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    The OP certainly could give informed consent to the use of the OP's blood, but the journal cannot know whether the OP's consent was properly informed. They would depend on the IRB reviewing the information that must be known to the experimental subjects before giving consent.
    – Patricia Shanahan
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 0:22
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    @GlenPierce: The same is true of any organic material that can spoil, like that slice of pizza somebody left in the fridge for too long, but you don't see anyone applying biohazard regs to that (even if they maybe should). Also, people routinely dispose of their own blood (e.g. on bandages, sanitary pads, etc.) in normal garbage bins, and that's not generally seen as a major infection risk. Yes, there are specific risks involved in handling human blood, especially if it's fresh and not yours. But those risks do not magically increase just because someone put the blood under a microscope first.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 8:40
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    That said, I agree with the gist of this answer: there's a line that needs to be drawn somewhere, and the OP was unlucky enough to have stepped just barely over it. So now they have to find some way to jump through all the hoops and tick all the necessary boxes to prove that what they did (or will do) was, in fact, done safely and ethically.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 8:44
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    "Second, while this may be an edge case, the line needs to be drawn somewhere and it has been decided that the line is drawn in the most conservative place so that you don't need to make judgements in every case. The reason for conservatism here is the potentially harmful result of getting it wrong - from HIV to Ebola. " But it does look like a judgment is needed in this case. Moreover, even if it needs to be redone "right", building your own lab by someone who is not an expert would seem at least every bit as "ethically questionable", no? That demands thus seems clearly not reasonable.
    – The_Sympathizer
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 10:47
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    @The_Sympathizer It's quite possible that the OP just assumed that.
    – Stack Exchange Supports Israel
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 22:53