The Biomedical Mutual Organization

A Biomedical Mutual Organization is a group of people who come together in a formal, legally structured way to test out new medical treatments on themselves. The idea is the same as a housing association or mutual assurance company, but for medicine, not building or life assurance. Several trends in 'informal' healthcare (patient pressure groups, internet drug trading) point to this as a possible future alternative economic model for biomedical research. But is it practical?

I floated the idea in two editorials appearing in Medical Hypotheses. The text of the articles appears in the two linked pages below.

• Truly personalised medicine: self-experimentation in medical discovery (Citation to come): about self-experimentation and the value of the N=1 clinical trial
• The Biomedical Mutual Organization: a new approach to developing new medical treatments (Citation to come): about the logic behind the formation, practicality and ethical acceptability of the BMO

Please e-mail me with your thoughts on william [at] rufus-scientific.com - I will, from time to time, incorporate any new insights (or cogent criticisms) into these web pages.