Huh.
It’s apparently been a while since I’ve read the Nuremburg Code, since I don’t actually remember this – but apparently Article 5 of the Code prohibits human subjects research if the experiment can result in death… unless it’s self-experimentation. Which, if this is true (and I’ve no reason to doubt Stephen Fry; besides being a brilliant polymath, he’s got a team of research elves behind him), might actually be the first time self-experimentation has been written into a code of practice as being okay.
Which in and of itself would be an interesting thing to study. (I realize there is a lot of history of medicine research on self-experimentation, but in this instance I’m talking specifically of studying the codes governing the practice.)
Anyhow, source: