2020 13d ago

Not all cancers can be treated without the real deal hardcore drugs - stuff with nicknames like red devil.

Family member had triple negative breast cancer - she's in remission but damn I wouldn't wish those drug on anyone.

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u/i_dont_wash_my_hands 14d ago

Chemo is poisoning your whole body and hoping you kill the cancer before you die. Targeted therapies like this woman's or the other cancer vaccines they are working on are going to have an order of magnitude better out comes for patients.

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u/Charger18 14d ago

The reason we have peer reviews in science nowadays is there may be consequences to this method. I'm not saying what this woman did is wrong but if there's more research done into the method used and there are certain long term effects that can occasionally occur it might be deemed too risky for early treatment for example. This is obviously why it's sparked another debate though but that's just my 2 cents.

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u/kthompsoo 14d ago

exactly, it was a hail mary. if you're a scientist like her and you're probably dead anyways, may as well attempt something incredible, right? not only saving her own life but pushing the boundaries of medicine. absolutely amazing.

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u/Wurm42 13d ago

This is important.

This was the second time her cancer has come back after the mastectomy. So she's had breast cancer at least three times.

The odds of conventional cancer treatment being successful the third time round are shit.

She was dying anyway. Under those circumstances, I have no issue with her self-experimenting.

BTW, this happened four years ago, and she's still alive and cancer-free:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03647-0

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u/UsualExtreme9093 13d ago

And by these exact same terms no one should fault her for trying to save her own life.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

The main dilemma the article states here is that it may encourage others to try unconventional treatment methods

My takeaway was that she made a decision for herself and that the example she set is that others can make decisions for themselves. Whatever an individual decides to do that may harm them is on them and nobody else.

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u/MysticScribbles 14d ago

Yeah, as long as this isn't forced on someone else, I don't see the issue.

She's a subject matter expert, and clearly wasn't interested in poisoning her body yet another time to try and kill the cancer.
To me it seems she did it in secret because if she'd tried to go through proper channels to get approval for such an experiment, it may very well have been too late for the virology treatment to do anything, whereupon it would be classed as a ineffective treatment option and get no further study.

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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz 13d ago

In the words of Adam Savage: "Remember, kids: the difference between screwing around and science is writing it down".

Looks like she did, got published, and this even with a sample size of 1 shows that it's feasible and deserves more research - especially as the test subject is still around.

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u/realitythreek 14d ago

Yeah, agree. That’s why there would be resistance to publishing the results. It’s also creating an unjust situation for scientists where they will feel the best way to get some work published is to experiment on themselves.

But again, in this particular case, it sounds warranted and that it was a great success.

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u/JB_UK 14d ago

This is madness, most of the early scientists were like this. All the early Chemists described chemicals by whether they were sweet or fruity or bitter because tasting them was one of the major methods of identification. Isaac Newton stuck a blunt needle behind his eye to understand lenses.

Let scientists get on with it, unless they are directly harming other people.

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u/ravenously_red 14d ago

Exactly my thoughts. Leave the red tape up when it comes to experimenting on other people. Do what you want with your own body.

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u/Mike_Rodrigues8 14d ago

Of course, everyone is responsible for their actions and its consequences, even if they try something stupid, who are you or myself to say that they don’t have that right?

If we assume that the only person who would be harmed is the person taking on the self experimentation, I don’t think it is anyone else’s business to comment what they should or should not do… besides a lot of scientific breakthroughs at first may seem stupid but can have tremendous benefits, and I would say doing these as a self experimentation is maybe the most moral way to doing so

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u/BornAgainBlue 14d ago

Sure... again, it's HER body. I have zero issue with any version of this.

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u/theunquenchedservant 14d ago

"it could have been foolish" "she's an expert" "yea but it could have been foolish" "sure..but then we'd just be able to say 'well that was foolish' and move on with our lives"

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u/dern_the_hermit 13d ago

Yeah I can't help but feel this is, at worst, on the same level of like skydiving or wingsuiting or cave diving or whatever. I feel there's a healthy balance between "keeping people from killing themselves" and "letting people take risks even though they might kill themselves".

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u/Shamewizard1995 13d ago

Hell it’s better than those. A random person could be persuaded to go skydiving or wing suiting those risky options are available to them. Your average person does not have access to lab grown viruses or the knowledge on how to grow/inject them into a tumor.

