The WSJ's Jenny Strasburg has another story on British challenge trials of Covid-19:
Researchers Infect Volunteers With Coronavirus, Hoping to Conquer Covid-19. So-called challenge trials have long been used to study infections, but so far only the U.K. is doing them for Covid-19 By Jenny Strasburg
"On March 8, 23-year-old Jacob Hopkins, a U.K. university student, watched researchers enter his quarantine room’s airlocked entrance at London’s Royal Free Hospital. They wheeled a cart carrying a big red box, like a picnic cooler, labeled “biohazard.”
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"A few days after the virus was dripped into his nose, he was shivering with a mild case of Covid-19, with the antiviral remdesivir pumped through a thin tube inserted into his arm. He spent 19 days in quarantine and said he felt fully recuperated a month later. He will ultimately be paid about £6,000, equivalent to $8,300, for that time, a year of follow-up tests and phone calls, and a parallel study he agreed to. Trial payments are based on U.K. living wages and go through ethical review."
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"All volunteers are 18 to 30 years old and screened for known risk factors. They are isolated in quarantine suites with full-time medical care and specialized air systems to contain the virus. Researchers hope to publish peer-reviewed initial findings from the first phase of the challenge trials by this autumn.
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"Researchers hope trial data will shed light on the durability of immune protection and how Covid-19 affects breathing, heart function, smell and concentration even before symptoms show. They say the model could test new vaccines and treatments head-to-head, eliminating weaker candidates before expensive, large-scale trials. Transmission data could help authorities prioritize who gets booster doses.
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As an observer of repugnant/controversial transactions, I've been following the challenge trial discussion, including in particular about appropriate payments for participants. There's a part of the medical ethics literature that worries that payments to volunteers might be 'coercive,' particularly to poor volunteers, and that payments should therefore be as small as possible, e.g. minimum wage payments for time spent, and that some things (such as risk) should not be compensated. My colleagues and I have been among those pointing out that there can also be ethical (as well as practical) issues involved in paying too little (or in providing too little post-trial medical care and insurance).
Here are some earlier posts focusing on articles I've coauthored about compensation for participation in challenge trials:
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