Trials beginning for the Covid19 vaccine

“Ordinarily, “Safety of a vaccine must be confirmed by extensive animal work, followed by the inoculation of dozens of humans, then escalating to thousands,” write vaccine consultant Stanley Plotkin and New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan in an upcoming article in the journal Vaccine. “That process normally takes months to years, during which SARS-2 will infect and possibly kill millions. Acceleration of that standard process is necessary.” They go on to propose human challenge trials as a way of achieving that acceleration.”

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/support-for-vaccine-challenge-trials-gains-momentum-67525?

I wonder how many will volunteer just so researchers won't have to use animals in the safer trials? Usually, new drugs are developed very slowly and painfully costing millions of dollars for each trial, then released slowly, declared safe, and then sometimes pulled when millions begin using them and they are discovered not to be safe after all. Be a guinea pig if you wish, but I'll wait for some real evidence.

But then I didn't actually approve of how some older drugs were developed either (when I found out)--like birth control. First the products were tested on Africans who didn't realize the danger, and then when not too many died, or became ill or were made sterile, they were further tested on poor and welfare mothers in western countries who appreciated the perks that went with the testing and didn't know the dangers. And then when it was decided prudent and profitable, ordinary middle class women got "the pill." Nutritional supplements for children were done the same way--tested on African babies and when declared safe, were available in Europe. Antiretroviral medications (which failed) were also tested on African women first to lower incidents of HIV/AIDs. And of course, the ever popular "bed nets" to use in Africa after the backlash withdrawal of DDT killed or crippled millions of Africans after malaria had virtually been eliminated before Rachel Carson and the environmentalist movement.

My sister was a guinea pig in NIH experiments in the 1950s with her BVS service.  I remember going there to visit her. My aunt Muriel even late in her life thought perhaps Carol’s shortened life (57) and poor health was due to something she’d received during those trials. I’m guessing she heard that from my parents, since they knew more of the details.