Speaker 1: School of Humans. On August ninth, seventeen twenty one, a
Speaker 1: Scottish surgeon named Charles Maitland performed an experiment on six
Speaker 1: convicted criminals at Newgate Prison in London. There was Mary North,
Speaker 1: a self professed lunatic and shoplifter, an tampion the best
Speaker 1: pickpocket in London, John Cothrey, who had stolen three wigs,
Speaker 1: John Alcock, horse thief, Richard Evans, steeler of Persian silk,
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Harrison, who took sixty two guineas from her mistress.
Speaker 1: All of them were relatively young, and all were condemned
Speaker 1: to banishment or death for their crimes. Using a technique
Speaker 1: he'd learned from an old woman in Constantinople, Maitland sliced
Speaker 1: opened the prisoner's arms and legs. Then he rubbed smallpox
Speaker 1: matter into the open wounds. This was called smallpox inoculation,
Speaker 1: a procedure meant to get the prisoners a bit sick
Speaker 1: in order to protect them from a more dangerous bout
Speaker 1: of smallpox. Twenty five or so a well known scientists
Speaker 1: from the Royal Society witnessed the operation, and each of
Speaker 1: the prisoners were observed for weeks after to see if
Speaker 1: they developed full blown smallpox. The experiment was a success.
Speaker 1: None of the six prisoners got very sick, and in
Speaker 1: return for their participation, they were pardoned. But there were
Speaker 1: still a remaining question. Now that they had recovered from
Speaker 1: a mild bout of smallpox, were they protected from getting
Speaker 1: the disease again. So Charles Maitland hired one of the
Speaker 1: newly pardoned criminals, nineteen year old Elizabeth Harrison. First, he
Speaker 1: had Harrison nurse a woman with severe smallpox, and when
Speaker 1: she didn't get sick, Maitland had her care for a
Speaker 1: ten year old boy with smallpox. He even had Harrison
Speaker 1: sleep in the same bed with the boy for six weeks.
Speaker 1: Considering the devastations smallpox could cause. To your mind, this
Speaker 1: was a frightening prospect. But she still didn't get sick.
Speaker 1: Today we might call what Elizabeth Harrison went through a
Speaker 1: human challenge trial. That's when a healthy person is purposefully
Speaker 1: infected so that researchers can study a disease or a
Speaker 1: treatment or prevention for that disease. Of course, to put
Speaker 1: it mildly, in Harrison's case, there are major ethical questions
Speaker 1: about her status as a prisoner sentenced to hang and
Speaker 1: the power and balance that created about whether or not
Speaker 1: she was a volunteer. But that aside, there are really
Speaker 1: good arguments today for infecting actual volunteers with specific diseases
Speaker 1: in order to more efficiently and quickly fight them. Infect
Speaker 1: a few to help many. And in this episode we're
Speaker 1: going to speak with someone who volunteered to do just that,
Speaker 1: a young British man who is one of the first
Speaker 1: people on earth to purposefully contract COVID nineteen From My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and School of Humans. I'm Sean Revive and
Speaker 1: this is long shot. In April twenty twenty, an organization
Speaker 1: called One Day Sooner was founded in order to advocate
Speaker 1: for human challenge trials. That's the number One Day Sooner.
Speaker 1: Here's one of their ambassadors to describe what they do.
Speaker 1: One Day Sooner is a global organization that advocates for
Speaker 1: the process of human challenge trials, amongst other things. We
Speaker 1: are very concerned with now because again this was like,
Speaker 1: this is not meeting Mesteing four somebody else. So I
Speaker 1: want to be a good, you know, ambassador. That's Thomas
Speaker 1: Smiley and he is a very good ambassador for One
Speaker 1: Day Sooner. He's thirty five and he lives in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: He works as a testing specialist. He tests medals for
Speaker 1: the aerospace industry, sometimes actual doors and propellers and seat
Speaker 1: belts and harnesses and things, and we just put them
Speaker 1: on our machines. Exposing them too was starting amount of
Speaker 1: stress and forces and heat and just do that for
Speaker 1: hours land to verify the strength and material the failure rate,
Speaker 1: things that nature, all the material properties of it. When
Speaker 1: coronavirus started spreading around the US, Thomas wanted to help,
Speaker 1: but even though he's a smart and willing person, he
Speaker 1: knew his ability to do so was kind of limited.
