WEBVTT - The Fringe Scientists Making a Homemade Vaccine 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:10.040 Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Francesco Levi. Laura Carlson is out. 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:16.480 It's day two eight since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:21.720 Today's main story A group of renegade scientists are trying 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:26.239 to make their own ultra fast tracked vaccine without all 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.680 the regulations slowing them down. They're learning that's harder than 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:41.080 it seems. But first, here's what happened in virus News today. 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.120 President Trump expects to be released today from Walter Reed 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:50.879 Medical Center, where he is being treated for COVID nineteen. 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.400 In a tweet, Trump said he would be discharged at 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:58.520 six thirty pm and that Americans shouldn't fear the virus. 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:03.320 White House physician Sean Conley said at an afternoon press 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.840 conference that the President has met discharge criteria but is 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.039 not out of the woods and upbeat. Conley said Trump's 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:16.199 duties could safely be completed at the White House. Conflicting 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.480 and incomplete accounts from the White House, the President's doctors, 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:26.839 and the President himself have marked Trump's diagnosis and treatment. Meanwhile, 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.319 at least three members of the White House press staff, 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:34.080 including Press Secretary Kaylee McKinney, have tested positive for COVID, 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.440 as have two members of the Residents housekeeping staff, adding 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.399 to the cluster of an affected lawmakers, administration officials, and 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:48.280 others around the president. In most parts of America, COVID 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:52.400 nineteen is making a dangerous comeback. The disease is hammering 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:56.600 rural America and smaller cities, and raising anxiety in New York. 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.520 Experts warn that school reopenings and older weather may cause 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:06.200 the situation to rapidly deteriorate. In thirty four states, the 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.919 seven day average of new cases is higher now than 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.240 it was a month ago. Although the virus has waned 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:16.200 in populous states including California and Florida, it is wreaking 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.800 unprecedented havoc in the Midwest and making a return in 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:27.320 parts of the Northeast. Finally, Russia reported almost eleven thousand 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.600 new cases in a day, the highest daily increase in 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:35.320 almost five months. Moscow ordered schools closed for two weeks 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.280 from Monday, and top officials around the country have called 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:42.040 on residents to wear masks and observe other precautions as 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:50.840 hospital admissions have spiked. Now for today's main story, dozens 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.680 of companies are rushing to test and produce a COVID 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:57.360 nineteen vaccine as fast as possible. But a fringe group 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.880 of d I Y scientists made a bet that with 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:04.160 out regulatory hurdles, they could produce a vaccine themselves a 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.840 whole lot faster. But, as Kristin V. Brown reports, they 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.120 learned that making a vaccine that works reliably and can 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:27.720 be proven safe is incredibly difficult. All right, So anyway, um, 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:31.360 here we go. I'm here with the greatest of all time, 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:36.560 Michael Jordan's I'm ready to go. Josiah Ziner is about 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:40.880 to inject himself with his own d I Y coronavirus vaccine. 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:45.960 Josiah is a former NASA scientist turned bio hacker, and 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:50.320 he's live streaming his experiment on YouTube. He's on screen 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.720 in his makeshift Oakland lab, wearing blue gloves and a 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.920 Michael Jordan jersey. Josiah is cleaning off his shoulder where 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.600 he plans to stick the needle. Two collaborators join him 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:05.119 on screen, and they are also preparing to inject themselves 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:09.000 with the vaccine. Ready, I got two point five in 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.280 my syringe and then I'll do another two point five, 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:22.240 all right. The two other participants follow him. One of them, 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.080 Daria don't Sava, a Ukrainian biohacker, has a friend injector. 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:34.040 She doesn't like needles. Oh, he knows I do not like. 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:40.520 Josiah is known for this kind of stuff. Years ago 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.280 he left institutional science for bio hacking. He has done 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.280 all kinds of experiments that should probably come with a 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.760 don't try this at home morning, including giving himself a 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:54.680 fecal matter transplant to treat some stomach issues. When the 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.640 pandemic struck. Josiah saw an opportunity to show just how 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.799 much a biohacker could do you with a little cash 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:05.720 and know how. He thinks things like regulations can slow 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:10.920 down drug development. Josiah says self experimentation has the potential 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.719 to make science happen a lot more quickly and cheaply. 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:19.200 The vaccine they are injecting themselves with is a replication 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.440 of one that worked in monkeys. In May, a group 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.159 of researchers published a paper demonstrating a vaccine for COVID 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:31.200 nineteen that seemed to trigger immunity to the virus and monkeys. 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.640 Josiah decided that he would recreate that vaccine and then 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.160 test it on himself in a series of online live 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:44.320 streamed classes. He recruited to other bio hackers, Daria and 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:48.480 David Ishi in Mississippi to do the experiment with him. 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:53.040 They nicknamed the experiment Project McAfee, after the anti viral software. 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:58.560 Here's Josia introducing the first class. You all just wanted 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:03.720 us to eject this DNA vaccine into ourselves, and we've 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.200 already had it made. So we already have the DNA 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.640 vaccine and in sufficient quantities. We had it professionally made. 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.880 But we thought that it would it wouldn't give much 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.440 to society if we just inject ourselves with it. We 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:22.000 wanted to give more. We wanted to, you know, teach 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:26.480 people to fish. So each week Josiah, Daria, and David 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.720 would log onto the live stream and explain a little 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:32.960 bit more about their experiment. They talked about how to 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.400 read an interpret a scientific paper, and how to get 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:40.359 DNA for something like this made for you. For this class, 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.960 I want to go over how we went from the 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.679 paper to an actual DNA vaccine and had it made 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.880 and synthesized and sent to us and all that all 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.080 that good stuff, and how to get blood work done 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.560 and antibodies tested to make sure the experiment was accurate. 