Some of us doubt Trump will wait for the customary 12 to 18 trial period for a vaccine and treatment drug anyways…
Some in Congress want to have volunteers get infected in ‘Challenge Trials’ to speed up test results…
An idea that might seem outlandish at first is gaining some ground as a way to speed development of a coronavirus vaccine: intentionally infecting people with the virus as part of a trial.
The idea, known as a “challenge trial,” would deliberately infect a few hundred young, healthy volunteers, who were first given either the potential vaccine or a placebo. Those picked would be well informed about the risks.
That would allow the effectiveness of a vaccine to be determined faster than a traditional clinical trial, which would require that researchers wait for some of the participants to become infected in the course of their daily lives.
Supporters say the challenge trial could save several months in the search for a vaccine, which is widely seen as critical for people to feel confident again with social gatherings.
A group of 35 House lawmakers, led by Reps. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) and Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), a former secretary of Health and Human Services, wrote to the Food and Drug Administration this week lending their support to the idea.
“Our situation in this pandemic is analogous to war, in which there is a long tradition of volunteers risking their health and lives on dangerous missions for which they understand the risks and are willing to do so in order to help save the lives of others,” they wrote in the letter.
Stanley Plotkin, a renowned vaccinologist who helped invent the rubella vaccine, also endorsed the idea in an article in the journal Vaccine, along with Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University.
They wrote that the vaccine trial process “normally takes months to years, during which [coronavirus] will infect and possibly kill millions. Acceleration of that standard process is necessary.”
Older people have been among the biggest casualties of the coronavirus globally, while younger people have generally shown a higher chance of recovery.
Still, the idea of purposefully infecting people with a potentially deadly virus raises some obvious ethical objections….
Note…
Initial trails have already started on several vaccine’s and treatment drugs in America and other places…
I think something like this will happen and likely fairly soon.
Yes ,there are major problems with it.
However the old adage,
“Desperate times require desperate measures.”
Will be the rallying cry.