What if someone asked you to get infected with the COVID-19 virus, deliberately, in order to speed up the development of a vaccine? Would you do it? Would you risk your life to save others?
For months, dozens of companies have been racing to create coronavirus vaccines. Finally, three have done it. But according to the experts, we’re not out of the woods yet; we’ll need several vaccines to satisfy the global demand. One way to speed up the development process is a controversial technique called a human challenge trial, in which human subjects are intentionally infected with the virus. Senior correspondent Molly Webster gets the lowdown from Public News Service reporter Laura Rosbrow-Telem and then tracks down some of the tens of thousands of people who have volunteered to participate in a challenge trial.
Special thanks to Jonathan Miller.
This episode was reported by Molly Webster and Laura Rosbrow-Telem and produced by Molly Webster and Pat Walters.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
Duration
28m
Broadcast on
24 Nov 2020
Audio Format
other
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What if someone asked you to get infected with the COVID-19 virus, deliberately, in order to speed up the development of a vaccine? Would you do it? Would you risk your life to save others?
For months, dozens of companies have been racing to create coronavirus vaccines. Finally, three have done it. But according to the experts, we’re not out of the woods yet; we’ll need several vaccines to satisfy the global demand. One way to speed up the development process is a controversial technique called a human challenge trial, in which human subjects are intentionally infected with the virus. Senior correspondent Molly Webster gets the lowdown from Public News Service reporter Laura Rosbrow-Telem and then tracks down some of the tens of thousands of people who have volunteered to participate in a challenge trial.
Special thanks to Jonathan Miller.
This episode was reported by Molly Webster and Laura Rosbrow-Telem and produced by Molly Webster and Pat Walters.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Before we start, I just want to let you know there's a moment or two of strong language in the story. Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. See? See? Hello. Hi. Laura. Yes. Hey, it's Molly. How are you? I figured I'm good. I'm good. How are you? Hey, I'm Jan Iboomerad. This is Radio Lab. We've not done a coronavirus dispatch since the summer, I think. So we're going to do one this week. This is dispatch number 13. Lucky number that it is. And this dispatch kind of grew out of a simple conversation between our senior correspondent, Molly Webster and reporter Laura Ross brow tell them. How did you get this? And reporter Laura Ross brow tell them. How did you stumble into the world of the story? So let's see. So I mean, actually it's sort of funny, like I, I'm just going to say, you know, all of this in case it's helpful. Yes. Say everything. So I actually had this like very kooky, like fiction idea. Normally Laura's a reporter for public news service, but given how crazy everything's been, she was sort of wondering if she could come up with a cool fictional scenario to do a story about. Yeah. And so in any case, I was sort of like, okay, wouldn't it be like a black mirror episode if like there was like a rehab facility that only like super, super rich people went to and they would like get infected with COVID, but then they would get just like state of the art treatment and, you know, have these parties and it would just be this like super, super mud or thing and they like have fun with people and it'd be like essentially going to resort. Yeah. You're going to get COVID. It's yeah. It's like a spa, like a COVID spa. Right. Right. That was kind of what I was thinking.
Transcription truncated.
What if someone asked you to get infected with the COVID-19 virus, deliberately, in order to speed up the development of a vaccine? Would you do it? Would you risk your life to save others?
For months, dozens of companies have been racing to create coronavirus vaccines. Finally, three have done it. But according to the experts, we’re not out of the woods yet; we’ll need several vaccines to satisfy the global demand. One way to speed up the development process is a controversial technique called a human challenge trial, in which human subjects are intentionally infected with the virus. Senior correspondent Molly Webster gets the lowdown from Public News Service reporter Laura Rosbrow-Telem and then tracks down some of the tens of thousands of people who have volunteered to participate in a challenge trial.
Special thanks to Jonathan Miller.
This episode was reported by Molly Webster and Laura Rosbrow-Telem and produced by Molly Webster and Pat Walters.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
