ArticleEthics & human research2020
Why Challenge Trials of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines Could Be Ethical Despite Risk of Severe Adverse Events.
Article in Ethics & human research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring the ethics of tuberculosis human challenge models.Journal of medical ethics · 2026Article
- Do coronavirus vaccine challenge trials have a distinctive generalisability problem?Journal of medical ethics · 2022Article
- Ethical Criteria for Improved Human Subject Protections in Phase I Healthy Volunteer Trials.Ethics & human research · 2022Article
- An ongoing science-society-ethics experiment: The human challenge trial debate in COVID-19 pandemic: The human challenge trial debate in COVID-19 pandemic.EMBO reports · 2022Article
- Testing SARS-CoV-2 vaccine efficacy through deliberate natural viral exposure.Clinical microbiology and infection : the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases · 2021Review
- Back to WHAT? The role of research ethics in pandemic times.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2021Article
- Why continuing uncertainties are no reason to postpone challenge trials for coronavirus vaccines.Journal of medical ethics · 2020Article
- Opinion: For now, it's unethical to use human challenge studies for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Reply to Hasford and to Spinola et al.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2020Article
- Is There an Ethical Upper Limit on Risks to Study Participants?Public health ethics · 2020Article
- Ethics & utility of controlled human infection studies (CHIS) in low- & middle-income countries.The Indian journal of medical researchReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Human challenge trials to test the efficacy of vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus behind Covid-19, could save considerable time and many lives. But they may initially seem unethical because they expose healthy volunteers to a live virus that is killing many people and for which no cure exists. This article argues that this is not the correct test of their ethics. The correct test is comparative. And in the special circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, human challenge trials meet the correct test better than standard efficacy testing would.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.