Biohacker snake-oil fraudster Aaron Traywick

[Jonathan Cline]

Due to a recent very naive reply in this group questioning the fraud which occurs in biotech and synbio on a regular and broad basis, fraud in biotech also including vaporware products which dupes investors and more importantly raises the possibility of harm to others, I will post a couple obvious news stories related to the need for more ethics in biotech.  RTFM.  Neither amateur nor professional scientists should tolerate this type of behavior especially in the community areas of synbio.  Fraud also includes faulty, improper, biased journalism, for those reporters who are reading this.

-- quote --

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43973588

Biohacker Aaron Traywick found dead in a spa

A biohacker who became infamous after apparently injecting himself with an untested herpes drug in front of an audience has been found dead.  

Aaron Traywick's body had been discovered in a spa room in Washington DC on Sunday, local police said.

Vice News reported that Traywick had been using a flotation therapy tank.  The 28-year-old was chief executive of Ascendance Biomedical. He had skirted the law by self-medicating as well as encouraging others to do likewise. A police spokeswoman has said no evidence has been found to suggest foul play.

Traywick had claimed his biohacking company had developed a DIY "research compound" that could cure HIV, Aids and herpes, but had no independent proof to back this up. Biohacking refers to people's efforts to alter their own biology by a variety of means including lifestyle and diet changes, surgery and the use of unlicensed therapies.  The BBC challenged Traywick over his behaviour when it interviewed him at the BodyHacking Con in Austin, Texas, in February.  Traywick, who had herpes, had performed a stunt at the event, apparently injecting his company's unregulated product into his leg.  On stage, he had referred to the product as a "research compound".  But in conversation with the BBC he described it as a "treatment" - a claim that had the potential to attract the attention of the US Food and Drug Administration.

Traywick told the BBC he had plans to take his work to Venezuela. When questioned whether it was ethical to encourage sick people to effectively act as guinea pigs, Traywick responded: "The best we can do is we can say to these people, 'We know you don't have access to this medication.'  "They don't have any other options. "All we know is that if it works they don't die."  Traywick's work had also caused concern among other members of the body-hacking community.  An autopsy was scheduled to be carried out on Traywick's body, but the results have yet to be disclosed.

-- end quote --

-- quote --

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42989077

Bodyhackers: Bold, inspiring and terrifying

8 February 2018

...

Unregulated

Aaron Traywick's Ascendance Biomedical is a more controversial example.

Mr Traywick claims - and there is no independent proof of this whatsoever - that his drugs can cure HIV, Aids and herpes. He says he suffers from the latter.  Indeed, at the event he performed a stunt on stage whereby he injected his own product into his leg - or at least tried to. There was some confusion about what exactly had transpired.  Mr Traywick skirts the law by self-medicating, and encourages others to do the same.  Officially he calls his product a "research compound", but in conversation often slips up and refers to it as "treatment" - a claim that could see him in choppy waters with the US Food and Drug Administration, the notoriously strict regulator.  The FDA calls companies like his "dangerous". But when asked by the BBC, it would not say whether it was monitoring Mr Traywick's activities.  In November, Ascendance Biomedical made headlines when a 28-year-old man injected himself with its HIV "research compound".  Mr Traywick told me he now plans to take that work to Venezuela.  "The best we can do, is we can say to these people 'we know you don't have access to this medication'," he says.  "They don't have any other options," he added, as if that was acceptable rationale for using an unregulated drug that was tested on only one person.

'Ridiculous'

At least one prominent bodyhacker has publicly taken issue with Mr Traywick's work.  "The idea that any scientist, biohacker or not, has created a cure for a disease with no testing and no data is more ridiculous than believing jet fuel melts steel beams," wrote Josiah Zayner, a man who also works with so-called "do-it-yourself" drugs.

