I was surprised to learn about the COVID human trials which were advocated for by the 1DaySooner project. The counterintuitive idea for me was advocating for infecting individuals with a disease with unknown consequences.
I went on a quick search to learn:
It’s not a usual practice to infect people with a new, unresearched disease (usually they do it only for well-researched ones):
because of the unknown consequences for the participants
and because, unlike the COVID case, it was harder to contain (it can be transmitted sexually to a partner, and from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and it stays in semen for weeks to months, so quarantine doesn’t help
The COVID trial went ok, with 18 out of 34 getting infected, everyone being young (36 people, 18–29 years) and noone dying or getting severely ill.
Overall, I seem to be ok with people taking on an additional risk for payment and signing informed consent, especially when the benefits outweigh the risks. I’m still a little uncomfortable when it’s a new disease. At a limited scale it seems ok — there are much more stupid ways to risk people’s lives, like wars — but it still made me think.
I’d be interested to learn about the philosophical approaches to these kinds of dilemmas. Trolley problem, anyone?
I was surprised to learn about the COVID human trials which were advocated for by the 1DaySooner project. The counterintuitive idea for me was advocating for infecting individuals with a disease with unknown consequences.
I went on a quick search to learn:
It’s not a usual practice to infect people with a new, unresearched disease (usually they do it only for well-researched ones):
one recent case is the Zika virus in 2017, where the ethics panel of American health organizations NIAID and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research declined to allow it
because of the unknown consequences for the participants
and because, unlike the COVID case, it was harder to contain (it can be transmitted sexually to a partner, and from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and it stays in semen for weeks to months, so quarantine doesn’t help
The COVID trial went ok, with 18 out of 34 getting infected, everyone being young (36 people, 18–29 years) and noone dying or getting severely ill.
Overall, I seem to be ok with people taking on an additional risk for payment and signing informed consent, especially when the benefits outweigh the risks. I’m still a little uncomfortable when it’s a new disease. At a limited scale it seems ok — there are much more stupid ways to risk people’s lives, like wars — but it still made me think.
I’d be interested to learn about the philosophical approaches to these kinds of dilemmas. Trolley problem, anyone?