Comment by angry_octet
4 years ago
I can't agree that widespread challenge testing would have been ethical. It's a larger topic than HN can accommodate, but some factors I consider important: (1) NPIs are effective at reducing transmission, (2) the consequences of an outcome with side effects could include global and long-lived anti-vax sentiment -- COVID19 is unlikely to be our last pandemic.
Issue (2) arose with the EU response to rare AZ/J+J side effects, where I believe the EU is more deserving of criticism. They will undoubtedly cause more deaths in their own populations and throughout the world than would occur from clotting complications, but no one will hold them to account. But they weighed their equities as more important than global benefit.
To save some folks an acronym lookup: NPI stands for Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention, and refers to things like wearing a mask, washing hands, physical isolation, etc.
As you agree challenge testing is unethical and it clearly would have had value (saving lots of lives) are you conceding that unethical research can have value?
The opposite -- I believe that the EU authorities acted unethically in covering their own asses, and this devalues their past & future statements.
Russia and China effectively approved vaccines with only phase II trial data. China didn't even have active cases (officially) and they vaccinated tens of millions of people with it, their own, Africans and Brazilians etc. Imagine if there had been side effects, it could have been a global disaster. (Recall the contaminated Cutter polio vax that had live polio in it. Or the SV40 problems. The UQ COVID candidate caused false positives for HIV. Various SARS-Cov1 vaccines caused bad/lethal side effects, see e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00462-y )
Being both too hasty (China) and too blame-averse (EU) seem to be ethical failings.