Are Human Test Trials for COVID-19 Humane? UK Researchers Want To Push the Possibility
Drastic times call for drastic measures. Well, at least that's what some scientists are suggesting in order to accelerate the production of the coronavirus vaccine.
According to a report from The Guardian, due to the current low risk of infection in the U.K., some researchers have opened the idea of exposing a certain demographic of the population to the virus. These questionable trials to speed up the creation of a vaccine will seek volunteers under the guidelines of the World Health Organization.
However, Jonathan Ives of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine at Bristol University was quoted in the same article saying that:
"If we were to do this, we would be asking healthy people to put their wellbeing and their lives at risk for the good of society at large. On the other hand, taking that risk could speed up vaccine development and save many, many lives. So I think there could be grounds for going ahead with challenge trials, though it would be based on a very finely balanced argument."
For some researchers, they believe that the need to follow a moral principle of doing the right thing at the right time. They questioned the probability of a high risk of mortality due to the seriousness of the illness.
"Levels of infection in the community are already low, and if this virus behaves like other respiratory diseases and coronaviruses, there may be even lower levels over the summer. There will not be enough people secreting the virus to be in contact with volunteers in vaccine projects. It is just not going to work," Professor Lawrence Young of Warwick University Medical School explained in IPP Media.
He also added that the U.K. government should encourage these human challenge trials. The subjects would either be given a placebo or a vaccine, after which they will be infected with the COVID-19 to demonstrate the effectiveness of the vaccine. For Young, this is not the time to be locked in a waiting game for a vaccine candidate; rather, he feels that we should be steadfast whether we're moving forward with the human trails or not.
Earlier this month via The Guardian, the WHO made public a 19-page set of guidelines for the human challenge trials, which indicated volunteers aged 18 - 30 as being the least risky group.
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Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has reported that there's now a slim chance for Oxford University's vaccine trial as the tested monkeys became infected with the novel coronavirus. The outcome of the research manifested that the vaccine does not avert the infection of the virus to an animal. However, they also have found that the vaccine may alleviate the severity of the disease. Oxford's ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine was one of the top contenders who were also being tested on humans.
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