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Aaron Traywick, a biohacker who once injected himself with an untested herpes therapy on a crusade to expand access to medications, was found dead on Sunday morning in Washington, DC, police confirmed to BuzzFeed News.
Traywick, 28, was found in a spa in Northwest DC, according to police. Staff discovered him in a sensory deprivation flotation tank, according to his colleague Tristan Roberts.
His body was taken for an autopsy, and his cause of death was not immediately known. Their investigation is still ongoing, but the police say they don't suspect foul play.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/aaron-traywick-biohacker-died
Previously: "Biohacker" Injects DIY Herpes Vaccine in Front of Audience and Facebook Live (Aaron Traywick)
Biohacker Regrets Injecting Himself With Gene Therapy in Front of a Live Audience (Josiah Zayner reacting to Aaron Traywick)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:31AM (14 children)
The sensory deprivation tank + hallucinogenic drug combo is welllllll known. Even the inventor/developer of the tank [wikipedia.org] did it:
Traywick was reportedly found "face down" in the tank [news2share.com]. So either he committed suicide, had some kind of a panic attack, or was on some kind of drugs that made him disoriented or panic. Unless you can find of some trend of sober people dying in the tank, I'm leaning heavily toward recreational drugs being a contributing factor, although I noted that I want to see the toxicology report. The injection from 3 months earlier is unlikely to have contributed; just injecting yourself with CRISPR+stuff doesn't mean you are going to be totally transformed.
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:54AM (5 children)
I didn't claim that a connection with the gene self therapy is likely. I just said that the evidence for drug involvement is even less than the evidence of a causal relation to the gene self therapy.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:05AM
You've got it reversed. If there was no mention of the tank, I wouldn't have brought up the involvement of recreational drugs, and would be pondering about how untested gene therapy could have fucked this man up instead.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:30AM (3 children)
I could have saved us some time if I had seen this earlier:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/05/02/aaron-traywick-dc-spa-says-police-found-drug-paraphernalia/ [washingtonian.com]
So now we have a spa employee claiming that the police found drug paraphernalia. Is this the tipping point for you?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:52AM (1 child)
A spa PR agent says it wasn't their fault, that's all. And what paraphernalia? That could be anything. And how does it take them 2 months to figure out what it was?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @01:27PM
And it's entirely believable.
If a detective asked about it, it may have had something to do with the man's death. Moreso than a pack of chewing gum or his wallet.
Same reason it takes years to get a "rape kit" tested. Backlogs and delays.
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:32PM
What exactly are those "drug paraphernalia"? I can think of some that would also be used in administering, say, herpes gene therapy.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:57AM (7 children)
After all, the inventor reportedly used the tank for 10 years before trying it with LSD.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:02AM (6 children)
LSD was A BIT MORE POPULAR AND AVAILABLE in 1964 than 1954.
Like, come on.
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(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:59AM (5 children)
That was also the least relevant point.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:30AM (4 children)
I didn't offer "resisting" as a reason for the 10 year gap. I implied that the idea to take LSD in the tank didn't occur to him or he couldn't get a hold of LSD until '64. Orders of magnitude more people were interacting with the drug by the end of those 10 years.
There is no fallacy in the thread. I wouldn't need to mention drugs if he hadn't DIED in the tank. The association I've made is not simply between drugs and the tank, but drugs and dying in the tank. Of which there are known cases. And as it turns out, drug paraphernalia was reportedly found in his belongings at the spa where he died:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/05/02/aaron-traywick-dc-spa-says-police-found-drug-paraphernalia/ [washingtonian.com]
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 03 2018, @04:36PM (2 children)
Ok, we get it. You believe that he died from doing drugs in his isolation tank. You have good reasons to believe that. We . get . it .
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @04:55PM (1 child)
I wouldn't need to explain it over and over if there wasn't so much complete ignorance displayed by other users in the thread. And I blame out-of-touch greybeards.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:10PM
Having made your point quite convincingly, I'd like to invite you not to dwell on those who have their own reasons to doubt your hypothesis.
You might be right,
but don't sound obsessive,
for this is just schadenfreude news,
and the internet doesn't actually give a flying fuck.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:04PM
You make a fair point there, but keep in mind that the cited known cases are 1) injection with a horse tranquilizer and 2) sedating drugs + ... + alcohol.
I'm going to at least suggest that things likely went down differently in this case.