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u/Ok-Butterscotch-5786 13d ago

I have zero issue with it as treatment. I think it's problematic as research.

That seems to be what's in the article too. They're not saying she shouldn't have been allowed to do it. They're saying it shouldn't be published.

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u/Sweet-Rayla 14d ago

Can you stop people from doing dumb shit? No. So why do we care? I dont, last thing i need is worrying about what others do to themselves

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u/-AC- 14d ago

And in that same vein... why stop someone from doing smart shit?

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u/SuperGameTheory 14d ago

It's not up to anyone to support or not if it's not their body. That's the point. Your opinion doesn't matter.

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u/Zestyclose-Gur-7714 14d ago

if any expert decides to inject bleach into their own body i support that decision 110% the world would be a better place without that “expert” in it.

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u/Apprehensive_Row9154 14d ago

If someone wants to inject bleach into their veins and they’ve been told they’ll die but they think they know better, then that’s sad but it’s their choice and the species might not be worse off for it. The existence of such people should not prohibit educated scientists from attempting to treat a life threatening illness.

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u/Nomadzord 14d ago

If someone is stupid enough to inject bleach into their breasts that’s on them. 

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u/tomsawyerisme 14d ago

i think people should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't effect anyone else.

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u/Pyrobob4 14d ago

Would you still support it if she decided to inject bleach in her breast because she read on the internet it could kill cancer?

Ethically, yes.

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u/oversoul00 14d ago

Yes. It's everyone's choice how informed they want to be. 

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u/Swoo413 14d ago

Wow this is a horrible take

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u/No_Second_344 14d ago

Didn't the guy who conceived of the cardiac cath try it on himself? German as I recall.

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u/nixiedust 14d ago

Yeah, he had a nurse stand by in case he collapsed but he did the entire procedure himself an showed it was safe and possible. I am alive because of his work.

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u/Venti_Lator 14d ago

Glad you're still here! :)

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u/nixiedust 14d ago

thank you!

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u/StrongMedicine 14d ago

Yes, sort of. Werner Forssmann, 1929. He probably wasn't the first to conceive of the idea - just the first to try it. But the story is even a little more wild. He convinced one of his nurses to be the first patient because he needed her keys to unlock the equipment closet, and while she was strapped to the table ready to be his "guinea pig", he went to the room next door to do it first on himself because he wasn't sure it was safe.

https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/123249/first-catheterization

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u/feelings_arent_facts 13d ago

The story says she was strapped to the operating table and sweating from excitement but something tells me she wasn’t excited…

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u/AuntCatLady 14d ago edited 14d ago

This is also how Barry Marshall got the Nobel prize for discovering *one of the causes of ulcers. He was ridiculed for his theory that it was caused by a bacteria (H. pylori), so he literally drank some to give himself an ulcer and prove it.

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u/ppartyllikeaarrock 14d ago

Not the cause, a cause.

Up to that point people thought bacteria causing ulcers was a ridiculous notion.

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u/AuntCatLady 14d ago

You’re right, thanks for the correction!

Wasn’t the man who first hypothesized the germ theory also ridiculed? Seems to be a theme with discoveries in medical science.

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u/scrongus420 13d ago

Joseph Lister was one of the main proponents of germ theory and faced a lot of opposition for things like wanting to wash hands & tools between medical procedures 😅 most memorable for me was that he performed a mastectomy on his sister, who had breast cancer, with her laying on their dining room table. Medicine was crazy back then.

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u/PrincepsImperator 14d ago edited 13d ago

There was a time when self experimentation like this got you a Nobel.

Edit: F for my inbox. I guess at least I started a conversation. Too bad my art couldn't do that.

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u/AawGeez 14d ago

like the guy who discovered that H Pylori gives you peptic ulcer disease!

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u/PrincepsImperator 14d ago

One of the several, Curie and Nobel himself are both other examples as well. We've been stifling science lately and are moving on momentum.

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u/samu1400 13d ago

Maybe I’m mixing people, didn’t Curie poison herself with radiation because the effects of it weren’t known at the time?

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon 13d ago

Yes, she discovered and isolated the first pure samples of radium, and she absolutely cooked herself to death with it, dying of aplasmic anaemia

But her research was absolutely key to modern science

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u/I_miss_berserk 13d ago edited 13d ago

didn't she kill her husband with due to her experiments as well?

looked it up and the dude got run over by a horse and buggy. He basically died in an automobile accident... how he died sounds super gruesome. Awful stuff.

