
What Does an Infamous Biohacker’s Death Mean for the Future of DIY Science? - cfadvan
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/aaron-traywick-death-ascendance-biomedical/559745/?single_page=true
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savanaly
>His exact cause of death is still unknown; police say the autopsy results are
not expected for several weeks.

Love it when they wait until like five paragraphs into the article to include
the sentence that tells you the whole article is a waste of time.

~~~
Zanni
Exactly. What does his death mean for biohacking? _Nothing_ , until we know
whether or not his death is related to biohacking.

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noetic_techy
I hate these sort of articles. As if we should all go cower back in our holes
now that someone flamed out. A cautionary tale maybe, but crossroads? Hardly.
People often pushing the boundaries push too far. If were ever going to
improve things and get off this planet, were going to have to start stomaching
some inevitable loss's.

~~~
ra1n85
I agree with you, primarily because this was a decision made by the individual
himself. Unlike a monkey shot off into space 40 years ago, this guy presumably
understood the risk to the endeavor.

And it's "losses" :)

~~~
RIMR
For me it's really off putting that a "life extension activist" experimented
on himself recklessly until he died before hitting 30.

It doesn't put an ounce of confidence in his company.

Medicine isn't easy - he wasn't a pioneer, he was a wannabe and he died
chasing the dream of eternal life.

I am all for the development of these incredible new treatments and therapies,
but the biohacker community needed a wake-up call badly. If Aaron's death
encourages others in the field to slow down and be more deliberate, and to
avoid high-risk testing for publicity's sake, then hopefully it won't be in
vain.

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MisterTea
Without reading the article we can safely say absolutely nothing in regard to
the future of DIY science as we still don't have an autopsy report. So until
then, let's stop speculating.

~~~
RIMR
I too look forward to seeing the autopsy report, but I am not too hopeful that
this was just a coincidence.

Having an otherwise healthy person perform high-risk experiments on his own
body and then drop dead before hitting 30 doesn't leave a whole lot to the
imagination.

Obviously, the autopsy will tell us everything we need to know, but let's not
pretend that his biohacking didn't play a role in his demise, because it seems
highly likely that it did.

~~~
ars
> Obviously, the autopsy will tell us everything we need to know

That's not obvious at all. The autopsy could come back "inconclusive". They
do, quite frequently. Not every cause of death leaves a marker behind.

~~~
VectorLock
And I think almost any result people will still attribute in some way to
biohacking, unless they find a bullet in him. Even if he drowned people could
still say he could have became unconscious because of something he injected
himself with, and they wouldn't be wrong.

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Rotdhizon
I don't think it means anything really. Judging from that article, the scope
of his biohacking was nothing more than getting treatments injected into
people before they went through the many years of tediously long testing and
approval. He didn't accomplish much, much of his fame was from hype and
reckless stunts. He established a company, touted a bunch of unfounded
achievements and breakthroughs, and ultimately came up empty. It even says at
the end that he was shunned from the biohacking scene after his herpes stunt,
so it's not like the biohacking scene took off in popularity. For as long of
an article as that was, it said very little. I think his view of getting
people treated without the lengthy process of following regulations, laws, and
approval was noble in a sense, but too few people feel the same as him for any
meaningful progress to be made. If you have a company that is offering
experimental treatments to human test subjects who agree to be tested on, more
power to them. I wouldn't call that biohacking, just using experimental
treatment.

I was surprised at first to learn that biohacking in this sense was about
medical treatments, I've always looked at it as becoming one with technoloy,
such as putting chips in your hands that serve specific functions(unlocking
doors, logging in, etc).

~~~
freddie_mercury
Yeah, this struck me as the kind of article that suffers from the rush to
press. Then again if they had waited a few months -- for autopsy results to
come in, for effects of his death on the community to be clear, etc -- then
maybe there wouldn't have been enough meat for an article at all.

~~~
kanzure
Autopsy report already says ketamine overdose.

edit: source is the-scientist.com

~~~
wavefunction
That was my first assumption, given the circumstances involving the sensory-
deprivation tank as the site of death.