-- end quote --

-- 

## Jonathan Cline

## jcl...@ieee.org

## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223

########################

[Cory J. Geesaman]

I agree it's irresponsible to encourage people who don't understand something to do anything with it, but there is no such thing as a coincidence so assuming his concoction didn't kill him someone did.

[cathal...@cathalgarvey.me]

Not to speak ill of the dead, but occam's razor suggests otherwise. He was found in a floatation tank, and he's publicly known to be prone to poor decision-making (injecting untested hypothetical therapies on stage as a stunt, publicly using language that could get him sued by the FDA, etc.).

It's entirely possible he was intoxicated in a tank full of water and simply drowned.

--
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+un...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/diybio.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/122c0f2c-7f02-4a88-81d9-1a8d011d2d15%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Cory J. Geesaman]

I don't discount the possibility, it just strikes me as unlikely after that kind of announcement.  There's a lot of money to be made treating the things he mentioned and neither of them are really outside the realm of possibility (HIV itself already has two cures I've read about over the years, one involving swapping out marrow + blood more or less like the way billionaires these days are using donor blood from young people as part of their health regimen and the other being something Human Genome Sciences published a paper on about a decade ago and immediately shot up in stock price before Glaxo-Kline-Smith bought them out and shelved the research.)  There have also been others which have cropped up for both of them over the years which are necessarily individual treatments (e.g. make antibodies specific to the strains in an individual like you would for anything that doesn't mutate as much.)  If I had to guess I'd say their version was that last one, because that's within the realm of DIY (though they might have some improvement on the pace at which it can be done thereby reducing the cost.)  Shkreli actually went into this stuff to some degree and calling national attention to it is why they ended up going after him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVQOZDKlRE.  Goldman Sacks actually went into this issue last month.  I'd say that they probably would go at it more like the guy who founded Reddit and just drive him to suicide, except it's already happened directly in a more obvious manner and healthcare companies who choose to withhold cures have already made the conscious decision to kill people through inaction for profit, doing it more overtly isn't a huge leap after that.

[cathal...@cathalgarvey.me]

I don't know about the Human Genome Sciences one, but I can tell you that marrow ablation + replacement was projected to have a mortality rate of over 10% just from the immediate operation, not considering (IIRC) later issues like Graft-Versus-Host disease or graft rejection. Compared to a regimen of HAART which can give people a relatively high quality of life with much lower risk, it's a no-brainer, until a less hazardous cure emerges.

Also, did you seriously quote Martin Shkreli as a reliable source of anything valuable? He's been one of the most toxic personalities in the public view outside of US/UK politics: he's been banned from multiple platforms for harassment of women, he rubs shoulders with the US Alt-Reich, he's been convicted on multiple counts of fraud, and to top it off his entire business practice was predatory price-hikes on near-expired patents. Nothing about the guy suggests that he speaks truth or has valuable opinions to contribute.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/2275f33b-cdc6-4039-9c54-b607cdacd047%40googlegroups.com.

[David Murphy]

That Goldman Sacks article isn't saying what many people seem to be claiming it's actually saying.

Curing an infectious disease simply has a different return profile to treating the symptoms of one.

People complain about investors only caring about the short term, and that's exactly what that says curing a disease will give you, short term returns, hence invest accordingly.

The company they talk about selling a hep C cure made a huge profit with 12 billion last year. But now the return is dwindling. Pretty much as you'd expect.

Hence if you're investing in a company that's actually curing a disease and it actually works make sure to price it such that you make your return in the first couple of years.

People selling cures still win in the market vs those who don't.

There is no conspiracy theory secret bank of hidden cures for everything.

--
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en

Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/diybio.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/2275f33b-cdc6-4039-9c54-b607cdacd047%40googlegroups.com.