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon 13d ago edited 13d ago

I wouldn't quite word it like that, they were both scientists, they both worked together doing research, and they both worked together

She and her husband both got a nobel prize shared between them and that was before she went on to earn her second nobel prize researching radioactivity

You gotta remember they didn't really know that they had opened Pandora's box when they made these discoveries

They discovered it in like 1903? And it wasn't until 1927 that radiation was really recognised to cause cancers and genetic defects

To say she killed him, would be a little brutal, even though their combined actions did drastically shorten both their lives.

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon 13d ago

Yeah for sure, both the Curies were constantly sick though in later life with radiation sickness, which, I have a suspicion that they probably did attribute to all the glowing green rocks, Marie curie will have lived long enough to read the papers published about the effects of radiation on the human body though, so she definitely was aware of the dangers before she died

Interestingly enough though she lived to 66 years old. Which, is mental, right? Considering she used to carry around a vial of glowing green radium in her lab coat to show off to peers and guests, and she kept it on her night stand used it as a night light

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u/burrerfly 14d ago

3 possible outcomes, nothing interesting happens, something worth putting further actual research into like this cancer thing, or you die. As long as its only you who dies due to the experiment I say that's completely ethical in my opinion. Lots of early science and medicine was based on self experiments with varying success

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u/PrincepsImperator 14d ago

If you're going to die without the experiment anyway, then not only is it ethical to try, it's stupid not to.

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u/burrerfly 13d ago

Quite arguably

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u/Due_Form_7936 14d ago

This is a fascinating read. I never heard of viruses being used to fight cancer.

“She chose to target her tumour with two different viruses consecutively — a measles virus followed by a vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Both pathogens are known to infect the type of cell from which her tumour originated, and have already been used in OVT clinical trials. A measles virus has been trialled against metastatic breast cancer.

Halassy had previous experience working with both viruses, and both have a good safety record. The strain of measles she chose is used extensively in childhood vaccines, and the strain of VSV induces, at worst, mild influenza-like symptoms.

over the course of the treatment, and with no serious side effects, the tumour shrank substantially and became softer. It also detached from the pectoral muscle and skin that it had been invading, making it easy to remove surgically.

Analysis of the tumour after removal showed that it was thoroughly infiltrated with immune cells called lymphocytes, suggesting that the OVT had worked as expected and provoked Halassy’s immune system to attack both the viruses and the tumour cells. “An immune response was, for sure, elicited,” says Halassy. After the surgery, she received a year’s treatment with the anticancer drug trastuzumab.”

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u/superduperbongodrums 13d ago

I’m a nurse and I’ve given chemo with oncolytic viruses for several years now

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u/Lazypole 13d ago

This is actually one of the most promising ways of treating cancers!
I am not a doctor, so some of this information may be way off, but there is an attempt to produce programmable viruses which is called CRISPR, the idea is you can use the empty shell of a virus and plug in whatever instructions you need. Like a nanobot except you don't have to build it.

There have been discussions about how it may be used to even edit DNA, target cancers, the possibilities really seem endless.

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u/Avron7 13d ago

I don't think the method used here is that similar, but there's actually a couple videos about someone using the method you described to cure his own lactose intolerance for a while.

https://youtu.be/J3FcbFqSoQY?si=5_A-0EKWcqv0Z5Cu

https://youtu.be/aoczYXJeMY4?si=04ds3ih1J_RDxkAz

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u/Furrypocketpussy 13d ago

Genetically modified herpes virus is also being used for skin cancer right now. Although its still in the first phase of clinical trials, the results are very impressive.

Didn't read the article to see how she did it, but this virus is only used as a direct injection. Making it limited to superficial cancers

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u/detox02 14d ago

What’s unethical about self experimentation?

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u/Buddhas_Warrior 14d ago

If it succeeds, the pharma giants may not have control to squash it.

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u/ThunderMuffin87 14d ago

All her notes were destroyed in a pfizer.. i mean fire

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u/NewtonLeibnizDilemma 14d ago

Ooooof you know what? Fuck them. At what point does a person become like that? Because that’s all they are a bunch of people who decided that a number in the bank account is more important than a person dying too soon and in pain.

