By the UK ad hoc specialist Research Ethics Committee Expert and lay members of UK RECs recognised to review Clinical Trials of Investigational Medicinal Products (CTIMPs) or Phase 1 studies in healthy volunteers, particularly those with experience of vaccine studies, were invited to join an ad hoc Research Ethics Committee to review SARS COV 2 […]
Category: Pandemic
The Values of Life, Liberty, and the Law: A Tale of Two (As)Sumptions
By John Coggon Lord Sumption, a retired Justice of the UK Supreme Court, has been a prominent contributor to debates on government pandemic responses. Representing an uncompromising libertarianism, he is a consistent, highly critical commentator on restrictions regulations and associated official guidance. However, there are some perplexing tensions between his practical and ethical assumptions when […]
What’s yours is ours: intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines
By Nancy S. Jecker. The extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic warrant waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is currently considering such a move, which over 100 Nobel laureates and 75 former heads of state have backed, calling it a “vital and necessary step” that would “expand global manufacturing […]
Persuading anti-vaxxers: Stop talking about facts
By Michelle Bach. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the WHO named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. The WHO attributes vaccine hesitancy to factors such as a lack of confidence, complacency, and convenience. In the UK, hesitancy has been associated with certain demographic factors such as race, age, and […]
“I am used to my happy life, not this” – why mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for care home staff is an essential humanitarian and ethical intervention
By Ayesha Ahmad. When traditional healers heal, they empathise with the pain being endured. The traditional healer is distinguished by their strength and ability to channel the suffering through, and beyond, them. What this shows is that there is a distinction between the person who is a healer and the person who is being healed. […]
Do doctors engaging in advocacy speak for themselves or their profession?
By Elizabeth Lanphier In the United States, where I live and work, it is common for physicians to speak out on a variety of topics both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, physicians advocate against gun violence as a matter of public health. Pediatricians become #tweetiatrician on social media to raise awareness about […]
The value of COVID challenge trials for diverse populations
By Nir Eyal and Tobias Gerhard Perhaps the strongest argument against COVID challenge trials posits that they must choose between the Scylla of insufficient safety for volunteers and the Charybdis of insufficient social value. In particular, challenge trials that exclude old or unhealthy participants for their own safety may involve surprisingly low risk, but they […]
The doctor can “see” you now – the ethical considerations of patient rights and safeguards in online mental health act assessments during Covid-19
By Lisa Schölin and Arun Chopra. It is fair to say that when the pandemic hit we were not entirely prepared to move our social lives, work, and healthcare to online platforms. Yet, we had to. But in which services, and more specifically in what situations, can remote contact sufficiently, legally, and safely be used […]
Do controlled human infection studies put bystanders at higher risk than conventional field trials?
By Kyungdo Lee and Nir Eyal. A dose-determining study toward the world’s first controlled human infection (abbreviated as CHI) COVID vaccine study has launched in the UK. A COVID vaccine CHI would typically enroll a few dozen young and healthy volunteers, excluding people at higher risk of severe outcomes. After admission to an isolated research […]
Making a killing: The imperative to waive COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property rights
By Harry Hudson Recent lobbying disclosures revealed that over 100 lobbyists have been deployed to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by the pharmaceutical industry to block generic manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines. The background here is that the richest countries have over half the purchased vaccine doses, yet only 16% of the global population. This has […]