Not so long ago, medical researchers had a habit of using themselves as guinea pigs. Many scientists saw self-experimentation as the most ethical way to try out their ideas. By going first, researchers could test their hypotheses and see how novel interventions affected human beings. In his book Who Goes First? Lawrence Altman reports that my own institution, Washington University, was nicknamed the “Kamikaze School of Medicine” because of its self-experimentation tradition.
Today we rely on a more systematic process to decide when to begin human testing, with experts and ethicists evaluating when a trial is justified. But a modified version of self-experimentation still makes sense.