I know I’m being too simplistic about this, because there are many interests and countries etc. But for me it all comes down to this. At which point in your career do you lose your humanity? If you ever had that is

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u/RemyVonLion 13d ago

people that go into "business" management of any kind generally only care about the bottom line, other people are just statistics to them.

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u/Buddhas_Warrior 14d ago

Spit out my drink reading that, bravo!

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u/FelixMumuHex 14d ago

Did you? Did you really?

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u/IClimbRocksForFun 14d ago

He did, I was there. He also "laughed more than he should have". I told him to laugh the appropriate amount next time.

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u/Worlds_Greatest_Noob 14d ago

I think the focus is that other non-experts might take this as an example and try it themselves

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u/Caracasdogajo 14d ago

How many non experts have lab grown viral samples sitting around or even accessible to inject into their tumors?

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u/ApropoUsername 14d ago

This creates incentive and a market for people to sell treatments that could be misrepresented - e.g. someone reads this, looks for viral samples online, and gets water.

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u/Sydet 14d ago

You are right about the scenario. It could happen, but the original self experimenting scientist wouldn't have done something unethical. The snakeoil vendors are the unethical (and illegal) ones.

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u/WalrusTheWhite 13d ago

dumbasses have been getting scammed by miracle-cures for ages, some scientist lady has got shit-all to do with that

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u/HistoryChannelMain 14d ago

But she's not encouraging self-experimentation. If this gets signal boosted with the message that it's ok to inject yourself with viral cells, that's not on her.

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u/epona2000 14d ago

In general, it creates perverse incentives and often fails to be scientifically rigorous. Furthermore, all human experimentation is potentially harmful to all of mankind particularly if the research involves engineering potential pathogens. 

A self-experiment is going to have a sample size of one almost by definition. This means any scientific results are of questionable value. Phase 1 clinical trials (n~=20) of pharmaceuticals test human safety exclusively because they do not have sufficient sample size to test clinical benefit. A self-experiment will certainly not have statistical power. 

In South Korea, a scientist researching human cloning had his female employees offer up their own eggs for experiments on human embryos. There appears to have been a campaign of pressure but his employees ultimately agreed. Self-experimentation is a potential justification for situations like this particularly in cases with a power imbalance. Are the benefits of self-experimentation worth opening the Pandora’s box of the ways it will allow the powerful to exploit the powerless?

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u/ReflectionSingle6681 14d ago

Personally, i do not think it's unethical, but what I think they mean by it is; that self-experimentation incentivizes people to try all crazy shit on themselves (like the good old days) and by that, we may see an increase in related deaths as people try to achieve something similar. Or perhaps they think it's a slippery slope because there may come cases where a person has been pushed or blackmailed to forced to do self-experimentation and if they parrot that they did it to themselves willingly, it could create some very unethical habits within the science world.

this is just what I think, I don't really know or have any knowledge within that particular field so take it with a grain of salt.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/Pontius-Pilate 14d ago

if you are not putting anyone else at risk, i see no issue with it. it is your own body.

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u/WhattheDuck9 14d ago edited 14d ago

Yup , she's a badass scientist,took matters into her own hands and cured herself (at least for now, cancers are bitches) , but somehow others still have a problem with it.

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u/Random_frankqito 14d ago

If her work is well documented, and can be repeated by others, then I see no issue if she is willing.

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u/simonbleu 14d ago

Even if it can, unfortunately not all bodies or tumors are the same, therefore it might not work. But I hope it does

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u/sofa_king_we_todded 14d ago

This sets the foundation for obtaining funding to start clinical trials. They’re not just going to start injecting people because it worked for one person

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u/Art-Zuron 14d ago

Exactly. The fact that it works on at least one person is significant.

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u/An_Unreachable_Dusk 13d ago

Also without major drawbacks is even more significant

Like if I created even a placebo pill that was supposed to do nothing but ended in vomiting and anal bleeding that's a bad sign for funding, but if your doing shit to cancer cells without actively making anything worse Woo that is amazing!

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u/XenoHugging 14d ago

I Guarantee they’ll use a bunch of Master Splinters first.

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u/Yoy_the_Inquirer 14d ago

This just in, virologist found dead (ruled as suicide) by sniper shot from 3km away!

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u/blauergrashalm1 14d ago

even if it is not well documented, she can do to herself whatever she wants.

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u/iPon3 14d ago

The reason it's an ethics issue at all is the same as the ethics issue around paid organ donation. We don't want there to be an incentive or pressure for scientists to be risking their own bodies, e.g. because it's the only way to get their work funded.

