{"id":20950,"date":"2025-01-28T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20950"},"modified":"2025-01-28T10:36:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T10:36:33","slug":"would-you-get-sick-in-the-name-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20950","title":{"rendered":"Would You Get Sick in the Name of Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n
\n

One cold morning in Baltimore last October, a 26-year-old named Alexander Laurenson strode into a small white room to have his arm preyed upon by mosquitoes. As requested, he had not showered the night before to make his skin more attractive to the pests, which are drawn to body odor. The mosquitoes, for their part, had been infected with malaria, a disease that kills over 600,000 people every year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

Listen to this article with reporter commentary<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption>
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Mr. Laurenson was part of a study to test the effectiveness of a new monoclonal antibody designed to prevent malaria transmission. Twenty-one others also arrived at the University of Maryland School of Medicine that morning, all of them part of a human challenge trial, a research method in which volunteers are knowingly infected with a pathogen.<\/p>\n

In preparation, the room had been secured, with no cracks or seams to ensure against the mosquitoes\u2019 escape, with a bug zapper installed on the wall and a few electrified paddles added as extra precautions. One by one, the healthy volunteers shuffled inside to serve as willing prey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Throughout the 20th century, trials like this one have underpinned the development of vaccines for deadly scourges like typhoid<\/a> and cholera<\/a>. Today, they are typically undertaken only with diseases that already have fast-acting drugs to ensure recovery. But because of the perceived risk involved, and their significant cost, challenge trials remain rare and, in some cases, controversial.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people say, \u2018Doesn\u2019t this violate the Hippocratic oath?\u2019 or \u2018How can a doctor do this?\u2019\u201d said Seema K. Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital and professor at Northwestern University in Illinois who studies challenge trials. \u201cIt\u2019s just something that\u2019s hard for the public to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One cold morning in Baltimore last October, a 26-year-old named Alexander Laurenson strode into a small white room to have his arm preyed upon by mosquitoes. As requested, he had not showered the night before to make his skin more attractive to the pests, which are drawn to body odor. The mosquitoes, for their part, had been infected with malaria, a disease that kills over 600,000 people every year.Listen to this article with reporter commentaryMr. Laurenson was part of a study to test the effectiveness of a new monoclonal antibody designed to prevent malaria transmission. Twenty-one others also arrived at the University of Maryland School of Medicine that morning, all of them part of a human challenge trial, a research method in which volunteers are knowingly infected with a pathogen.In preparation, the room had been secured, with no cracks or seams to ensure against the mosquitoes\u2019 escape, with a bug zapper installed on the wall and a few electrified paddles added as extra precautions. One by one, the healthy volunteers shuffled inside to serve as willing prey.Throughout the 20th century, trials like this one have underpinned the development of vaccines for deadly scourges like typhoid and cholera. Today, they are typically undertaken only with diseases that already have fast-acting drugs to ensure recovery. But because of the perceived risk involved, and their significant cost, challenge trials remain rare and, in some cases, controversial.\u201cA lot of people say, \u2018Doesn\u2019t this violate the Hippocratic oath?\u2019 or \u2018How can a doctor do this?\u2019\u201d said Seema K. Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital and professor at Northwestern University in Illinois who studies challenge trials. \u201cIt\u2019s just something that\u2019s hard for the public to understand.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20952,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20953,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20950\/revisions\/20953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}