Britain to infect healthy individuals with coronavirus for vaccine trials

The Hill ^ | 10 20 2020 | Celine Castronuovo

[yesthatjallen]

British scientists on Tuesday announced plans to launch the first COVID-19 human challenge trials in which researchers will intentionally infect a sample of healthy volunteers with the virus in order to speed up the testing of potential vaccines.

According to The Washington Post, the research, scheduled to begin in January, will be led by scientists at Imperial College London and funded by the British government.

Fewer than 100 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 will have a laboratory-grown strain of COVID-19 blown into their noses and will be quarantined in a private unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, where they will undergo regular testing over a two- to three-week period.

According to the Post, the study aims to determine the minimal amount of virus necessary to cause an active infection in the volunteers’ upper respiratory system.

Later in the spring, the scientists hope to add more volunteers, who will be treated with candidate vaccines and then exposed to the virus to see how well the vaccines protect them.

SNIP

[9YearLurker]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/coronavirus-vaccine-fda-353088

[discostu]

Of course “ethical heartburn” sounds like a good reason to avoid it... until they send out a vaccine that’s never been tested on humans so functionally the first million people to get it are the challenge test.

[stremba]

That’s why numbers are better than percentages. Percentages can be misleading. 20% of those who died are in the younger age group. That does NOT mean that young people have a 20% chance of dying if they get COVID. To make simple math let’s approximate the totals as 8 million cases and 250,000 deaths. This means that there have been 200,000 deaths in the old age group and 50,000 in the young age group. Almost all of the case total is young, let’s say 7 million. That would indicate a CFR among the young group of <1%. It would indicate a CFR of 20% in the old group. Since estimates are that actual infection rates are likely 5-10x greater than reported numbers, the true risk is likely <0.1% for young people and 2-4% for old people. The 20% of deaths being young people does not matter—there are a lot more young people and therefore a lot more cases among them.

[Svartalfiar]

Or they could just open up a tens of million dose trial to every patriotic American who is willing to take an experimental vaccine then forgo any social distancing,masks none of that and see how many get sick vs those that don’t. The results will come back real fast and you can let all those people have immunity passports once you find the one that works.

Um this doesn't read to me as if they're giving out vaccines. They are ONLY getting infected with viral samples, to determine how much virus is needed to get someone infected. The vaccine testing is scheduled for a later date.

[stremba]

The difference between this study and either Mengele’s “experiments” or the Tuskegee “study” is informed consent. Unlike the victims in those two cases those involved in this study are volunteers who presumably agreed to participate after being informed of the potential risks of participating. I don’t see why we should have ethical issues with a study like this when the participants are properly informed volunteers.

[Left2Right]

Europe is culturally opposite than the U.S. when it comes to drug trials - ok to use humans, but not ok to use animals.