'Biohacker' Who Injected Himself With DIY Herpes Treatment Found Dead (livescience.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Okian Warrior quotes Live Science: The CEO of a biomedical startup who sparked controversy when he injected himself with an untested herpes treatment in front of a live audience in February has died, according to an email sent to Live Science. Aaron Traywick, the CEO of Ascendance Biomedical, was found dead at 11:30 a.m. ET on Sunday (April 29) in a spa room in Washington, D.C., according to a statement provided to Live Science by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of the District of Columbia. Traywick was 28 years old. According to the website News2Share.com, Traywick was found in a flotation tank. Flotation tanks are soundproof pods filled with body-temperature saltwater that are used to promote "sensory deprivation."
Vice News reports that Traywick had "lost touch" with co-workers at his company more than four weeks ago, adding that "Disagreements over the company's direction and philosophical differences over how to best distribute its creations split the small startup."

MIT Technology Review reports that Traywick, "who had no formal medical training, was also planning to test an experimental lung cancer treatment that supposedly involved the gene-editing tool CRISPR. The therapy was to be offered at a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, just a few miles over the U.S. border... An employee at the Tijuana clinic, International BioCare Hospital & Wellness Center, confirmed in a phone interview that doctors there were working with Traywick to set up the trial but won't be moving forward with it after his death...

"In December, the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy issued a statement warning patients about unregulated gene therapies, saying such procedures are potentially dangerous and unlikely to provide any benefit."

Comments

Cause of death?

[arth1]

In a sensory deprivation tank, nobody can hear you scream...

Re:Cause of death?

[Memnos]

That tank really worked as advertised. Now he is truly deprived of all sensation.

I hope more people will do this

[ooloorie]

"In December, the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy issued a statement warning patients about unregulated gene therapies, saying such procedures are potentially dangerous and unlikely to provide any benefit."

It's "potentially dangerous" in the same sense as repairing your own car, packing your own parachute, or building your own hang glider is dangerous. Yes, you can hurt or kill yourself, but if you know what you're doing, you can limit the risk to something reasonable.

Furthermore, for human gene therapy, drug companies and the FDA really can't do much to reduce the risk anyway; most of the negative effects can only be observed in living human beings, so either you inject the therapy into a living human being or you don't get a gene therapy.

If people take these risks voluntarily, human gene therapy can make rapid progress and not be subject to million dollar a shot monopoly pricing. Drug companies don't like these kinds of grassroots efforts because they undercut their business.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[Greyfox]

Cars, Parachutes and gliders are a very well known problem space. It's not terribly hard to find someone in those problem spaces who can tell you if what you're doing is going to kill you. Gene editing is not a well-understood field at this point. We're just poking at things and seeing what happens. Even if you find something that looks like it's going to work, you really need to study that process for years to make sure that all the potential consequences are well understood. We're not at that point yet, and I'd honestly be surprised if it was less than another 2 - 5 decades before we're even remotely certain of anything that modifies human DNA for non-terminal diseases. For all we know at this point, this guy died of turbo-herpes and has introduced turbo-herpes into the ecosystem. That's why we need to be careful with this stuff.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[quantaman]

"In December, the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy issued a statement warning patients about unregulated gene therapies, saying such procedures are potentially dangerous and unlikely to provide any benefit."

It's "potentially dangerous" in the same sense as repairing your own car, packing your own parachute, or building your own hang glider is dangerous. Yes, you can hurt or kill yourself, but if you know what you're doing, you can limit the risk to something reasonable.

More like building your own car or parachute. This isn't "non-expert does something that experts do routinely" it's "non-expert attempts something that experts are still trying to figure out how to do safely".

Furthermore, for human gene therapy, drug companies and the FDA really can't do much to reduce the risk anyway; most of the negative effects can only be observed in living human beings, so either you inject the therapy into a living human being or you don't get a gene therapy.

