By Amanda van Beinum, Nicholas Murphy, Charles Weijer, and Jennifer Chandler “…this study […] it was a way of […] making him live on, in certain ways, or be able to say, ‘hey my dad did this’ you know, we did this, and maybe some good will come out of it…” Intensive care units can […]
Category: Research Ethics
Why we agreed to review the first COVID-19 human challenge study
By Simon E. Kolstoe, Tony Lockett and Hugh Davies Reliable information is essential for good decision making. This is particularly true when complex medical situations are combined with political and social ramifications, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last two years have been revealing from the perspective of seeing how societies rely upon, but […]
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 […]
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 […]
Challenge studies for COVID-19: Now is still not the time
By Françoise Baylis and Landon J Getz Two challenge studies for COVID-19 involving the deliberate infection of healthy volunteers aged 18-30 are underway in the UK. Both studies involve the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 from Wuhan China, and not the recent variants of concern – commonly referred to as B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1. These variants […]
COVID-19 human challenge volunteers are neither doing too little, nor helping too late
By Abie Rohrig and David Manheim The world’s first COVID-19 human challenge trial began in early March, with around a dozen healthy, consenting volunteers between the ages of 18-30 deliberately exposed to the virus at a quarantine facility in London. Getz and Baylis recently argued that the questionable harm-benefit ratio of COVID-19 challenge trials make them […]
Challenge studies for COVID-19: Now is not the time
By Landon J Getz and Francoise Baylis hVIVO, a for-profit clinical research organization in London, in collaboration with Imperial College London, has initiated a human challenge study in youth between the ages of 18 and 30 to determine the dose at which individuals become infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The dose-ranging study, […]
Ethics, iBlastoids, and brain organoids: Time to revise antiquated laws and processes
By Julian Savulescu. Jose Polo and his team at Monash University have successfully reprogrammed human adult cells (fibroblasts – skin cells) to form “iBlastoids”. These are structures which are like early human embryos. Normally when a sperm enters an egg, it produces a new cell, which divides, and these cells divide until a blastocyst is formed […]
How to ethically conduct research with Black populations at the intersection of COVID-19 and Black lives matter
By Natasha Crooks, Geri Donenberg, Alicia Matthews. For months now, we have been asking ourselves if it is appropriate to engage populations in research who are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and continuously being murdered by institutions (i.e., government, police, hospitals) that are supposed to be protecting them. The current societal context suggests Black lives are […]
Dialyzing the discourse: a response to Rohrig and Manheim
By Hayden P. Nix and Charles Weijer In a recent blog post, we sought to answer the narrow question: is altruistic kidney donation sufficiently analogous to participation in a SARS-CoV-2 challenge study to justify the risks of SARS-CoV-2 challenge studies? We argued that three morally relevant differences (the risk of adverse effects, the availability of […]