Where intuition can't be relied on we must resort to experimentation. Animal and virtual models can tell us a lot, but because immunology is so contingent on th

Where intuition can't be relied on we must resort to experimentation. Animal and virtual models can tell us a lot, but because immunology is so contingent on the details, they can't make strong predictions about human responses. Human testing is needed for that, and even then reactions over the population can differ wildly. But we've locked ourselves out of timely human testing. We are protective of subjects to the point that even a global pandemic can't overcome long deadly delays in testing vaccines. So what's the alternative, Dr. Mengele? One simple word that Mengele didn't bother with: consent. We should create a category of fully informed, fully consenting adults that are willing to subject themselves to human experimentation, even before lengthy animal testing. Give them sufficient education, training and evaluation to determine that they consent by strict criteria. Test them on their knowledge, let them decide over months. And then let the scientists administrate the test substance or placebo. With conditions monitored by a research oversight committee. Even if it were a risky and painful process that didn't make a subject any richer, I predict that there would be hundreds of sincere volunteers. Both fools and heroes. We should let them. It could defer large numbers of deaths.