I'm sure researchers have more ways that live trials on humans to start testing the safety and efficacy of these treatments. As for the DIY, medical treatments are notoriously hard to measure outcomes for, I mean there's still people who swear by homeopathic treatments. DIY is not the way to figure out if these treatments work.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[ArmoredDragon]

Cars and parachutes are a poor analogy anyways. This is more like opening up a binary copy of the Linux kernel with a hex editor, and making changes to it with only a very rudimentary knowledge of assembly, and hardly any knowledge of the Linux kernel in general. Screwing up with that means the kernel crashes or something just doesn't work right. Screwing up with CRISPR, assuming something besides nothing at all happens, is going to fail spectacularly...like oh say...cancer formation in multiple major organs simultaneously.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[Victor Liu]

Gene editing is extremely well understood: it makes predictable changes to human DNA. That's its attraction.

Absolutely. However, the consequences of those very predictable edits is not well understood.

Re: I hope more people will do this

[SirSlud]

People are not islands. They have dependants, friends, family, etc. They can pass on desease. They can land on other people. Cleaning up bodies costs money and has an emotional cost. Societies cannot and should not be expected to bear the full cost of people who take very bad risks. This notion that people make choices for self in isolation is wishful thinking and over simplification. Part of the function of a society is to set limits on what those risks are.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[Darinbob]

This is more like a pre-teen building a bomb; dangerous, you can hurt or kill yourself, and you certainly don't know what you're doing. Nobody knows what they're doing with gene therapies without a sufficient amount of testing. Let me repeat, these tests have not been performed on animal, vegetables, or even rocks, and there is not even a theory that it might work, so no one knows what the result will be. Sure, there are patients with no hope of having an effective cure, but that gives no reason to hand them a lootbox full of random chemicals. These people are irresponsible know-nothing brats, which is not the way you bring down pharmaceutical prices or bring about medical advances.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[h33t l4x0r]

Gene editing is extremely well understood: it makes predictable changes to human DNA. That's its attraction.

- Seth Brundle

Re:I hope more people will do this

[Greyfox]

Right. I don't understand how gene editing works. I do understand how programming works, though. And I understand what happens when some jackass who doesn't understand about programming starts cutting and pasting code around and finds that he's occasionally somewhat successful at getting something to do sort of what he wants it to. We're doing that now with systems more complex than anything humanity has ever built. Given that we can't even change the formulation of soap without accidentally unleashing antibiotic-resistant E-Coli on an unsuspecting world, we really should approach this shit with a little bit of humility and caution.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[CFD339]

Right. I don't understand how gene editing works. I do understand how programming works, though. And I understand what happens when some jackass who doesn't understand about programming starts cutting and pasting code around and finds that he's occasionally somewhat successful at getting something to do sort of what he wants it to.

You've just described how we got Facebook

Re: I hope more people will do this

[ooloorie]

This notion that people make choices for self in isolation is wishful thinking and over simplification. Part of the function of a society is to set limits on what those risks are.

I have a right to kill myself in any way I see fit, even if that hurts my family, my friends, etc. No, you do not have a right to limit the risks competent adults take with their lives. In addition to not having the right, you also do not have the ability. Notice that this guy was going to do his experiment in Mexico.

Societies cannot and should not be expected to bear the full cost of people who take very bad risks.

Who is expecting anybody to bear the full cost of people who take very bad risks? Did anybody ask for ACA to cover the consequences of editing my own genes?

They can pass on desease. They can land on other people.

That's not an issue in this case.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[Victor Liu]

Absolutely. However, the consequences of those very predictable edits is not well understood.

That's saying that the consequences of editing a text file with emacs are not well understood; it's a meaningless statement, since the consequences depend on the edit.

There are many edits with predictable consequences. There are many edits with unpredictable consequences. But the range of consequences is pretty straightforward: most of the time, nothing happens, and rarely the person either gets sick or gets better.

I think the better analogy is it is like using emacs to edit a large binary executable (something I've actually done before in trying to crack licensed programs). One would hope that, through a debugger, one has a good idea of what the edit is supposed to do in order to exact the changes expected. Even when I was pretty sure I understood what changes I needed to make, I was still not eliminating the license checks, and causing random crashes. I don't claim to be an expert at doing this. However, our biological understanding (the debugger) is currently similarly lacking, if not more so. We know that editing DNA sequences modifies the transcribed proteins, and that there are also epigenetic factors that are affected (which was only established relatively recently), among other things (possibly yet to be discovered). I personally believe it is presumptuous and premature to declare that consequences of edits are predictable, since there could be subtle long-term decades-later effects of edits, or perhaps consequences for progeny of those subject to gene editing.

