Lucas Tafur

Sounds like someone's never been pinned under a bar, wondering if this is how the obituary gets written. 'Leisurely,' he says, between sips of his recovery drink.

For the past 70 years, modern biology has been built on a static objects worldview: DNA = information, proteins = structures, cells = nanomachines, disease = broken parts, drugs = part repair/update. I'm honestly excited for a “new worldview” and “Dynamic Biology” to emerge.

Ok we are closer to agreement than it first appeared. N=1 experiments that are not randomized are equivalent to case reports, especially if documented to a similar degree. N=1 randomized experiments are the highest tier evidence for the individual in whom they are done provided that the time course is feasible and relevant to the outcome of interest. N=1 randomized experiments cannot be used for population-level guidelines because they don't apply outside the individual. However, since all information from any source is imperfect, and since many areas of interest have enormous gaps in knowledge, it is very valuable to use findings from N=1 experiments as potentially relevant to other individuals especially when those individuals are similar in genetics, history, and constitution in the variables thought to be relevant to inter-individual differences. Randomized self-experiments are practical on short time scales, especially when effects are acute over the course of hours. They are reasonably practical for time horizons of one day or several days. They are entirely feasible for time horizons that take weeks or longer but are difficult enough at those timescales that one would have to be extremely motivated to do it, either because the stakes seemed high or because one is a scientist in the classical sort, which is now almost absent from science. The classical scientist, the most genuine of all scientists, loved to experiment out of curiosity and loved to experiment on himself. There are many such scientists in history but they are a rare breed. Barry Marshall most famously with ulcers, Carl Wilhelm Scheele most notoriously for smelling and tasting every chemical he could, William Brown who working with George Burr tried to give himself an EFA deficiency. A R Berger 1, H H Schaumburg, C Schroeder, S Apfel, and R Reynolds taught us a lot about vitamin B6 toxicity by purposefully inducing it in themselves in self-experiments that lasted YEARS. They published their report in 1992. So the answer to your question is that no it is not practical but it is the sign of a genuine scientist of the highest breed.