Speaker 1: I'm not a virologist. I'm not a person that's going
Speaker 1: to go out and create a vaccine. My best trait
Speaker 1: that I had was giving my time to science, giving
Speaker 1: my service to science, and being able to let people
Speaker 1: study the virus under the guise of giving my time
Speaker 1: to be part of a human challenge trial. One day
Speaker 1: Sooner was founded to advocate for human challenge trials order
Speaker 1: to speed up the development of the COVID nineteen vaccines
Speaker 1: and to represent volunteers who want to participate in these trials. Remarkably,
Speaker 1: they've had almost forty thousand people from more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty countries sign up as potential volunteers. The
Speaker 1: idea was that clinical trials in general, but especially during
Speaker 1: a pandemic, just take too long. You need to design
Speaker 1: the studies, get approval for them, recruit thousands of people,
Speaker 1: follow them for months, if not years, and then interpret
Speaker 1: the results once enough of the participants have gotten sick
Speaker 1: and maybe after all that the trial is still a failure.
Speaker 1: But with a human challenge trial, you can give a
Speaker 1: much smaller number of volunteers a perspective vaccine, one that
Speaker 1: is believed to be safe, expose them to the coronavirus,
Speaker 1: and see if they get sick. That could theoretically take
Speaker 1: just months or even weeks. But why would anyone actually
Speaker 1: do this? Why would they signed up to be a
Speaker 1: participant risk their own health, their life? Even Here's Thomas
Speaker 1: to explain his reasoning for doing just that. When coronavirus
Speaker 1: hit the US, there was a lot of fear, There
Speaker 1: was an incredible amount of uncertainty, and there was an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of financial and life destruction that went on.
Speaker 1: We've evolved to a point where we at least understand
Speaker 1: that the greater good is necessary in some of these
Speaker 1: times when it's this dire. Thomas thought he'd be a
Speaker 1: good candidate for a trial, so he signed up with
Speaker 1: One Day Sooner as a volunteer in case any Human
Speaker 1: Challenge trials we're going to take place in the United States.
Speaker 1: I have no kids, I have no major responsibilities. Nobody
Speaker 1: really relies on me. I'm not in a position where
Speaker 1: I have a great deal to lose if something adverse
Speaker 1: were to happen to me. And when I heard that
Speaker 1: I could be the subject of the study, I didn't blank.
Speaker 1: I said, of course, this more utilitarian. This is a
Speaker 1: thing that I can do to advance the masks. This
Speaker 1: is the needs of the many outwey that needs a
Speaker 1: few kind of situation. But there have not been any
Speaker 1: trials in the US. Various Powers that Be decided it
Speaker 1: would be unethical to deliberately expose people to coronavirus, even
Speaker 1: young and healthy volunteers like Thomas. In the UK, however,
Speaker 1: medical ethics authorities approved a human challenge trial earlier this year.
Speaker 1: By then, dozens of coronavirus vaccines were being developed, and
Speaker 1: some vaccines were already being distributed worldwide, but there were
Speaker 1: still major benefits to holding a human challenge trial, and
Speaker 1: we found one of the participants. Maybe you can just
Speaker 1: quickly tell me, you know, what is your name and
Speaker 1: your age and where you were speaking to us from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of my names Jacob or Jake Hopkins. I'm twenty
Speaker 1: three years old and in the Midlands in the UK,
Speaker 1: so a town called Tamworth, which is just outside to
Speaker 1: see if Birmingham, so right in the middle of the country.
Speaker 1: Should I call you Jacob, Yeah, Jacob, Jake, whatever's easier,
Speaker 1: both fine for me. Jake Hopkins is probably the first
Speaker 1: person to get COVID on purpose, and he's going to
Speaker 1: tell us how that happened and why it happened. But
Speaker 1: first let me tell you a bit about Jake, or
Speaker 1: about Jake a year and a half ago, when coronavirus
Speaker 1: hit the UK. He's got daed blonde hair and a
Speaker 1: bunch of tattoos. Iadloads that have like kind of look
Speaker 1: a whale. Here it's a rose. They've got a rose
Speaker 1: piece just there. I have some like antners, kind of
Speaker 1: like kind of look floor things ants kind about closed
Speaker 1: like kind of wild flowers. So when coronavirus first hits
Speaker 1: the UK, Jake is at university studying history and living
Speaker 1: with some friends, but the school shuts down around eastern
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and he was home to live with his parents.
Speaker 1: He gets a job at a supermarket. I just got
Speaker 1: himself a job just to work, to keep himself busy,
Speaker 1: anything really tills, stocking shelves, working deliver really like just
Speaker 1: general stuff all around the store. So, like everyone else.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the pandemic, he's home and kind
Speaker 1: of bored. But then he reads about something called Human
Speaker 1: Challenge Trials. I remember, literally, I was just sitting at
Speaker 1: home one night scrolling through like Facebook or whatever, Instagram, whatever,
Speaker 1: and this ad popped up to be part of this
Speaker 1: clinical trial for COVID, you know, a human tryans trial.
