WHO Reviews Vaccine Trials Using 'Direct Human Injection' of COVID-19... 'Inevitable Controversy Over Validity'

WHO Begins Review of Vaccine Trials Injecting 'Corona Germs' into Humans
Effectiveness and Ethical Validity Questioned
Johns Hopkins Professor Warns, "Unexpected Long-Term Side Effects May Occur"

On the 4th (local time), a nurse at a hospital in London is conducting a rehearsal for vaccination ahead of the Pfizer vaccine supply. London, UK = AP Photo

[Asia Economy Reporters Kim Suhwan and Naju Seok] The World Health Organization (WHO) and others have begun reviewing a method to verify the effectiveness of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine by directly injecting the virus into healthy young individuals to test the vaccine's efficacy. Besides ethical controversies over whether it is appropriate to inject the virus into healthy people, doubts about the effectiveness of the study have also sparked debate.

According to foreign media including the British daily The Guardian on the 7th (local time), the WHO held a meeting of experts and advisory panels on the same day to review a vaccine trial method that recruits a group of healthy young adults as the experimental group and directly injects them with the COVID-19 virus. Experts believe that unlike the conventional vaccine development process, this method can significantly shorten development time because the experimental group does not have to wait to be naturally infected with COVID-19 in daily life.

However, there are counterarguments that this experimental method is not effective. It is analyzed that limiting the experimental group to a small number of healthy young adults poses limitations in verifying the vaccine's effectiveness. Jeffrey Kahn, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute of Bioethics, and four other researchers stated in an article published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), “(In the case of directly injecting the virus into young adults) the vaccine's effectiveness for the elderly cannot be verified,” and “To sufficiently verify the vaccine's effectiveness, an experimental group that includes various age groups is necessary.” They also added, “Unexpected long-term side effects may occur even in young participants.”

Ethical issues have also been raised. Foreign media such as CNN noted that historically unethical medical human experiments were conducted on Black people, which has led to their distrust of vaccines themselves. In this context, where minority races widely distrust vaccines, the method of artificially injecting the virus into vulnerable groups is criticized as unethical.

Charles Weijer, a professor of philosophy at Western University, criticized this experimental method as “unjust” in an article for the British Medical Journal (BMJ). He stated, “The experimental group includes minority races such as Black and Asian people, who have a high fatality rate from the virus,” and “Due to social polarization structures, these groups are already at high risk from the virus in everyday life, and involving them in vaccine trials will increase their burden.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.