A SWOT Analysis of COVID-19 Human Challenge Trials in Light of Christian Ethics: Is Infecting Healthy Humans with Coronavirus in Order to develop vaccines ethical?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited reactions of various magnitudes from various stakeholders and countries. Interventions have come from stakeholders with matching veracity. Some have proposed hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, green tea, traditional herbs, anti-retroviral drugs, religious magic, etc. An interesting intervention that has been championed by scholars such as Arthur Caplan (2020) is human challenge studies. This is giving healthy human volunteers with trial COVID-19 vaccines and then infecting them with the virus to test the vaccine’s efficacy. Challenge studies involve volunteers motivated by altruism and a desire to help humanity. In addition, the payment of study participants would motivate many volunteers to enroll in the study, especially if the offer was encouraging. Several ethical questions have emerged when implementing challenge studies: Are participants who participate in a study only to obtain money regarded as volunteers? Is exposing humans to a virus that could affect them negatively—even causing death, the best intervention for COVID-19? This paper argues that COVID-19 challenge studies are unacceptable based on existing research on human regulations, Christian views of human dignity, and biblical instructions on treating humans. This documentary study employed available literature on human challenge studies from secondary sources. The conclusion suggests a way to guide the policy and practice of existing and other possible COVID-19-related studies.

Keywords

• covid-19
• challenge studies
• vaccines
• christian ethics
• altruism