Human Challenge Trials

[John Clark]

Through the website https://1daysooner.org/ more than 26,000 young healthy people have volunteered to be  deliberately infected with COVID-19 so a vaccine can be tested and developed faster. Even most bioethicists, who are notoriously squeamish about this sort of thing, say this would be ethically acceptable because in that age group there is only one chance in 3000 of dying and because each and every day such trials DON'T happen several thousand more people will die. But even though nobody can find a good reason for not conducting  Human Challenge Trials for some inexplicable reason nobody has taken any of those 26,000 people up on their offer and such trials are not taking place. That website is well named because if you can find a way to develop a vaccine just one day sooner then you have found a way to save several thousand people from dying. And the clock is still ticking and so are the deaths.

 John K Clark