Speaker 1: I kind of signed up instantly, really like I had
Speaker 1: really had no idea what Human Challenge trials were other
Speaker 1: than that, like that brief description that gave when you
Speaker 1: signed up, so kind of when it's a bit blind,
Speaker 1: He signs up to be a volunteer in June twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: along with thousands of other people, including me for the record.
Speaker 1: In January, the company that actually runs the trial, h Vivo,
Speaker 1: brings them in for a pre screening at their clinic
Speaker 1: in London. The idea is to make sure Jake's healthy
Speaker 1: enough to participate in a trial. If he's selected, he
Speaker 1: gets a full physical. They check his blood, check his heart,
Speaker 1: check his long capacity. They do you analysis test, which
Speaker 1: is awful because I knew that was coming up. So
Speaker 1: they tell us to drink a lot of water forehand,
Speaker 1: and I was in there. I did that and there
Speaker 1: was such a long way to like I actually I
Speaker 1: ended up going to fund of a nurse as being like, look,
Speaker 1: we need to do this now. But as I'm going
Speaker 1: to wet myself, like you know, like can we just
Speaker 1: get this bit done. February twenty twenty one is one
Speaker 1: of the authorities in the UK approved the trial, but
Speaker 1: Jake doesn't know if he'll be a part of it.
Speaker 1: It's weird how passionate iually came about his trials and
Speaker 1: like how much you learned and how desil I wanted
Speaker 1: to do them. So when they actually got a call
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, You're actually gonna be a part
Speaker 1: of this, I just like I was happy, weasie like
Speaker 1: I was like, oh god, I'm actually going to be
Speaker 1: part of this thing that I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: part of us so long now and then no relief
Speaker 1: is probably a bad words to mean it's COVID, but
Speaker 1: it was a bit of relief because he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can actually do this now, and this his finger
Speaker 1: wanted to be part of so long. It's like happening.
Speaker 1: So it's official. He's been selected to participate in a
Speaker 1: trial in a London hospital. But first he has to
Speaker 1: isolate at home for a few days, and he also
Speaker 1: has to do some informed consent meetings where a doctor
Speaker 1: or someone else working on the trial explains again and
Speaker 1: again what the trial is and what the risks are.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of consent meetings throughout the trial they
Speaker 1: really want to make sure Jake knows what he's getting into.
Speaker 1: And then one really long one that's about two and
Speaker 1: a half hours, but basically they go through this massive,
Speaker 1: like thirty five page document which they send David to
Speaker 1: you and they read the whole thing word by word
Speaker 1: to you and you have to read it with them,
Speaker 1: and then like you to sign relevant boxes at certain
Speaker 1: points to make sure you and some that's going on
Speaker 1: as part of his self quarantine before the trial, Jake
Speaker 1: has to stop working at the supermarket for at least
Speaker 1: a month. But his bosses are super cool about it.
Speaker 1: But thankfully they're really in his Sunday again, like really
Speaker 1: happy and willing to let me do it because I
Speaker 1: think we understood that as part of a good sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I was like, actually, nervous is getting COVID
Speaker 1: because you know, if I caught it, it it eliminated from
Speaker 1: me even his trial, which like I just didn't want
Speaker 1: to happen to, Like I was that working, I was
Speaker 1: wearing like three masks at the same time and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff like that just going to like
Speaker 1: take everybody courtion necessary to make sure I didn't catch it.
