https://www.theguardian.com/science...lunteers-lab-controlled-human-challenge-trial
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/sci...ed-with-the-coronavirus-to-test-vaccines.html
How do you feel about the potent use of human "challenge trials" to speed up the vaccine trials?
The team behind the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine hope to begin tests on volunteers who will be intentionally exposed to the virus in a "challenge trial", a move seen as controversial since there is no proven cure for the illness.
Although challenge trials, in which healthy volunteers are given a pathogen, are routine in vaccine development, taking the approach for Covid-19, where there is no failsafe treatment if a volunteer becomes severely ill, has been questioned.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/sci...ed-with-the-coronavirus-to-test-vaccines.html
Over 100 prominent scientists, including 15 Nobel laureates, are calling for healthy volunteers to be exposed to the coronavirus to see whether vaccines against Covid-19 actually work.
The scientists signed an open letter to Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S., on Wednesday calling for human "challenge trials" that they say could "greatly accelerate" the development of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Challenge trials see healthy volunteers deliberately exposed to a virus, after being given a vaccine, to test whether the vaccine works to prevent infection.
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Scientists that signed the letter, including the director of the University of Oxford's Covid-19 vaccine program, said "human challenge trials can provide information much faster than conventional efficacy trials, which take months longer."
"In such trials, volunteers still receive the vaccine candidate or a control. Instead of resuming life as usual and waiting to 'catch' a virus, volunteers are deliberately exposed to the pathogen under controlled conditions. Beyond being faster than conventional trials, a challenge test is likelier to conclude with interpretable results, e.g. should the presence of virus around the study site begin to fade over time," they added.
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Guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) says that human challenge trials are ethical when they meet certain criteria. Protections that should clearly be in place, experts said, including that trial participants are relatively young and in good health and provided with the highest quality medical care with frequent monitoring.
The WHO notes that it is essential challenge trials are "conducted within an ethical framework in which truly informed consent is given" and that they should be undertaken with "abundant forethought, caution, and oversight." Consideration must be given to both potential individual risks and benefits, WHO says, as well as to potential societal benefits and risks, such as the release into the environment of a pathogen that might not otherwise be present.
How do you feel about the potent use of human "challenge trials" to speed up the vaccine trials?
