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I don't know enough about this trial to decide yet whether it is ethical or not. But there are in any case some differences to a full trial for a vaccine. This

I don't know enough about this trial to decide yet whether it is ethical or not. But there are in any case some differences to a full trial for a vaccine. This is a trial with young people, for a real vaccine trial you also need to know if it works in older people and the mortality is so much higher then that it would be clearly unethical to perform this trial.

fallingknife 6y ago
How can it be unethical if everyone is a volunteer? Also, has there ever been a case of a vaccine that only works on one age group?
- Closi 6y ago
  I personally find this study totally ethical, but I guess the counter-argument would be “How risky is an experiment allowed to be before it’s considered unethical, even if people are volunteering?”. Like let’s say we wanted to verify if some liquid was a poison, and we thought it had a 50/50 chance of killing someone, and we offer someone £500k to drink it, is that ethical? Probably not. I mean ethics are always subjective, but I don’t think that’s right. Does it make it ethical if it will probably save two lives? Uhh, I’m still uncomfortable with it... So after that point you are just arguing about how risky the experiment is allowed to be before it becomes unethical, and what benefit it will have for other people in relation to that risk. Again, I agree with you and the trial because the risk seems low enough and the reward seems high enough - this is just the counter argument.
renewiltord 6y ago
> or a real vaccine trial you also need to know if it works in older people No, it really doesn't. Most vaccines don't. Maybe one could argue that a COVID-19 vaccine should. But if you had a vaccine that worked on everyone under the age of 60 but worked zero above that, it would still be a 'real' vaccine and we'd be using it everywhere for the cohort it works for. In fact, I can't even imagine what train of thought leads to this statement.

fallingknife 6y ago

How can it be unethical if everyone is a volunteer? Also, has there ever been a case of a vaccine that only works on one age group?

Closi 6y ago
I personally find this study totally ethical, but I guess the counter-argument would be “How risky is an experiment allowed to be before it’s considered unethical, even if people are volunteering?”. Like let’s say we wanted to verify if some liquid was a poison, and we thought it had a 50/50 chance of killing someone, and we offer someone £500k to drink it, is that ethical? Probably not. I mean ethics are always subjective, but I don’t think that’s right. Does it make it ethical if it will probably save two lives? Uhh, I’m still uncomfortable with it... So after that point you are just arguing about how risky the experiment is allowed to be before it becomes unethical, and what benefit it will have for other people in relation to that risk. Again, I agree with you and the trial because the risk seems low enough and the reward seems high enough - this is just the counter argument.

renewiltord 6y ago

> or a real vaccine trial you also need to know if it works in older people No, it really doesn't. Most vaccines don't. Maybe one could argue that a COVID-19 vaccine should. But if you had a vaccine that worked on everyone under the age of 60 but worked zero above that, it would still be a 'real' vaccine and we'd be using it everywhere for the cohort it works for. In fact, I can't even imagine what train of thought leads to this statement.