Hi Ericf, thanks for responding! Do you think that it’s possible to run a human challenge trial in the early stage of a deadly pandemic, without any known treatment for the disease, without provoking a major public debate?
If not—if debate and politicization of early-pandemic HCTs is guaranteed—then it seems to me that the right question isn’t whether to debate it, but how to debate it. And that’s only a relevant question if we have accepted the need to debate it.
I haven’t kept up on the state of debate of the trolley problem, but there should be a discussion among bio-ethisists and regulators about the ethics of infecting N people to prevent N x X infections among other people.
The current state seems to be “it is unethical to switch tracks, no matter who is on each track.” Which, for all I know, is the correct answer.
Hi Ericf, thanks for responding! Do you think that it’s possible to run a human challenge trial in the early stage of a deadly pandemic, without any known treatment for the disease, without provoking a major public debate?
If not—if debate and politicization of early-pandemic HCTs is guaranteed—then it seems to me that the right question isn’t whether to debate it, but how to debate it. And that’s only a relevant question if we have accepted the need to debate it.
I haven’t kept up on the state of debate of the trolley problem, but there should be a discussion among bio-ethisists and regulators about the ethics of infecting N people to prevent N x X infections among other people. The current state seems to be “it is unethical to switch tracks, no matter who is on each track.” Which, for all I know, is the correct answer.