As laboratories worldwide have raced to develop COVID-19 vaccines, ethicists and other experts, including McMasters Claudia Emerson, have been working urgently to establish World Health Organization guidelines for testing the efficacy of vaccines using human challenge studies clinical trials where healthy human volunteers are given a test vaccine and then infected with the pandemic virus.
The guidelines were issued May 7 in a document that emphasizes the importance of minimizing risk and maximizing public trust if such tests are deemed necessary…..
