Vaccine policies and challenge trials: the ethics of relative risk in public health

Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Sarah Chan outlines some risks arising from the deliberate infection of human participants to infectious agents for research purposes In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Sarah Chan explores three key areas of risk in ‘challenge trials’ – the deliberate infection of human participants to infectious agents as a tool for vaccine development and improving our knowledge of disease biology. Dr Chan explores a) whether some forms of challenge trials cannot be ethically justified; b) why stratifying populations for vaccine allocation by risk profile can result in unjust risk distribution; and c) how comparing these cases and the evaluation of relative risk reveals flaws in approach to pandemic public health.