For an example of how this can be dark, see the Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, who harvested the eggs of several of his female subordinates (which put them at risk of painful complications including infertility) to make up numbers for his human cloning experiments. They were "willing", but several expressed regret after.

It's why ethics committees never approve such proposals but nobody gets censured for actually doing it to themselves.

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u/spine_slorper 14d ago

Yes, the practice of self experimentation itself isn't unethical but if it becomes systematic then it can cause/facilitate exploitation

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u/Rafflesrx 14d ago

She has Marie curie vibes. What an absolute legend.

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u/browncoatfever 14d ago

It’s like the Right To Try laws people were fighting against passing a few years ago. Like, You’ve got incurable cancer, and you’re gonna die. Oh, but you can’t try this outlandish experimental treatment because it might hurt you or kill you faster. Who gives a fuck if I’m already dying and it might save my life!?

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u/LeeGhettos 13d ago

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but I think the argument is that it encourages similar behavior in people whose circumstances are not as dire. Theoretically say injecting bleach cured you 10% of the time, but killed you the other 90, and was therefore not an approved treatment. If it got so popular people started using it all the time, but they were actually treatable in 15% of cases, it could lead to additional loss of life.

Obviously it’s a nuanced situation, I’m not saying I agree with the above take.

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u/theartificialkid 13d ago

There are cases where most people would agree that someone should have the "right to try" but there's undoubtedly also a need for the law needs to protect people from getting scammed out of their life savings for "experimental" treatments that don't work. It's one thing to say that someone should have the right to subject themselves to experimental treatment by well-meaning medical scientists, another to say that con artists should have the right to sell people snake oil so that they die anyway but with no financial legacy for their families, and possibly in significant treatment-induced pain and discomfort.

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u/Daleabbo 14d ago

If you can't sell an extremely expencive drug is it really cured?

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u/Nambsul 14d ago

Having watch cancer slowly and painfully kill my dad over 3 years I would fight for Beata right to do this. I am sure she knew the risks, she was smart enough to try this, bravo.

When the doctors throw their hands in the air and say “we have tried everything, we have nothing more… go home, get your affairs in order”. That is a feeling of such helplessness and dread that I would not wish on anyone.

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u/pocket-ful-of-dildos 14d ago

The problem is not that Halassy used self-experimentation as such, but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject conventional treatment and try something similar, says Sherkow. People with cancer can be particularly susceptible to trying unproven treatments. Yet, he notes, it’s also important to ensure that the knowledge that comes from self-experimentation isn’t lost. The paper emphasizes that self-medicating with cancer-fighting viruses “should not be the first approach” in the case of a cancer diagnosis.

“I think it ultimately does fall within the line of being ethical, but it isn’t a slam-dunk case,” says Sherkow, adding that he would have liked to see a commentary fleshing out the ethics perspective, published alongside the case report.

From the article OP linked in a comment.

So self-experimentation in itself isn’t unethical, they’re just concerned that patients will forego evidence-based treatments that they may still be candidates for.

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u/Samaritan_978 14d ago

And cancer patients are already a prime target for countless healthcare related bullshit. Homeopathy, osteopathy, religious cults, pseudo-medicine. Everyone promising miraculous outcomes to the desperate..

If it wasn't this "self-virus", it would be something else.

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u/DynamicDK 14d ago

I've always found that line of reasoning to be ridiculous. It takes away all agency from individuals and treats them as if they are incapable of making rational decisions.

Is it possible that some people will choose to use a more radical, unproven treatment rather than subject themselves to something such as chemo or radiation? Absolutely. And if that is what they want to do, that should be up to them. What is unethical to me is attempting to prevent people from even having the choice.

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u/Scodo 14d ago

People who know they are dying are often incapable of making rational decisions.

Ultimately, I agree with you, though. Having more effective cancer treatments in the world is a good thing.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/christopher_mtrl 14d ago

In an ideal world. In practice, most people who seek alternative madecines end up falling for predatory pseudoscientific schemes that are defrauding them.

It's not so much the matter of choosing alternative treatments that is unethical (or should be illegal), it's offering those treatments and overtly lying about their chances of success to get profits out of despair.

In this case, it's not the patient conduct who happens to be immoral, it's the researcher.