[ruphos]

Shkreli being human garbage does not necessarily negate the possibility that pharma would go to large measures to protect their profits. That said, I think Hanlon's Razor is even more relevant than Occam's:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Yes, there could be a big pharma conspiracy to keep the biohackers in their basements and on the fringe, but much more likely is that someone with a history of risky behavior decided to enhance their trip by using an isolation chamber.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/ba73a9e7996381fe4aa5cf155459ad55%40cathalgarvey.me.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

"And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then be at least its warriors."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

[Cory J. Geesaman]

Shkreli is absolutely a toxic troll, but nobody is absolutely good or absolutely evil and I buy his story for the price hikes as he lays it out in that video.

[Cory J. Geesaman]

I don't think they are out to get biohackers, I think that guy in particular was out to cure things, had a personality such that he wouldn't be bought off, and did a bunch of things publicly to show that he wouldn't be able to be bought off - so that would make him a target if ever there was one.

[Cory J. Geesaman]

I'm not suggesting they don't make short-run profits that could make it worth it, just that the financial sector is taking the issue seriously enough to be looking for alternatives - which itself says treatments are worth more than cures in the long-run (which is what the larger corporations care about.)

[John Griessen]

On 05/03/2018 06:37 AM, David Murphy wrote:
> Curing an infectious disease simply has a different return profile to treating the symptoms of one.

The way the article by Tae Kim was worded seemed totally cold hearted, so yes that's probably how successful investors use it.
But then Kim describes analyst comments, [ analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition
carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for
sustained cash flow."]

It suggests that the really big pharma companies are being trained, (by the market -- by Wall St.), to go for the good returns,
and that won't involve gene therapies that cure.
Meanwhile, the way the FDA works, only big pharma can afford their methods, so who is left to work on gene therapies
but DIYers and small companies that sidestep or flout the rules.

[David Murphy]

It's likely also an unsubtle jab at the regulators to tell them to create a variation on patents more suitable to rewarding such things.

it's like the problem with antibiotics. The sane and sensible way to use new antibiotics is to hold them back in reserve for the absolute worse cases as a final line and perhaps decades on when they're less effective use them more. But that's a terrible pattern for anyone with a patent. Which reduces the incentive to invest in novel drugs. Hence we need something more suitable than existing patents to reward developers of antibiotics.

Investment is almost certainly distorted towards long term treatments but nobody is sitting on cures because while they don't match the profitability over 20 years you can make an absolute killing for a few years. 

Of course one politically difficult solution might be multi-billion jackpot funds for anyone who develops something with properties of X to provide a guaranteed reward... but politicians hate trying to pull together giant piles of money that may never pay off politically.

--
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
--- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/diybio.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/118522e9-7a16-9e70-813d-9acb09b70f3a%40industromatic.com.

[Jonathan Cline]

Please don't drum up conspiracy theories, which especially will be
read by the non-savvy and likely end up as overinflated misinformation
elsewhere. The news article said the formal investigation is
continuing, so either wait for that to complete, or contact the team
responsible for the investigation in order to work directly with them
and present a perspective using first hand information.

[VladimirGent]

I am doing  something similar to  Aaaron  and  Zayner  ...  and would like to say  that he was  an interesting persona in the community of   DIY bio-hackers.    In fact  I  do not  see anything  impossible in his  stunts with injections  and genetic therapy... The only problem was that his  education  was not that deep enough  to understand  some obvious professional points.   

I  do the same  things , public  DNA  injections , but  cover  it  with artistic  activity shadow.   And, DNA vaccinations  for example  is well established  form of humane somatic genetic  modification  with obvious benefits , tested  on  large groups of  people  in clinical trials   , with minimal  side-effects... FDA is  still against it  and in a favor  of  usual  classic  vaccines ... but DNA works  good,   DARPA pays  loads of money to the company  for further development.  So  I  would not hesitate  to steal one of their  DNA vaccines , I mean to  remake it  as biohacker ,  and  inject  into me . No problem at all.   And  share  it.     here is  last  vide  for illustration , I inject  Tobacco  DNA  into my body.   https://youtu.be/klMdzjjBtVk