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:05.799 So my veins pop out the secrets actually being able 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:10.560 to feel the veins and not necessarily just see them, 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.720 but be able to feel them. It goes without saying 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.960 that none of you should try this at home. Be careful, 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:24.040 be safe out there, don't copy us. After two months, 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:28.720 Josiah tested himself for antibodies again and it seemed as 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.600 if the experiment was working. Further testing of their blood 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.880 showed that Josiah, David, and Daria all seemed to have 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:40.760 antibodies that suggested immunity to the virus. But this didn't 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.440 mean Josiah was about to start handing out his vaccine 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:48.000 to friends and family. This was the first time Josiah 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.440 had tried an experiment quite like this, and he realized 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:55.200 something when he looked at the results. There were simply 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.080 too many asterisks to really be sure how to interpret 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:03.679 what they found. These things are messy, That's what I'm learning. 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:07.240 Like when you do a drug test on a human being. 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:13.120 Human beings their biology is so complex that is messy, right, Like, 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.000 the results are going to be messy, The experiments are 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:20.240 going to be messy. So like you do thirty thousand people, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:25.000 so that the messiness kind of averaged out. For example, 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.360 as I had gotten antibody test at lab Core before 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.640 the experiment, that tests came back negative. But when he 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.880 tested himself again right after that, it wasn't so simple. 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:39.480 You know. I went to lamp Corp And I got 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.800 tested and they said I wasn't positive for coronavirus antibodies. 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.160 But when I run the experiment myself, it's pretty obvious 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.760 I have some sort of antibodies. So he did have 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:57.800 some antibodies, but they weren't neutralizing the virus. So it's 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.720 like this weird thing, like what is going on there? 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:04.400 M Are they just other antibodies the coronavirus? Are the 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.400 antibodies to a different coronavirus that was a mask? And 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:09.839 that's like an example. If we were just going by 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:14.280 antibodies alone or something, you know, just being like, you know, 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.600 did it produce antibodies? I could have just ran a test, 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.760 you know, after I injected the vaccine. It would have 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:26.200 came back as positive. For Josiah. That raised questions about 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:30.520 how to interpret the final results. Maybe the reason I 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:35.360 have antibodies is because, like I was already my immune 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.720 system was already primed. I was infected before or something 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.000 like that, and the vaccine maybe just you know, it 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:46.800 was like a booster boosted my antibodies and my immune 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.559 system or something like that. Right, it's super complicated. It 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:52.560 starts to get and then you're just like, holy cow, 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:58.400 this thing isn't as simple as we set out, you know, 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:03.920 just like injective scene and measures some antibody project. McAfee 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:08.120 isn't the only COVID nineteen vaccine project happening outside of 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:13.319 normal regulatory structures right now, with thousands of people dying 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:18.160 every day, speed is of the essence, and vaccines take time. 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:23.080 The fastest vaccine ever developed in history was the Month's Vaccine, 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:27.440 and it took four years. The clinical trials alone took 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:31.600 two years. In the US, Operation warp Speed aims to 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.520 approve vaccine candidates more quickly than ever, but the first 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:40.760 one is likely still months away. Josiah's human trials took 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:45.000 less than three months. Hank Greeley is a Stanford bioethicist 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:48.440 who has become somewhat of an expert on Josias antics 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.680 over the years. He says, in the end, while the 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:55.680 experiment was interesting. It simply wasn't big enough to add 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.319 much to the body of scientific research. I think we 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:04.040 could fairly say it adds a tiny bit of value. 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:06.480 It shows that if you do this to three people, 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.839 none of the three dropped it. That's, you know, that's something. 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:15.320 None of the three apparently had terrible reactions. Now you'd 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:19.400 want thirty thousand instead of three, but three adds a 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.040 tiny bit. I think the potential risks without way any 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:29.200 benefits you could expect from an end of three vaccine trial. Um, yeah, 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:33.320 it added a thimble thimble's worth of water to the ocean. 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.760 But Hank says there is value in showing what really 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.640 goes into making a vaccine. So I think there is 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.800 some value in showing that this is not magic. It's 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.440 not rocket science, but it is I think useful for 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:53.280 people to know that actually making making the vaccine isn't 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.680 that hard. It's testing it and knowing that it's safe 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.199 and knowing that it's effective. That's the hard part. There 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:06.319 is a benefit in having people realize that it's not magic. 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:13.199 In the end, Josiah's coronavirus trials actually made him decide 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.120 to take a break from human experimentation. He says it's 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:22.640 just too complicated. Instead, he says his next project will 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.480 be teaching people to grow chicken cells and to make 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:38.679 fake meat. And that's it for our show. For coverage 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.120 of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.960 bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.040 please leave us a review and a rating on Apple 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.200 Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:55.640 listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is 0:12:55.640 --> 0:13:00.880 produced by tofor Foreheads, Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson, and Laura Carlson. 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.360 Today's main story was reported by Kristin V. Brown. Original 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.800 music by Leo Sidron. Our editors are Rick Shine and 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:12.920 me Francesco Levi. I'm also Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.