Young doctor Jesse Lazear has deadly Yellow Fever. He thrashes around and convulses in his sick bed, and his vomit is black. He is just 34 when he dies.
Curiously, mosquito expert Lazear was researching the disease when he became ill. Some historians think his infection wasn’t an accident, and that he was secretly experimenting on himself…
Today, human challenge trials – where volunteers are intentionally given a disease under the watchful eye of medical support – are rare. The authorities are wary of the risks involved. But such trials can also mean that vaccines are developed faster, and thousands of lives are saved. Is it time to start thinking differently about experimenting on humans?
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Further reading
Two in-depth histories of yellow fever are The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby, and Yellow Jack: How Yellow Fever Ravaged America and Walter Reed Discovered Its Deadly Secrets by John R. Pierce and James V. Writer. This episode also owes a debt of gratitude to the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission online exhibit hosted by the University of Virginia.
Published in March 2020 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Human Challenge Studies to Accelerate Coronavirus Vaccine Licensure sparked a debate on the ethics of challenge trials that was covered by outlets such as CNN and Wired. An academic article by Mabel Rosenheck puts the debate in historical context. The 1Day Sooner-sponsored paper asking what challenge trials might have changed is Vaccines at Velocity: Evaluating Potential Lives Saved by Earlier Vaccination in the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Pushkin+ listeners seeking further reading for our episodes on the Panama Canal should consult the shownotes here.
