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Comment by hedgew | Hacker News Reader

Every day vaccines are delayed costs thousands of lives.

Bioethicists who have forbidden challenge trials in vaccine trials have firmly taken the no-action stance in the trolley problem.

A normal phase 3 trial gives the vaccine to volunteers and waits for them to get sick (or not). A challenge trial is the same, but infects the volunteers intentionally, which significantly speeds up the trial and reduces the sample size needed.

The trolley is running over thousands of people every day, and by flipping a switch you could reroute it to another rail where only a few people would be at risk. The modern bioethicist stance is that flipping this switch is unacceptable. Maybe waiting for people to randomly fall ill instead of acting is more holy and sacred — or perhaps "natural".

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https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicin...

Thalidomide changed our relationship with new medicines for ever.

It took five years for the connection between thalidomide taken by pregnant women and the impact on their children to be made. Not only did thalidomide change people’s lives, but it resulted in tighter drug testing and reporting of side-effects.

The bioethicists argue that perhaps having people stay at home and wear a mask when going outside is absolutely required would be better than untested vaccines.

Can you imagine what happens if the antivax crowd gains actual arguments? I don't want to.

The antivax group DOES have actual arguments. If you have kids and they have complications from the vaccines maybe you'll do the research needed to help them through their suffering like my wife and I had to do when our 5 year old started screaming, pissing herself and rocking uncontrollably.

I am from a country that deems many of vaccines that are used in the US unsafe. That might make a difference.

>The trolley is running over thousands of people every day, and by flipping a switch you could reroute it to another rail where only a few people would be at risk.

The mathematical issue is that a vaccine is given to everybody, so even if it has a very small rate of harm, it can be greater than the illness it's meant to prevent, if the incidence of the illness is small enough.

I'm not against vaccines in general, but they have to be incredibly safe to be worthwhile, assuming all lives are equal. Much more so than regular medication that is only given to sick people. Inherently, there has to be a higher bar.

maybe because the legal stakes are much higher? It does seem that a lot of scientists will 'let nature take its course' to absolve their ingroup from responsibility. Which makes sense in a culture of outrage.

I don't have much of an opinion here, but the situation is a bit different than the classic trolley problem. With the vaccines, you don't know how many people are on the rails. Yes, a not finished vaccine might safe thousands of people. But what if it causes other damage and the vaccinated people die a year later, even though the would've survived covid?

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