This activity is designed for participants to consider whether it is ever wrong to give someone an option that they can freely refuse.
What is a challenge trial?
Trial volunteers receive a vaccine candidate and, once the vaccine takes effect, researchers deliberately expose them to a live virus to see if the vaccine works in preventing illness.
Challenge trials can also:
- Test the efficacy of vaccines as a means of preventing infectiousness
- Measure how vaccines compare to each other and how long each vaccine lasts.
- Determine optimal dosing strategies, including spacing and timing.
- Learn about correlates of vaccine protection as a way of informing treatment.
- Test vaccines and boosters against new variants
- Test therapeutics.
Example of a current trial for Whooping Cough vaccines:
The Southampton NIHR Clinical Research Facility is looking for healthy volunteers to take part in a new trial to develop a new method of protecting people from Whooping cough…. If you are aged 18-55, in good health and not taking antibiotics, you may be eligible to participate. Participants are compensated up to £1000 for their time and travel during the study. Participation on the trial will last around 4-18 weeks with volunteers attending 7-10 visits. Volunteers must avoid crowds and at-risk individuals such as babies and the immunocompromised for the duration of the outpatient trial.