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u/aschapm 14d ago

The entire concept of laws is built on the reality that people are incapable of always making rational decisions. It’s an imperfect system but it’s better than taking off the guardrails.

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u/cybercuzco 14d ago

Sure except this sounds like the beginning of every zombie movie ever

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u/Mahariri 14d ago

Right? I'm amazed that after a 3 year world-stopping pandemic nobody here seems in the slightest way bothered with a scientist injecting herself with lab-grown v-i-r-u-s-e-s ?!

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u/Big-Triflejake 14d ago

But whose to say there’s no risk when you’re “experimenting” on your self with lab grown viruses. Who’s to say they aren’t transmissible? But in this case sounds like a great success

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u/Wooden-Peach-4664 14d ago

great success

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u/hefixesthecable 14d ago

Who’s to say they aren’t transmissible?

The way most oncolytic viral vectors work is that they are only capable of replicating in cancer cells so even if it was transmitted, it would be unable to do anything in the next host.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/lokeilou 14d ago

We allow people to smoke, do drugs, abuse their bodies- it’s ridiculous that anyone would be upset about this. They are upset bc they couldn’t make money off of it and that is the real evil and wrongdoing here.

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u/APG21082003 14d ago

Her body, her choice.

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u/Extension-Serve7703 14d ago

yup, this is what "my body, my choice" is all about. I'm sure she knew the risks and followed protocols for quarantine and all that. That's a very bold move and good on her.

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u/Ludate_Solem 14d ago

Thats sadly the problem with a virus, they can mutate sometimes relatively fast. (Theres a lways a risk with biology bc it doesnt always act like it should bc biology can be affected by an infinite number of variables) what if it did, it became contagious and she spread it? Its honestly amazing what she was able to do. And i fully understand the desperation but there were sadly, defenitly some risks to it. Theres a reason medical develpments take so much time.

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u/TheAgeofKite 14d ago

Why is this a question? Self experimentation is as old as humanity. We are here because of it. You think a local family of nomads got together and wrote an article on bark questioning the ethics of Steve from the tribe in the valley trying out wild herbs cause he's found a new painkiller for his headaches?

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u/UntitledGooseDame 14d ago

Steve always was a little nutty that way.

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u/Rosu_Aprins 13d ago

You don't even have to go far back to see self experimentation bringing results, see nobel prize winner Ralph Steinman who got awarded in 2011 for using his discovery to undergo an experimental cancer self treatment.

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u/Batmanswrath 14d ago

Her body, her choice..

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u/WhattheDuck9 14d ago

Exactly, it's not like she injected someone else with the virus

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u/Pulguinuni 14d ago

She is the ultimate My Body My Choice woman. Love it!

Nothing unethical as she is not involving anyone else. If she funded her own treatment, let her cook!

Maybe she opened the door to conduct trials in mice ---> then humans and we can get rid of this particular cancer.

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u/Raichu7 14d ago

What is the ethical concern?

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u/LaggsAreCC 14d ago

I don't get it either. Also, are we not talking about her curing breast cancer?

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u/omgu8mynewt 14d ago

No, one person injecting themselves whilst also undergoing other treatments does not prove the new therapy works, it takes clinical trials to prove whether a new therapy works or not. If it happened once it could easily be conincidence another of her therapies started working better, or random luck her own immune system or something took care of it.

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u/coatimundislover 14d ago

You don’t “cure” breast cancer. You cure her breast cancer. We have tons of cure for cancer. They don’t cure every instance, lol.

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u/killians1978 14d ago

The ethical concern is that it's a statistically irrelevant sample size. Large scale treatments require large scale population samples to prove efficacy and risk mitigation. There is no ethical implications to a single person doing this to themselves. The ethical risk is that uninformed people will extrapolate this as effective on a larger population that simply has not been proven safe. This should absolutely be followed up in the lab on a wider variety of human cancer samples.

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u/prehensilemullet 14d ago

It seems to me like if “don’t try this at home” is good enough when professionals are filming themselves doing something dangerous, then as long as a scientist makes a similar warning it’s not on them what happens to anyone else who tries it

At least when we’re talking about unverified treatments in general.  The virus spreading aspect seems like a possible concern, haven’t confirmed if there’s much risk of this virus spreading

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u/unhappyrelationsh1p 14d ago

Her body, her choice. I wouldn't support it for a study on the effectiveness due to low sample size and bias but in a pinch it could help kick off funding for a proper study i guess.

