Britain to infect healthy volunteers with coronavirus in vaccine challenge trials [View all]
Source: Washington Post,
LONDON — British scientists said Tuesday they will launch the world's first human challenge trials for covid-19, in which healthy volunteers will be deliberately infected with the coronavirus in hopes of further speeding the drive to a vaccine.
The research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and funded by the British government, is a gutsy gambit, given that people will be submitting themselves to a deadly virus with no surefire treatment.
The United States is moving more cautiously, with leading government researchers saying human challenge trials might be too risky or unnecessary. But the British scientists say the potential payoff is massive — that accelerating vaccine development by even three months could save hundreds of thousands of lives globally.
The British experiment is scheduled to begin in January. Volunteers will have a purified, laboratory-grown strain of the live virus blown into their noses, while quarantined in a 22-bed biosecure unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, where they will undergo daily, even hourly, tests over two to three weeks.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/covid-challenge-trials-uk/2020/10/20/00a31136-026c-11eb-b92e-029676f9ebec_story.html
ABSOLUTELY irresponsible. Two points.
1. Even a well-designed vaccine may not protect much more than 80% of recipients.
2. Although young people are unlikely to die from COVID, particularly if receiving up to the minute medicare care and assessment, Sars-Cov-2 can attack virtually every organ in the body, not just the lungs. Neurological and renal injuries are widespread amongst hospitalized patients. And.The.Longterm.Effects.Are.Unknown.
A challenge trial of a COVID vaccine is a grave violation of medical ethics.
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