[ExI] Virologist cures herself of breast cancer with a lab grown virus

[efc at disroot.org]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2024, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 5:42 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>       Given her training and expertise in the area, as well as the fact that she
>       probably had the support of colleagues, I think this is great!
>
>       As long as you harm no one else, I do not see why you should not have the
>       right to experiment with your own body.
> 
> 
> The problem comes with the unstated condition: "...and has a reasonable chance of success."
> 
> What of those who have no clue and are all but guaranteed only to harm themselves if they try, such that they would either become
> society's ward whose welfare other people must pay for, or unfit for normal work and left only able to prey upon others (in the
> criminal sense, not - necessarily - the cannibalistic) to survive?  This is among the more coherent objections of those who warn
> against the masses being allowed to try such things on their own.

That is their responsibility and theirs only. As for society, that's a 
political decision, and not an ethical one. If society is engineer to 
provide care, that can be changed, it can be ammended, for instance, 
should smokers or alcoholics be given free health care? Should people who 
do not exercise be exluded and so on. Overall this exemplifies beautifully 
the slippery slope of positive rights and serfdom.

So if someone will be a burden to the health care system, I personally 
couldn't care less about, since I have never voted for, nor am a proponent 
of, publicly funded healthcare.

With that said, I fully appreciate that a socialist would want to ban and 
severely punish people who experiment with their own bodies, since the 
government, in socialism, owns all property including your own body.

> And in that sense, even this example was not truly on her own.  Surely she discussed her plans with her colleagues (who were
> presumably trained and competent like her), both to review beforehand and to help monitor immediately after treatment, yes?  If this
> was permitted without limitation, many - likely most - cases would not have that benefit.

Why not? I'm sure that people with an interest in such experiments have 
access to internet, books and knowledge. I doubt a redneck in the middle 
of Alaska all of a sudden decides to turn biohacker.
   
>       Since I am not an expert in medicine, I would be very interested in
>       knowing what kind of experiments, anyone at home could do, that would
>       result in mutating viruses or other things, which might risk the lives of
>       others?
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_case - aka "patient zero" - is the start: be the first host of an infectious disease.  I think I
> recall a movie where the plot revolved around a bioterrorist who did just that, visiting as many airports as he could while his body
> held out (and then a time traveller from the resultant ravaged world going back to intercept said terrorist around or before the
> first airport).  A better version would be to immunize oneself (and perhaps a small group one cared about) while still being a
> carrier.

These cases are very interesting! However, what is lacking is probability. 
These things can happen during official experiments as well (and have 
happened) so if this is a reason, we should not do any medical experiments 
at all, except for the most trivial ones.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance describes another possibility: cure a disease just enough to repress symptoms
> but still incubate the microbes in one's system, which can lead to the survival of the few microbes resistant to whatever cure was
> administered, which are usually cleaned up by the immune system once the other microbes are dealt with, but in this scenario are
> unintentionally (or, for those with ill intent, intentionally) left in large enough quantities to overcome that.
> 
> And that's just stuff one can do in one's own body.  https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+bioweapon has lots of results.

If someone has malicious intent, all bets are off anyways. This is 
actually my argument for that we are all engineered for overall and 
average goodness over badness, given the fact that we've had the 
capability to completely destroy our planet for decades, yet this has 
never happened. This tells me, at some level, even dictators, terrorist 
and eco-fascists want to life.