Infect volunteers with Covid-19 in the name of research? A proposal lays bare a minefield of issues
In 2016, a team of scientists asked the National Institutes of Health for permission to develop a “human challenge model” for Zika virus infections — a sometimes controversial tool to fast-track research on vaccines and drugs. Under the model, healthy volunteers would be infected in a highly controlled setting.
An ethics panel denied the application in January 2017, saying that deliberately infecting volunteers with Zika — which is innocuous to most people but can profoundly damage the brains of fetuses infected in the womb — would pose too much risk to the participants and their sexual partners.
