Ethical Questions About Coronavirus Vaccine Trial
As they race to test a coronavirus vaccine, researchers are breaking with the usual protocol and not waiting to see how well it works in animals before trying it in people. The idea is to do human and animal testing at same time in hope of getting a vaccine ready for general use as soon as possible. Is this ethical? In an interview in Stat, Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke said that the researchers need to be ready to stop the human trial if the results don’t look good in mice. “There’s no reason to put people at risk in a study if there’s no efficacy,” said Maschke, who is the editor of the Hastings journal Ethics & Human Research. Hastings Center fellow Jonathan Kimmelman, of McGill University, said: “Outbreaks and national emergencies often create pressure to suspend rights, standards and/or normal rules of ethical conduct. Often our decision to do so seems unwise in retrospect.” And Hastings Center fellow Arthur Caplan, of NYU, said that if the vaccine comes to market, there is an obligation to keep tracking its safety and efficacy. Read the article.
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