Speaker 1: So in the final days before going to the hospital,
Speaker 1: he says this goodbyes to friends, gives a few interviews
Speaker 1: to journalists, and tries to convince his family that he's
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. Oh no, no, they were. They weren't
Speaker 1: happy about it. They were like happy for me in
Speaker 1: the sense of, like you know, they know one how
Speaker 1: bad I wanted to do it, and like thad, I
Speaker 1: was getting game. But I think they were secretly hoping
Speaker 1: either the trials didn't go ahead or I would be
Speaker 1: disqualified for some reason. The trial people don't want him
Speaker 1: using public transport too much of a risk that will
Speaker 1: contract coronavirus. So on March sixth a taxi shows up
Speaker 1: at Jake's house around five thirty in the morning. It's
Speaker 1: a long ride to London, so Jake and the driver
Speaker 1: chatted up. It turns out that the taxi driver has
Speaker 1: lost a friend and his father to COVID kind of
Speaker 1: reaffirmed the reason why I've seen it sort of thing
Speaker 1: a lot, because it's awful. Amout of lives have been
Speaker 1: lost and like these sort of things, sort of things
Speaker 1: that I can stop it. Jake has dropped off at
Speaker 1: London's Royal Free Hospital early that morning and then I
Speaker 1: was like taken up into into that quarantine ward and
Speaker 1: then put into my room and it is like you
Speaker 1: are like a secure package, like passed around sort of
Speaker 1: thing a lot, like trying to avoid any exposure. About
Speaker 1: forty others will also be going through this trial. All
Speaker 1: of them are between the ages of eighteen and thirty,
Speaker 1: and all are healthy. Since several vaccines like Maderna, fiser
Speaker 1: and Estra Zeneca have already been approved for use in
Speaker 1: the UK and countries across the world. This Human Challenge
Speaker 1: trial is focused on something else. They call it a
Speaker 1: dose optimization study. One of the goals is to learn
Speaker 1: how much or I guess, how little coronavirus has needed
Speaker 1: to infect at least half of the volunteers. They also
Speaker 1: hope to learn more about COD nineteen immunity and the
Speaker 1: diseases effects on the body. By studying infected volunteers before, during,
Speaker 1: and after their infection, they can get a more granular
Speaker 1: look at the virus and that can help with future
Speaker 1: vaccine and treatment development and just generally give insight into
Speaker 1: how the virus works. So you get into your room
Speaker 1: and by this point it's like ATM and they bring
Speaker 1: you some breakfast and then the doctor comes in and
Speaker 1: they do the same informed consent in eating V two
Speaker 1: hour one, but I did a zoom. They do that
Speaker 1: again if you but in person, and again it's just
Speaker 1: again tick up the boxes, you know, make sure you're in.
Speaker 1: Somebody getting in four and then you have your first
Speaker 1: a lot of texts and that is it. The doors
Speaker 1: are short and that's it. You don't leave. And his
Speaker 1: new home isn't bad. It's got a TV, a PlayStation,
Speaker 1: a decent amount of space, his own bathroom and shower.
Speaker 1: The floors and walls are blue like a typical hospital room.
Speaker 1: It's got an anti chamber with an airlock type thing
Speaker 1: where nurses get into their respirators and get hours before
Speaker 1: coming in. And then luckily you have huge windows, like
Speaker 1: the main the whole wall is almost pretty much all window.
Speaker 1: You get a great view across London, like I could
Speaker 1: see the London I and all that from right from
Speaker 1: my room, which a really nice thing to have. At
Speaker 1: around six am each day, they take his blood in
Speaker 1: a nasal swam and the rest of the day was
Speaker 1: filled with more tests. On day three they do the inoculation.
Speaker 1: That's when they infect Jake with coronavirus. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: about half eleven in the morning where like one of
Speaker 1: the nurses came in and was like, okay, so we're
Speaker 1: going to inaculate you in about an hour and now
Speaker 1: for the un last chance now to kind of like
Speaker 1: buck out, like are you sure you want to do
Speaker 1: this sort of thing like that, And I was like yeah,
Speaker 1: like I still want to go ahead. So the nurse
Speaker 1: hands Jake a big pair of goggles and says see
Speaker 1: you in an hour. The hour between from like half
Speaker 1: eleven to about half twelve when it came in, was
Speaker 1: like just nerves and excitement and just like I was
Speaker 1: calling Cohen being like I mean, I mean, like it's
Speaker 1: going ahead, like you know, like from my friend and stuff.
Speaker 1: Then like it was probably like the longest hour of
Speaker 1: my life. Around noon, the nurse and other staff come
Speaker 1: back into Jake's room. The experience of getting and COVID
Speaker 1: is the most surreal thing in the world. The doors
Speaker 1: open and like there's like five people in these big hoods,
Speaker 1: you know, respirator things like like a horde almost walking
Speaker 1: towards you, sort of thing like that maybe they're wheeling
Speaker 1: behind him. This like its trolley like this big red,
Speaker 1: big red box in it that you know, with by
Speaker 1: a hazard all over it, which contains the coronavirus. The
Speaker 1: virus solution comes in a chilled plastic bag kind of
Speaker 1: like a blood beg and didn't ask you to lie
Speaker 1: on your back with your head hanging out edgy bed,
Speaker 1: which you do, and then obvious people are standing over
Speaker 1: you and it's like it's intimidating. It's like Jesus crying,
Speaker 1: like this is like intense, and they get this huge
Speaker 1: pet it's like almost like a turkey basis, Like it's
Speaker 1: a massive pet they have. They pick it up and
Speaker 1: they get the solution side, and then like they start
Speaker 1: counting down. So they count down from twenty, which adds
Speaker 1: to the suspense really, and then they kind of like
Speaker 1: drop out in each nostrils. So they kind of drop
Speaker 1: it around the outside of the one nostril and then
Speaker 1: did the other, and then their way and they count
Speaker 1: not from twenty again and then they repeat. It's a
Speaker 1: long count. It really builds up the tension, and like
Speaker 1: you can feel the solution going right back to the
Speaker 1: nostril and mean like down your throape ethically as well.
