"I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in my Kitchen and it Worked - Science Still Sucks"
I hate science. It's so elitist.
I have an internal dialogue going all the time trying to convince myself that I don't want my work to be called science. What I do is completely different, more sacred, honest and open and yes sometimes flawed. Sometimes I hide the fact that I have a Ph.D. because I don’t want it to be a symbol of authority or intelligence for myself. It also feels douchey to tell people I have a Ph.D. I want to be judged by my actions, not where I went to school, which can be primarily determined by your parents financial status and education level. I grew up on a farm in rural Indiana. We ate eggs from our chickens and drank dehydrated milk. Up until even high school my family was dirt poor. We had our electricity shut-off and had to take cold showers. When we couldn't afford the phone bill, I walked to 7-11 and used the payphone to call my friends. Violence, evictions, car repossessions — you name it, I’ve lived it. Starting undergrad at SIU I was homeless and lived out of my car and slept on the dorm room floors of people I knew.
When I was in graduate school, 99% of my peers did not come from a similar background. It was abundantly clear that the practice of science and medicine is only accessible to the upper crust. That’s an issue in itself, but the fucking humongous gigantic bigger problem is that cutting-edge medicines are also only available to the societal elite. Time and time again throughout this pandemic, we’ve watched as the wealthy and powerful get all the unapproved drugs to treat their covid, while all of us peasants sit back and do our best not to die without them. The 108 Regeneron antibody cocktails all went to Washington DC.
That’s why I left academia. Why I quit my job at NASA and started doing science as a biohacker. I want everyone to be able to do science without any gatekeepers. The single greatest impediment to diversity in science is access to knowledge and information that is being held tighter than Ric Flair’s Figure Four Leg Lock.
Biohackers are setting knowledge free.
In May 2020, an article came out in science magazine where researchers showed that by using a DNA vaccine that codes for the SARS-COV2 spike protein, they could create antibodies that provide protection from covid-19 in macaque monkeys without harmful side-effects. Getting good monkey data is basically the best pre-human data you can ever hope to get. Most people only have experimental data from mouse tests. When I see a paper like this the gears in my brain begin to spin because there is a good chance the FDA would approve this for human testing.
So, I decided to test it myself. The project perfectly fit a niche where biohackers have an experimental advantage over academia and industry. With enough knowledge and skill, we could perform quick but data-laden experiments to show whether the same DNA vaccine tested on monkeys would be promising in humans. And instead of taking months or years we could have results in as little as a few weeks.
[...]
From the early days of the pandemic: http://www.josiahzayner.com/2020/12/i-made-covid-19-vaccine-in-my-kitchen.html https://archive.is/mKx2Q
===everything after this is from those link:
"I Made a Covid-19 Vaccine in my Kitchen and it Worked - Science Still Sucks"
I hate science. It's so elitist.
I have an internal dialogue going all the time trying to convince myself that I don't want my work to be called science. What I do is completely different, more sacred, honest and open and yes sometimes flawed. Sometimes I hide the fact that I have a Ph.D. because I don’t want it to be a symbol of authority or intelligence for myself. It also feels douchey to tell people I have a Ph.D. I want to be judged by my actions, not where I went to school, which can be primarily determined by your parents financial status and education level. I grew up on a farm in rural Indiana. We ate eggs from our chickens and drank dehydrated milk. Up until even high school my family was dirt poor. We had our electricity shut-off and had to take cold showers. When we couldn't afford the phone bill, I walked to 7-11 and used the payphone to call my friends. Violence, evictions, car repossessions — you name it, I’ve lived it. Starting undergrad at SIU I was homeless and lived out of my car and slept on the dorm room floors of people I knew.
When I was in graduate school, 99% of my peers did not come from a similar background. It was abundantly clear that the practice of science and medicine is only accessible to the upper crust. That’s an issue in itself, but the fucking humongous gigantic bigger problem is that cutting-edge medicines are also only available to the societal elite. Time and time again throughout this pandemic, we’ve watched as the wealthy and powerful get all the unapproved drugs to treat their covid, while all of us peasants sit back and do our best not to die without them. The 108 Regeneron antibody cocktails all went to Washington DC.
That’s why I left academia. Why I quit my job at NASA and started doing science as a biohacker. I want everyone to be able to do science without any gatekeepers. The single greatest impediment to diversity in science is access to knowledge and information that is being held tighter than Ric Flair’s Figure Four Leg Lock.
Biohackers are setting knowledge free.
In May 2020, an article came out in science magazine where researchers showed that by using a DNA vaccine that codes for the SARS-COV2 spike protein, they could create antibodies that provide protection from covid-19 in macaque monkeys without harmful side-effects. Getting good monkey data is basically the best pre-human data you can ever hope to get. Most people only have experimental data from mouse tests. When I see a paper like this the gears in my brain begin to spin because there is a good chance the FDA would approve this for human testing.
So, I decided to test it myself. The project perfectly fit a niche where biohackers have an experimental advantage over academia and industry. With enough knowledge and skill, we could perform quick but data-laden experiments to show whether the same DNA vaccine tested on monkeys would be promising in humans. And instead of taking months or years we could have results in as little as a few weeks. [...]