Josh Morrison and health policy activism: kidneys and covid

Here's a profile of Josh Morrison, one of the most interesting health care policy activists I've encountered.  I first met him when he was the general counsel of the kidney exchange organization The Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, and since then he's created new organizations (with evocative names) and new policies.

One Man’s Quest to Infect People With Covid-19 for Science

Inside the movement to launch a human challenge trial for Covid-19

by Andrew Zaleski

"Morrison donated a kidney in 2011, months into his job as a corporate attorney. A few years later he abandoned the law for a more mission-driven career helping people find kidney donors, eventually starting the nonprofit Waitlist Zero in 2014.

"In his telling, his parents “really hated” the idea of being a live organ donor. What he’s planning next terrifies them: Morrison wants to give himself Covid-19 for the sake of science.

...

"The 35-year-old from Brooklyn is the leader of 1Day Sooner, a grassroots organization he co-founded in the spring with a radical idea: Speed up vaccine testing by giving the coronavirus to willing recruits. Including Morrison and his co-founder, 22-year-old Stanford human biology graduate Sophie Rose, more than 30,000 people from 140 countries are signed up — a pool of applicants offering to enlist in what’s known as a human challenge trial.

...

"Human challenge trials involve deliberately infecting small groups of vaccinated volunteers. In a time of social distancing, mask-wearing, and the public’s general leeriness of contracting Covid-19, some researchers, doctors, and ethicists say challenge trials are worthwhile. Unlike traditional Phase 3 clinical trials, which sign up thousands of participants, inject some with a vaccine and others with a placebo, and then wait for people to encounter the virus in everyday life, there’s no waiting on people to catch a virus in a challenge trial. This means it can be completed in weeks instead of months or years, potentially yielding data on vaccine efficacy much more quickly.

"On July 15, human challenge trials for the coronavirus received their biggest endorsement. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford in the U.K., announced that Oxford scientists — already hard at work on a promising coronavirus vaccine — want to launch a challenge trial."