'Is It Ethical?': Netizens Divided After Scientist Treats Her Cancer Using Experimental Vaccine

Beata Halassy (53), an expert infectious disease researcher, has divided the internet after she treated her cancer using an experimental vaccine she developed in her laboratory. Halassy discovered she had Stage 3 breast cancer at the site of a previous mastectomy in 2020. Not willing to face another bout of chemotherapy, Halassy, a virologist at the University of Zagreb, took matters into her hands and started trying out an unproven treatment by combining a measles virus and a flu-like pathogen to create a potent shot that attacked the tumour directly and restored the immune system. Fast forward to 2024, Halassy is now cancer-free for four years.

Halassy self-administered an experimental treatment called oncolytic virotherapy (OVT) which is usually reserved for patients with advanced or resistant cancers. "The short-term and middle-term outcome of this unconventional treatment, which was devoid of any significant toxicity, was undoubtedly beneficial," Halassy said in a report published in Vaccines.

Halassy also advocated for using OVT as the first line of defence for cancer treatment instead of sticking with current treatment procedures involving surgery, chemotherapy, biological therapy, or radiation.

"They will probably work much better than they do today, and maybe they don't always work as well as other treatments, but they are certainly less destructive. So maybe we can use them as first line or treatment, or in combination with other treatments," Ms Halassy told Uncharted Territories.

She added that "it took a brave editor to publish" her report as the practice of conducting experimentation on oneself is considered a stigmatised and ethically fraught practice.

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'She's a genius'

The netizens were seemingly divided on the issue with the majority praising Halassy for taking control of the situation and curing herself while a minority raised questions over the ethical side of the issue.

"She's a genius and a hero and instead of s****ing themselves over dumb procedural questions, the scientific community should be figuring out how to replicate and adopt her findings to save other women," said one user, while another added: "Where is there an ethical problem here? They say there is, but I just can not for the life of me imagine where it is."

Meanwhile, Blair Strang, a lecturer in Virology at St George's, University of London said: "I heard whispers but hoped it wasn't true. I'm delighted the subject is well, but the ethical dimensions are very troubling: Ethics of self admin, her own doctors, the reagents used, the funding, the institutional oversight, and the journal publishing the work. Where to begin?"

Notably, breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related death in women worldwide. It occurs in every country of the world in women at any age after puberty but with increasing rates in later life. In 2022, 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), adding that it accounted for 670,000 deaths globally.