There are some implausible scenarios under which gene editing might pose a risk to other humans, but regulations are not going to stop those anyway, so you might as well not bother making those illegal.

What should be, and what is, as you point out, are two different things. I would rather be overly cautious in the case.

Re: I hope more people will do this

[ooloorie]

And you don't have that right, legally speaking, anywhere on earth.

Suicide is legal in much of the world.

People can also make mistakes when trying to end their lives, and society bears the cost of taking care of these people flight for no other natural reason than human compassion

Compassion is something individual feel, and it leads to charity, a voluntary act. To argue that you should restrict people's liberties because other people might be charitable towards them otherwise is obscene.

When society provides medical treatments to people, that has nothing to do with compassion but compulsion.

Re: I hope more people will do this

[ooloorie]

It costs money to throw your body out. You cannot make killing yourself impact nothing. You live in the world with other people.

Yes, I can impose costs on you and there is nothing you can do about it. It isn't fair.

I don't consider your attitude particularly adult.

The adult thing to do is to recognize that life isn't fair, and that trying to turn society into a totalitarian shithole in an attempt to make it fair doesn't work.

Obviously, you are not an adult.

Re: I hope more people will do this

[Gondola]

> Worst case, the person dies.

Worst case, you introduce a change that gets into the gene pool that makes us more vulnerable to a common disease, shortens lifespan, increases infant mortality, etc. With genetics, the results could be terribly subtle or take decades to reveal themselves.

Re: I hope more people will do this

[ooloorie]

Worst case, you introduce a change that gets into the gene pool that makes us more vulnerable to a common disease, shortens lifespan, increases infant mortality, etc.

Germ line modifications with CRISPR take a lot of extra effort to produce. Even if the self-experiment did result in vertical transmission, how is that different from any other deleterious mutation? Right now, not only do we tolerate deleterious mutations from propagating in the human gene pool, we actively and massively subsidize deleterious mutations.

Re: I hope more people will do this

[lgw]

Yes, freedom can cost money.

Freedom is more important.

Re:I hope more people will do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a research scientist in biotech. The only reason I would try self-CRISPR/Cas9 would be if I had a gun pointed at my head. Here's the deal: biology is hard. Figuring out a target for drug discovery--a single enzyme--is usually based off of years to decades of basic academic research. From there the rule of thumb is 10 years and $1 billion to come up with an actual marketable drug; a great many compounds--hundreds of thousands to millions--will be tried from initial high throughput screening to animal models to clinical trials. Most do nothing and are eliminated early. Some that have efficacy in vitro fail to work in vivo. Some are found to be effective but with unacceptable side effects. Some are even lethal. Testing is exhaustive in part because predicting what compound has what it takes to be an efficacious drug is beyond our current abilities, and will remain such for the foreseeable future.

Only for the most basic things might a CRISPR/Cas9 approach currently be feasible, for instance modifying a single gene encoding a single protein that has an undesirable point mutation, cystic fibrosis for example. Now any kid with a masters degree in a relevant field probably could, given time and resources, modify the gene as desired in cell culture. Delivery of treatment in a safe and efficacious manner in an adult organism is an entirely different manner however and a lone "biohacker" isn't going to be able to compete with a team of well funded experts.

Darwin award nominee?

[mark-t]

[nt]

Re:Darwin award nominee?

[techno-vampire]

If you RTFA, you'll learn that he was found face down. Presumably, he drowned, but we don't know why he rolled over. Unless something interesting shows up in the autopsy, we may never know for sure.

Re:Darwin award nominee?

[martinX]

It was an new experimental flotation tank made by a startup who was taking on Big Tank.

OK, it was actually a washing machine.

Re:Darwin award nominee?

[bickerdyke]

OK, I'm pulling that hypothesis out of thin air, but I'm trying to do so in an Ockham-complete way.

