By Erik Boetto and Davide Golinelli. Frauds and misconduct have been common in the history of science. A well-known example is that of former-doctor A.J. Wakefield, who published a study in 1998 reporting the association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and a syndrome of autism in children. Only in 2011 was it proven that […]
Category: Research ethics
How much money would it take for you to be infected with COVID-19 for research?
By Olivia Grimwade and Julian Savulescu. Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM) research involves infecting otherwise healthy people with a disease in order to improve our knowledge of the disease and/or to test vaccine candidates. In the hope of halting the deaths, infections and lockdowns caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, CHIMs have been identified as […]
Why “human challenge” vaccine trials for COVID-19 are morally permissible, but only if we lock down, test, and contact-trace properly
By Ben Bramble We urgently need a vaccine for COVID-19, in order to fully end our lockdowns. The trouble is such vaccines usually take years to develop and test for efficacy and safety. Recently, a number of bioethicists have proposed “human challenge” vaccine trials to speed up the testing process. These involve volunteers receiving a […]
Finding a vaccine against the novel coronavirus: why challenge trials can be ethical even when a lot remains unknown
By Robert Steel, Lara Buchak, Nir Eyal Multiple authors believe that the development of coronavirus vaccines could be substantially accelerated through the use of challenge trials, in which participants are deliberately exposed to the virus. The tremendous loss of life and health and significant social and economic upheaval from ongoing worldwide pandemic make acceleration of […]
CoViD-19: Time to rethink the RCT and consider more efficient and ethical approaches to clinical knowledge acquisition
By Michael Keane. A recent, much publicized, randomized controlled trial (RCT) demonstrated that the corticosteroid, dexamethasone, reduced mortality from CoViD-19. This was hailed as a practice-changing breakthrough. The authors announced that “RECOVERY is a large, pragmatic, randomized, controlled adaptive platform trial designed to provide rapid and robust assessment of the impact of readily available potential […]
How should the risks of infecting research participants with SARS-CoV-2 be assessed?
By Susan Bull, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Ariella Binik, Michael Parker Vaccine development processes typically take ten to twenty years. The exceptional pace of COVID-19 vaccine research has resulted in early human trials being commenced with vaccine candidates. Calls have been made to conduct controlled human infection studies (CHIs), also known as challenge studies, with SARS-CoV-2 to […]
Ethical oversight during COVID-19: rewriting the norms of research ethics review?
By Anna Chiumento and Lucy Frith One consequence of physical distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rapid suspension or adaptation of ongoing research activity. This presents an opportunity for the research ethics community and researchers to promote ethical oversight that integrates the situated and informed judgement of researchers, rebalancing away from […]
We need a framework for the ethics of secondary epidemic vaccine trials
By Joshua Teperowski Monrad Introduction In the 21st century, few medical innovations have been as intensely anticipated as an effective vaccine for COVID-19. The pipeline of candidates now includes more than a hundred potential products, as governments, pharmaceutical companies, and researchers engage in an unprecedented effort to combat the worst pandemic of a century. This […]