Ignoring current law, what would be the fastest way to test a vaccine while minimizing risk?
Obviously this question is motivated by the situation with Covid-19. Let's suppose that we are designing a testing protocol for a proposed vaccine. We want to be reasonably sure that the vaccine is safe for humans. We want to minimize the risks to our volunteers. We don't want to take a year while the pandemic kills lots of people.
Let's assume for now that we are willing to risk that it might be ineffective, but evidence of effectiveness would certainly be nice. Let's also assume that we can rewrite current law to allow for this.
What is the fastest protocol one could design?
A couple of ideas that come to mind:
1. Could one skip animal testing and start on humans with an absurdly small quantity? Say 10% of the lethal dose of the worst poison known?
2. Could one ramp up the quantity quickly by giving successive volunteers slightly bigger doses and spacing them with a shortish interval? For example, if one gives each person 10% more than the one before, and they are spaced four hours apart, the quantity would go up by a factor of 1.77 every day.
Feel more than free to shoot down my ideas, propose your own, etc.
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