1. Guy injects himself with probably inert liquid as dangerous as isotonic saline solution, but labled "untested drug"
2. Guy grows more and more anxious fearing for possible dangers, but it's too late
3. Guy is so afraid of what he may have done, starts to go insane. (Checkpoint 1: Reports of him loosing contact to the rest of his startup, irritating business descicions)
4. Guy decides he needs to relax. In a fancy and expensive way as considered normal by Silicon Valley Standards
5. Sensory deprivation makes the guy panic, doesn't find emergency exit, splashes and inhales salt water, rolls around and drowns.

Re:Visionnary retards

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, but I question just how visionary some of these biohacker sorts are. To be a visionary, you need a goal and a plan. Saying that you want to use the next big thing to cure a disease is simple; actually following trough is the hard part. These people just hear the Crispr hype and think it is some cure all for every disease without any understanding of what they're talking about. Having good fundamentals in the biological sciences is absolutely essential, and I question how much actual knowledge these sorts have.

Don't misunderstand, there's nothing wrong with the idea of DIY Bio for people who have been screwed by the system as it stands (and believe me, it happens). Biotechnology should not be the property of just of ivory towers and corporate interests, and putting that into the hands of the people is a laudable goal. Still, if you don't know what you're doing, you probably shouldn't be doing it. I mean, you wouldn't try making fireworks without a basic understanding of chemistry and physics, would you? The Crispr gene editing system has a lot of potential over older gene editing mechanisms, sure, but all these people who think gene editing is some cure all just waiting to happen don't have a clue.

this guy doesnt fuck

[binarybum]

Biohacking sounds like the worst possible way to get herpes.

No evidence it was done by the "cure"

[bahwi]

While I doubt he came anywhere close to curing himself (when your cure is more buzzwords than products....) I don't think the attempt had anything to do with the death. The body is versatile for lots of those things, and the immune system and kidneys probably got rid of just about everything before any effect.

It was probably an accidental drowning of some type, drugs, overdose, or something. I doubt this is the first death in a sensory deprivation chamber....

Re:No evidence it was done by the "cure"

[mysidia]

I doubt this is the first death in a sensory deprivation chamber....

Police are still investigating the cause of his death.

Until more information is available... Occam's razor say, this the simplest
explanation: This was probably just another unfortunate fatal accident in a sensory
deprivation chamber...

NO it's not the first death in such a chamber.
These chambers can be quite dangerous.... others have died in them by cause of hyperthermia,
or drugs/alcohol toxicity. Drowning or electrocution are major risks.

This could also have been a suicide. From this person's documented past behavior.... it is possible the fellow was not sane and had some other issues; Most people aren't comfortable "Injecting themselves" with anything ---- he may have later injected himself with more dangerous stuff, such as heroine, LSD or other hallucinogenics shortly before going into this chamber.

Suspicious - A new Aaron Swartz?

[BlueCoder]

The title implies that he died from his treatment. He would have continuously been tested since injection in multiple sites across his body as well as blood work. Herpes itself is not fatal. A preliminary examination on the scene would be more informative. If it was his treatment I would have expected him to have been admitted to the hospital for weeks before death.

It sounds to me like depression and maybe a suicide. The FDA probably came down on him and told him he was blacklisted and no company he was associated with would ever get anything approved.

Could this be another Aaron Swartz?

Re:Visionnary retards

[ColdWetDog]

Fortunately, the world is rather Darwinian. Experiment on yourself - if you do manage to create something useful / helpful, great. Otherwise you're likely dead, certainly ill.

Given how many humans are running around trying to do things, it is hardly surprising that wack noodle narcissists will get some media exposure, claim their 15 minutes of fame and then .... explode. Perhaps there will be some sort of middle ground that will use the new techniques and their own knowledge to advance things. Perhaps not.

I do fail to see why people think that just because you're doing something in your garage, you have a leg up on the tens of thousands of grad students and post docs who are working in better equipped labs with more intellectual support. If this stuff were that easy, there would be happy molecular biology departments throughout the world.

It's not easy at all, CRISPR or not.