US gov­ern­ment re­port­ed­ly be­gins prepar­ing for Covid-19 chal­lenge tri­als. Are they eth­i­cal?

Con­tro­ver­sial hu­man chal­lenge tri­als for po­ten­tial Covid-19 vac­cines re­port­ed­ly have a new boost­er — the US gov­ern­ment.

Sci­en­tists work­ing for the gov­ern­ment have be­gun man­u­fac­tur­ing a strain of the nov­el coro­n­avirus that could be used in such stud­ies, Reuters re­port­ed Fri­day morn­ing. The tri­als would en­roll healthy vol­un­teers to be vac­ci­nat­ed and then in­ten­tion­al­ly in­fect­ed with a weak­ened coro­n­avirus.

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