~~~
sincerely
Do people often take dissassociatives in sensory deprivation tanks?

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LifeLiverTransp
If Icarus tought us one thing- then its to never set foot into a boeing 747 or
an airbus.

Look at the ISS, just look at them, tar and feathers everywhere, because they
flew to close to the sun. They are still falling. Every day.

He who challenges the gods soon develops a liver problem. He who develops a
vacaccine against the liver problem _, challenges the writers of moral outrage
pieces.

_ Author of said piece, would still welcome a working liver cure. Cheers!

PS: Projecting the hatred of ones own cowardice onto the late explorers is not
considered enlightment.

~~~
baq
There was this site which asked you to classify sentences as profound or
bullshit and I feel I got back there...

~~~
analognoise
Profoundly bullshit.

------
kirubakaran
"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake
coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the
trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."
Douglas Adams [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/639593-far-out-in-the-
uncha...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/639593-far-out-in-the-uncharted-
backwaters-of-the-unfashionable-end)

------
Symmetry
_" all progress depends on the unreasonable man"_

I don't have any particular knowledge or opinion on this person's work, how
liable it was to lead to breakthroughs and whether it could have been
accomplished as quickly with less risk. But medical science has a long and,
frankly, glorious history of self experimentation featuring both Nobel
Prizes[1] and deaths[2]. I'm sure most of the people who do this are
overconfident just based on the selection process but still medical science,
and hence all of us, have benefited from their attempts and I'm not going to
look down on someone who is willing to risk their own life in pursuing the
frontiers of medicine, even if they might be after fame or notoriety.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Forssmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Forssmann)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_William_Lazear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_William_Lazear)

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dschuetz
It always meant and still means "don't try this at home". It's unreasonable
and very dangerous if you do biohacking without actually knowing what you're
doing! Seriously, the world won't miss another idiot killing himself, because
he thought he was smarter than everyone else. That's not science. It's
recklessness.

~~~
this_user
> It's unreasonable and very dangerous if you do biohacking without actually
> knowing what you're doing

The question is whether you can really know what you are doing with this kind
of process. There is a reason why biotech companies are spending billions on
rigorous scientific research and well constructed, multi-stage studies. But
even then a lot of that research fails to produce anything useful. Or
something like the infamous Contergan slips through and causes massive harm
despite all of this effort. How much can we really expect from a bunch of
outsiders doing (at best) very flimsy science when even the best and brightest
experts in the field regularly waste years pursuing ideas that do not work
out?

~~~
LyndsySimon
> How much can we really expect from a bunch of outsiders doing (at best) very
> flimsy science when even the best and brightest experts in the field
> regularly waste years pursuing ideas that do not work out?

I'd guess "a lot".

Certainly this is higher risk. It's also much faster and less constrained -
there's nothing stopping someone who believes a certain process will have a
certain effect from trying it, regardless of what others believe. That will
result in data that can be potentially useful for subsequent research
regardless of the outcome.

At the end of the day, I believe that people own themselves. If they want to
risk their life and health to be their own test subject, more power to them.

Consider that someone, somewhere, once saw the round white thing that came out
of a chicken's butt and though "Hmm... I wonder how that tastes..." If not for
that intrepid soul we might never have discovered omelets :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Since you mention it, let's have a moment of silence for all our ancestors who
died trying out random things they found in the forest, so that future
generations could know exactly what is and what isn't edible.

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j-c-hewitt
One fruitcake died, therefore the entire future of non-institutional science
is in question?

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thelegendxp
What does this useless article mean for the future of journalism?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not much. It's just another data point on a curve clearly showing that reading
news stories is not just a waste of time, but actively poisonous to the mind.

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api
What does a reckless drivers' death mean for the future of automobiles?

~~~
ribosometronome
What does the death of a someone barreling down a hill in a prototype
horseless carriage mean for the future of automobiles? Perhaps the need for
regulations, safety features, caution, etc.

~~~
afsina
This is not such a case. More like "Let adults bare consequences of their
decisions please".