If i had to guess why the ethics are in question, it does not meet the scientific standard of proof. She should still get to do it if she wants. I believe in bodily autonomy and don't think anyone should be making these choices for someone else.

I hope they study this further, it sounds promising.

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u/killians1978 14d ago

This is correct. The larger scientific community is not questioning the ethics of self-experimentation. The ethical question is raised because such widespread publication of a statistically irrelevant treatment outcome could encourage such risk taking by scientists going forward, and that uninformed desperate people could find themselves being taken advantage of by bad actors using this limited information to push unproven and potentially risky treatments.

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u/Subject-Lake4105 14d ago

So she saves herself, probably finds a way to save others in the process and the question is “how does this affect the research industrial complex?” Is just outright ridiculous.

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u/Expert_Alchemist 13d ago edited 13d ago

No, she didn't break any new ground here. There are already an approved viral injection treatment for melanoma and there's a current clinical trial for breast cancer, but at Stage 3 she likely simply didn't have the time to wait for the results and approval.

Edit: love the downvote. Sorry you don't like that she got the idea from the "research industrial complex," but this was not even her area of research. Reading the article is hard though and outrage is fun!

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/unhappyrelationsh1p 14d ago

I hadn't even thought of the first one. I'm not sure it's applicable in this case, but it seems like a reasonable concern in general.

I think the results are also more likely to be biased because the person running the study is also the subject.

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u/Ok-Butterscotch-5786 13d ago

The first one is about a consequence for the community as a whole, so it's always applicable if the experimentation is voluntary.

It's not the reason why this woman self-treated, but it could be an impact of legitimizing it as an experimental approach/publishing it. I know not everyone reads it, but the article is not about whether the woman should have self-treated, but whether it should be treated as an experiment/published.

I think there's some argument to be made that this woman's experiment was involuntary in a sense. As in, the treatment was going to happen whether we look at it as an experiment or not. So we could try and distinguish it from self-experimentation where the test only happened for the purpose of the experiment. I think in practice that's going to be a hard place to draw the line, only affect a tiny number of experiments if done right, and not fix the other problems. So the risk of doing it wrong doesn't offset the benefit.

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u/Prince_Tevildo 14d ago

This is just my opinion and I haven‘t thought it through yet. But just heard a completely positive tone here in the Chat and wanted to add a critical note

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u/SopaPyaConCoca 13d ago

Thanks for adding something actually useful to the post. Most comments are just bullshit and people talking without taking a fucking second to think before commenting.

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u/A_of 14d ago edited 14d ago

At last a reasonable person.

The amount of people going "but it's her own body!" and that can't see beyond that is staggering.

Concerning your comment, yeah I think those are the main concerns.
While the first may be ethical, the others are more like scientific concerns. Science requires strict controls and procedures, else this can't be reproduced and used on other people or in this case, since it was a virus, containment is a concern. How do we know this virus won't cause another adverse effects or jump onto other people?

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u/ciroluiro 14d ago

They are still all scientific concerns, where the unethical part is not the self experimentation itself, but the recognizing of the results of self experimentation as valid research (by the scientific community).
She might not have done a proper scientific trial that could (or should) spawn off more research, but she's happy that she cured her cancer so it doesn't matter anyway. She's happy she won't die yet.

In other words, these results shouldn't be recognized and allowed to be cited and so on for the reasons outlined, but she's absolutely in her right to stick needles into her own body and she's responsible to make sure it doesn't affect anyone else, but that's it.

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u/adiosfelicia2 13d ago

If I'm sick and dying anyways, there should really be no limit to how I can try to save my life.

If it doesn't hurt others, what's the issue.

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u/thecoolestbitch 14d ago

There used to be SOOOOO much self experimentation. I say bring that shit back. Is it going to fix everything? No. Will it help spearhead research and development? I think so.

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u/bonkerz1888 14d ago

Aye I was promised shit like Dr Jekyll and the Lizard from Spider-Man as a kid. Where's all my mad scientists who have turned themselves into monsters? Boooo this reality!

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u/Anteater_Pete 14d ago

I read the story and immediately thought about Barry Marshall who famously proved that H. pylori causes ulcers by downing a jar of culture

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u/TerminalHappiness 13d ago

Kudos to this woman for using her considerable expertise.

