• Question: Do you think experiencing an illness first hand (getting the illness) that you are studying, can sometimes be a positive thing rather than a negative?

    Asked by pratyushjain to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      It would certainly motivate! But it might also be dangerous. In the old days (100 years ago), scientists often tested out therapies by deliberate infections. Thankfully that’s been illegal for decades.

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      If it doesn’t kill you, sure! Getting an illness can sometimes show you the symptoms that are difficult to describe, so that patients can’t tell the doctor properly about them (stabbing pains? shooting pains? err…), or sometimes there are very small symptoms that people forget to mention, but which are useful to know about. Also of course it means you know exactly how uncomfortable it feels to have that disease, and you’ll understand how important it is to find a cure.

      But that’s only if it’s an illness you can recover from fairly quickly, and without permanent damage. If having the disease makes you so ill that you can’t do research anymore, then there certainly isn’t anything positive about it!

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      I would rather not catch any of the diseases I study, since they would probably kill me! I suppose it would be easier to get samples of the disease if I had it though.

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      It could be, unless it made you so ill that you couldnt do any research on it! I’d say overall it would be a negative thing.

      Years ago, scientists used to sometimes deliberately cause infections, but today it’s not legal. They did this because they had not developed the use of animals to observe diseases and their effects- today the use of animals for such purposes is strictly controlled as well.

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