The downside of DIY

There’s been a surge in DIY vaccines for Covid-19, which is troubling bioethicists. A group of citizen scientists called RaDVaC — short for Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative — is working on quickly developing vaccine recipe that’s simple enough to be produced by the public. But a pair of medical ethics experts, writing in Science, argue it's a terrible idea.

Home-brewed vaccines are more likely to fuel the growing public mistrust in vaccines, as opposed to helping combat the pandemic, they write. A lack of peer review means that there’s no real understanding in such vaccines' efficacy — or in their risks. And if something goes wrong in a citizen’s DIY vaccine project, the broader scientific community suffers.

“DIY vaccinology is dangerous at a time when nonevidence-based claims of Covid-19 ‘cures’ have done little but sow mistrust of science and public health,” the authors write.