Trudie Lang, the Nature author, put it this way: “in general, 90% of research helps less than 10% of the global population.” This time it is different: The global pandemic means its everyone’s problem, rich and poor.
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The trial started in Johannesburg, and some participants are residents of Soweto township. That said, Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine trial began on June 24 in South Africa. And according to the magazine “Nature” of the 2,000 COVID-19 trials registered around the world, 90% are in wealthy countries, with few in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. To get pharmaceuticals to the needed level of safety and efficacy requires multiple trial phases for dozens of experimental versions, involving literally hundreds of thousands of participants.Īccording to the WHO, there are currently 220 vaccine candidates in development, with thirteen in clinical trials: five in China, three in the United States, two in the United Kingdom, and one each in Australia, Germany, and Russia. Simply put, there is the need to be concerned and care for the people who serve as test cases.Īs COVID 19 continues to explode across regions and countries, the race for therapeutics and vaccines has intensified to the point that it is a preoccupation for everyone. The present COVID-19 pandemic is anything but normal, and while extraordinary measures are required, the moral obligation to those who participate in such trials must remain. Under normal circumstances, health economic evaluation methodology would provide benefit-cost and cost-effective analyses to inform possible clinical trial decisions, and that would include potential adverse effects to participants. Inevitably some human trials will prove unproductive, and nonetheless, are necessary. John Le Carré, in an interview on March 28, 2001 And so that was what the novel was really about, the use of Africans as guinea pigs…being theoretically willing to test medicines which neither they nor their countries would ever be able to buy.” “It cannot continue that we allow patent laws to exercise the right of life and death on these people. Much has changed since 2001 when John Le Carré, author of the best selling The Constant Gardener, attacked the medical trials system in use at the time, but much has not, with those harmed by medical trial missteps going far beyond Africa.