References
Self-experimentation
Abstract
In this month's article, George Winter discusses examples throughout history of medical self-experimentation by researchers
The scientific literature has abundant accounts of human volunteers participating in medical experiments, but self-experimentation in a medical context is less well documented. By 2012, there were ‘465 documented instances of this practice, performed over the course of the past two centuries’ (Weisse, 2012), and self-experimentation had reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century, with eight deaths occurring.
For example, Pal et al (2015) describe the role of self-experimentation in helping to establish disulfiram – tetraethylthiuram disulfide (Antabuse®) – as a deterrent for patients with alcohol use disorders. First synthesised in 1881 by German chemist M. Grodzki, disulfiram was found to be useful in the vulcanisation of rubber, but ‘the distress among the workers involved in the processing of the substances after ingesting alcohol’ was recorded (Pal et al, 2015).
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