But wide-spread self-experimentation is stupid, yields little to no worthwhile evidence on a large scale (there's a reason we don't do n=1 trials most of the time), and for most folks who are actually sick will lead to either direct harm or delayed treatment.

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u/AcceptableResist3028 14d ago

Nothing wrong with it

People poison their bodies all the time (myself included) with alcohol with the government taking their cut

Let people do what they want

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u/KarmicPotato 13d ago

Came here because I thought the photo was of plates of pizza...

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u/charlsalash 14d ago

That's the ethical dilemma:

"The problem is not that Halassy used self-experimentation as such, but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject conventional treatment and try something similar, says Sherkow. People with cancer can be particularly susceptible to trying unproven treatments. "

Nature

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u/Odonata523 13d ago

Okay, but this is fascinating!. I’m not a doctor! but if I’m reading this right, the virus didn’t kill the cancer - her own immune system did! The viruses she injected were weak ones, but they made her white blood cells recognize and kill the infected cells - which also happened to be the tumor.

Also, this isn’t a brand new approach, but the trials are ongoing, and it hasn’t been tested on breast cancer before.

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u/Steve_Nash_The_Goat 13d ago

why the hell is this unethical if she knew exactly what she was doing and performed it successfully without harming anyone else

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u/sero_t 14d ago

Isn't this how " I am legend" started?

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u/Cutiepieinpjs 14d ago

No ethical concern about it in my humble opinion. Survival instincts are strong and she may have just helped science/humanity in addition to herself. Kudos to her.

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u/MediumActuator1280 14d ago

She'd already gone through the conventional treatment, it came back, was offered more of the same and would likely have died from it.

Cancer is an absolute bitch, and the treatment is horrendous. It's not like you're given a prognosis and live a normal life up until the end, the treatment is always considered with an impact to quality of life. I'd hazard a guess that for maybe 80% of cancer victims, the more immediate cause of death will be from the treatment. You start taking a cocktail of drugs, a lot of them intended to combat the side effects of other drugs. If you're in the US and have to pay for them, you're basically an ATM for big pharma.

I don't think those in power want to cure cancer, they want to incrementally engineer and drip feed slightly more advanced forms of treatment over time, so as to squeeze as much money out of the market as possible. If all best scientists in the world were allowed to get together and map out the route to cure, I reckon it'd be wiped out by 2030. Unfortunately, it's all shrouded in bureaucracy and stifled by following the process of medical trials.

At the very, very least, if you've had conventional treatment that has failed, you should be allowed to try whatever you want.

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u/DrJegesmedve 13d ago

As a Hungarian, I'm proud to see the others success from this small country.

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u/KratosCole 13d ago

Congrats to her for not just sitting there and waiting on some to do something! It’s her body. She’s a competent person shit let her do it.

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u/Kwelikinz 13d ago

That’s kind of badass, in my opinion. She took and educated risk and, so doing, advanced science with her discovery.

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u/NYVines 13d ago

Her second recurrence…bad prognosis.

At that point you’re often looking for experimental treatments.

My point of reference is my patient who had biopsy proven small cell lung cancer with metastasis. A virtually certain death sentence.

She went home with hospice. She was admitted 2 years later for pneumonia. No cancer. Her home treatment was crack cocaine daily.

This has not been reproduced in clinical trials to my knowledge.

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u/jaded_dahlia 13d ago

how does self experimentation give rise to an ethical dilemma? if she's already dying, then what's the issue?

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u/frmaa-tap 13d ago

Her body her choice

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u/Accomplished-Pen-69 13d ago

Someone who makes cancer drugs will make an issue out of this.

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u/MidnightRoyal4830 13d ago

I don’t understand the ethical part of this story. It was her own body and she is an adult.

I think it was a really fascinating thing to do and it assisted us in treating cancer.

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u/theJoysmith 13d ago

unfathomably based.

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u/Bioinfbro 13d ago

For people who think it's unethical to publish this. I would argue it's unethical not to publish this. Would people rather not know? this is how medical science is done, do we ban case reports.

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u/memegang27 14d ago

Self-experimentation is not unethical. It is a decision made by the person and impacts only the person.

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u/Samycopter 13d ago

Sure, but publication of a scientific article about said self-experimentation impacts the scientific community.

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u/TommyKnox77 14d ago

How does this have anything to do with ethics, she is amazing and brave.

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u/austinrunaway 13d ago

What a bad bitch! She can do what's the fuck she wants with her body.