Subject: AIDS Scientist's Self-Inoculation Sparks Debate
Date: Published: 3/19/87 101 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   AIDS Scientist's
   Self-Inoculation
   Sparks Debate
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   A report that French scientist Daniel Zagury made himself
the first human subject to receive an experimental AIDS
vaccine has electrified the scientific community, but left it
divided as to whether the action was heroism or folly.
   Dr. Zagury, a researcher at the Pierre and Marie Curie
University in Paris, describes his actions in a letter to the
British journal Nature, scheduled for publication today.  He
is one of dozens of researchers world-wide attempting to
develop a vaccine to combat acquired immune deficiency
syndrome.
   Dr. Zagury injected himself last year.  The synthetic
vaccine was produced by splicing a protein from the outer
surface of the AIDS virus onto the vaccinia virus, a staple
vaccine long used to immunize people against smallpox.
   Dr. Zagury asserts that he suffered no ill effects, saying
in a telephone interview, "Why, yes, I feel well.  Of course!"
More importantly, he says his experiment triggered two types
of immune responses in his body:  antibodies to neutralize the
AIDS virus and a critical cellular immune response thought
needed to protect against the varying strains of AIDS. 
   He says a subsequent test in two African patients
confirmed this; the test had the support of the government of
Zaire.
   But Dr. Zagury's experiment has sparked diverse reactions,
including fears for his health and a wish that he had
provided more documentation of his earlier vaccine tests on
animals.
   "This is a crazy experiment ...  It's like a B-movie,"
says Laurence A. Lasky, a senior scientist at Genentech Inc. 
who has been testing an AIDS vaccine on animals for more than
a year.  He says that if Dr. Zagury's vaccine, by some remote
chance, ends up infecting the French physician with AIDS, "He
may be a hero now, but a fool later."
   The small size of the test, Dr. Lasky adds, limits its
usefulness.  "You can't put the guy down," he says.  "It's
brave, but unfortunately, it's meaningless."  He says that
even a synthetic vaccine-believed safer because it contains
no natural viral particles-should be extensively tested
before a human is inoculated.  He also questions whether Dr. 
Zagury will take his experiment to its logical but perilous
conclusion:  infecting himself with the live AIDS virus to see
if his vaccine works.
   Despite such criticisms, Dr. Zagury's action has a wealth
of historical precedent behind it.  Jonas Salk, creator of the
original polio vaccination, twice injected himself before
beginning broad human trialsonce in 1942 with influenza
vaccine and again in 1952 with polio vaccine.
   "I look upon it as ritual and symbolic," says Dr. Salk at
the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif.  "You wouldn't do unto
others, that which you wouldn't do unto yourself."  Though he
says he isn't advocating self-experimentation for all
scientists, he adds, "I couldn't have done otherwise.  It was
a prerequisite for me, a responsible act."
   Dr. Salk says he doesn't recall feeling any fear as he
injected himself and doesn't remember any adverse comments
from colleagues.  "I didn't consult anyone, " he says.  "I
don't even remember whether anyone objected."
   Dr. Zagury dismisses any notion that he is a hero as
"stupidity," and cites Dr. Salk's work as justification
enough for his own experiment.  But times have changed, and
most scientific institutions now impose stringent rules on
human experimentation.
   John Fletcher, an Episcopal minister and chief of
bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical
Center in Bethesda, Md., says self-experimentation has been
"ubiquitous in science" for centuries -- with mixed results.
He cites the 1885 case of Daniel Carrion, a researcher in
Peru who injected himself with "verruga peruana," an exotic
ailment characterized by fever, skin eruptions and rheumatic
disease.  He contracted the disease and died.
   On the other hand, Mr. Fletcher notes the "amazing
success" of Werner Forssman, who pioneered the use of cardiac
catheters in surgery by inserting one into his own body, a
chilling feat that won him a 1956 Nobel Prize in medicine.
   But "the idea of doing this today is highly questionable,"
Mr. Fletcher adds.  He says the National Institutes of Health
has a 20-year-old rule that requires a scientist to enroll as
a bona fide research subject, with all the review and patient
protections normally applied to such tests.
   "The ethics of self-experimentation don't rule it out,"
Mr. Fletcher concludes.  "But they guard against the blindness
of people who fall in love with their own ideas, and they
protect scientists from injuring or killing themselves in the
name of progress."

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