Challenge trials?
This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.
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"You learn something new every day if you pay attention." -Ray LeBlond
Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),
[Challenge trials?]
Exactly, Dana. What are challenge trials?
My first thought was that challenge trials might be the name for a new revenue stream developed by America's beloved and revered ambulance-chasing litigators. Lawsuits filed over the resulting damage — physical, mental, and property — from zany Zoomers carrying out "challenges" posted by other zany Zommers on TikTok.
TikTok, if you're unaware, is a social media platform imported from the same country that exports fentanyl precursor chemicals and popular consumer goods manufactured by slaves and distributed by some of America's largest corporations.
Hint: The Wuhan Flu is probably their most well-known export and they're currently imprisoning citizens of Hong Kong for perpetrating democracy. But I digress.
[It's what you do. What's a Zoomer?]
Generation Z, H. sapiens born after about 1995 or so. Anyways... As oft happens, with depressing regularity in fact, I was wrong.
[Oft?]
However, I recently stumbled on this article on the FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) website.
[You're a wild man.]
There was a time... The title of the article is We Had the Vaccine From the Start — You Just Weren't Allowed to Take It. Intrigued, I read the article and I now know what challenge trials are although I, a current events junkie, am loath to admit I didn't know.
[Loath?]
"Human challenge trials deliberately expose participants to infection, in order to study diseases and test vaccines or treatments."
This is a quote from the website of 1Day Sooner.
We Advocate on Behalf of Covid-19 Challenge Trial Volunteers
More about them anon. First, I'd like to discuss the FEE article.
From the article: "The vaccine, a triumph of medical science known as mRNA-1273, was designed in a single weekend, just two days after Chinese researchers published the virus's genetic code on January 11, 2020" (my emphasises).
[Emphasises?]
The term challenge trials simply refers to a process wherein a handful of volunteers is given a bug and a vaccine and if they don't get sick from the bug, the vaccine's side effects, or become the catalyst of a zombie apocalypse, the process is repeated with ever larger groups of volunteers until (and if) we have a winner.
[Isn't that the same thing as the clinical trials that were done?]
Sorta/kinda.
Normally, getting a vaccine, or any new drug approved by the FDA, takes many years and billions of bucks.
[Big Pharma is evil!]
Big Pharma, the relevant regulators of The Fedrl Gummit, and our Parliament of Whores constitute a codependent cabal that cranks out cutting edge but wildly overpriced medications and medical devices of all sorts. But that would require a book, and someone smarter and more energetic than I, to explore properly.
Suffice it to say that in the case of the vaccines that have been developed for combatting the Wuhan Flu, thanks to a soon to be former president — who, unfortunately, then lost his freakin' mind! — money, resources, and personnel flowed freely, and clinical trials were radically truncated.
However, a Challenge trial, as the article in FEE points out, is when a group volunteers to be guinea pigs as soon as a drug is available, truncating the process even further, a methodology rarely used, but not unheard of.
Philip Steele's article in FEE estimates that we could've had a vaccine ready to roll by March or April of last year and saved many thousands of lives.
[Who would be crazy enough to volunteer to...]
This brings us back to 1Day Sooner.
1Day Sooner (a vaccine available one day sooner would save _______ lives) is a non-profit that has signed up nearly 40,000 volunteers ready to participate in Challenge Trials to speed up the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
[Um... Don't we now have a vaccine?]
Yup, but one can still donate to "...help cover the salary of 1Day Sooner's five full-time employees...along with several part-time contractors...".
And, they'd "like to hire someone to work on pandemic preparedness advocacy to promote the use of human challenge trials for future pandemics, as well as a Director of Research Participant Representation, who can work to build volunteer interest and capacity to get engaged with other studies would be useful for the longer-term goals of our organization."
[I dunno, man. This sounds like...]
Yes, it does. However, they're incorporated in Delaware as a non-profit and as far as I can tell are a perfectly legal operation. As to how effective they actually are... Well, I don't have the resources to find out, I had to lay off my private detective.
Regardless, there have been news stories, so I'm hoping there actually are better than 38,000 volunteers who've signed up to serve their fellow H. sapiens.
[Did...]
No, I didn't.
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK dayP.S. Update from a newer FEE article: “The FDA needs to stop playing games and authorize the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It’s safe, cheap ($2-$3 a dose), and is the easiest vaccine to distribute,” says Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “It does not require freezing and is already approved and being administered in the United Kingdom.”
Your humble correspondent has verified that the United Kingdom is not experiencing a zombie apocalypse and that the volunteers of 1Day Sooner are still available.
[Has anybody told Uncle Joe?]
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