Examining the ethics of self-experimentation, after a virologist injects herself to treat cancer Premium

Article discusses Dr. Beata Halassy's self-experimentation with viruses to treat breast cancer, raising ethical concerns in scientific research.

On August 24 this year, a publication appeared in the journal Vaccines, under a special issue titled ‘Advances in Cancer Vaccines as Promising Immuno-Therapeutics’. The article detailed the use of two viruses – measles and vesicular stomatitis, to treat a patient who had recurring breast cancer. The technique involved the injection of the viruses directly into the tumour, which lead to a stop in its growth, a reduction in its size, and allowed surgeons to excise it. Despite the success of the procedure, no journal was prepared to publish the results before Vaccines finally accepted the paper. This was because, the team did not have the approval of an ethics committee – a primary requirement for any study involving human or animal subjects.

The team argued that they didn’t need an ethics committee approval because Dr. Beata Halassy, the lead scientist on the research, had performed the experiment on herself. 

The idea to use specific viruses to target cancer cells is not new. Scientists have known for over 100 years that certain viral infections cause tumours to shrink. Experimental evidence is available since 1951, when it was shown that that certain strains of tickborne encephalitis viruses cause an inhibition of the growth of tumours in mice. However, the first large-scale clinical trial with this idea did not happen until 2004, when a modified adenovirus named H101 was used in combination with chemotherapy to treat patients with advanced cancers in China. The first FDA-approved trial came in 2015, when a modified Herpes virus called T-VEC, was used to treat skin cancer. Usually, such experimental therapies are tested only in patients who are in advanced stages of the disease.

In the case of Dr. Halassy, she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 and underwent chemotherapy and a mastectomy (breast removal surgery). In 2018, at the site of the mastectomy, the cancer reappeared, and she underwent a minor surgery once again. In 2020, when she realised that the cancer had recurred for the second time, she decided to try the unconventional method of using viruses to treat her cancer. Being a virologist herself, the treatment was carried out using viruses grown in her own laboratory at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. For her treatment, she chose the measles and vesicular stomatitis viruses. The measles virus was picked because breast cancer cells are known to express two proteins called CD46 and nectin-4 on their cell surface in abundance. Since the measles virus uses these proteins to enter the cells, and a safe strain of the virus was already available and being used as a vaccine, it was the ideal choice. Vesicular Stomatitis virus, on the other hand was chosen because of its low pathogenicity to humans, and the results of a previous study that demonstrated its effect on breast tumours in mice.

The authors report that upon administration of this treatment, the tumour shrank in two months, allowing its surgical removal, and Dr. Halassy has been cancer-free for almost four years. The authors conclude in their manuscript, that their work supports the possibility that this technique can be used to treat patients at earlier stages of cancers.

While the work does indeed holds promise for future cancer treatments, that potential does little to overshadow the glaring problem in Dr. Halassy’s research.

Experimenting on oneself is a deeply dangerous practice. Whilst it is true that the act requires a certain degree of bravery and a firm belief in the underlying science, it comes at the inevitable cost of losing objectivity in the research. This introduces a bias in the interpretation of results, and, at the very least, undermines the rigour necessary to draw meaningful conclusions from data.