Speaker 1: And then was it's done. You have to lay there
Speaker 1: for ten minutes, your head hanging back and they're just there.
Speaker 1: They're just talking amongst them. Sounds really like checking much
Speaker 1: they did over the prostigures, right like kind of just
Speaker 1: laying there in silence, like just thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've just been infected with coronavirus, and like it kind
Speaker 1: of obviously kind of hits in. At that point. They
Speaker 1: put a clip on Jake's nose like something a beginning
Speaker 1: swimmer might use, and he has to wear it for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, so nothing drops out. So Jake's sitting there
Speaker 1: in his room with a clip around his nose, and
Speaker 1: then everyone realizes it's a pretty big moment because it
Speaker 1: was the world's first. Though kind of like excited about
Speaker 1: it as I was kind of like a lot of
Speaker 1: like high fives, like whoa, you just got COVID, like
Speaker 1: like you know, really excited like that, and then made
Speaker 1: meeve and like and then that's it. You kind of
Speaker 1: like infected with coronavirus. And at that point you're going
Speaker 1: nowhere for at least two weeks because you can't leave
Speaker 1: a quarantine unit until like you're obviously testing negative. The
Speaker 1: next few days are filled with more tests, nurses and
Speaker 1: doctors checking his blood and taking nasal swabs, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. The interaculation was on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: most of Thursday. Jake feels fine. Since one of the
Speaker 1: points of the study is to see how little coronavirus
Speaker 1: one needs to get infected, Jake starts wondering if he
Speaker 1: didn't get enough virus, if he didn't get infected at all.
Speaker 1: But on Thursday, after his third nasal swab of the day,
Speaker 1: he gets news being the first person ever and part
Speaker 1: of the first group. I was getting the smallest, like
Speaker 1: in the most diluted dose they have, so like I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure whether'll even catch an affection because because they
Speaker 1: dropped them and I didn't mean it was actually gonna take. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they came to my room and like they were like,
Speaker 1: so you've tested positive two times in a row now
Speaker 1: and we're going to start you on rumdzivia. Rumdzervie is
Speaker 1: a drug originally developed to treat heppatatis C, which became
Speaker 1: a part of some treatment programs for COVID nineteen. But
Speaker 1: Jake still didn't feel sick when they started the treatment.
Speaker 1: Even though I knew I was technically positive, I didn't
Speaker 1: feel any side effects of it, Like I still felt fine.
Speaker 1: On Thursday night, he starts feeling cold. At first he
Speaker 1: thinks the air conditioning is just too strong. Then he
Speaker 1: wakes up feeling a lot colder. And I woke up
Speaker 1: ten times colder. I had full body eggs. I felt
Speaker 1: really run down, rough over, like really high temperature, but
Speaker 1: like feeling really cold at general thieverish stuff. And then
Speaker 1: he gets even sicker because the mine was kind of
Speaker 1: like abnormal and a bit too wrong, and my temperature
Speaker 1: was too high and my vestory or it was too high,
Speaker 1: and they actually moved me to hourly vitals. It's like
Speaker 1: they're coming in every hour to do more of just
Speaker 1: to keep monet for me, because like I was a
Speaker 1: bit like upper charts. The symptoms, just the things smiling.
Speaker 1: The symptoms just came on like a cliff dive, Like
Speaker 1: I went from having like nothing a thing fine to
Speaker 1: literally like brick wall hitting me, like really ill. They're
Speaker 1: less about two days and then it went away to quick,
Speaker 1: like you know, I went to bed on Saturday night
Speaker 1: feeling really rough, and I woke up the Sunday it
Speaker 1: was like a healed almost straight away, like you know,
Speaker 1: I woke up feeling fine as it was before. One
Speaker 1: of his daily activities is a smell test, basically a
Speaker 1: scratch and sniff book filled with pictures of things that
Speaker 1: you scratch and smell, like an onion or wood or gasoline.
Speaker 1: But then a week after his first COVID symptoms, he
Speaker 1: loses his sense of smell. At this point, I've been
Speaker 1: working to the books for like over a week by
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, I knew the answer before
Speaker 1: I even synapped it, because like it was the same
Speaker 1: books every time, and that's what really actually let me
Speaker 1: name it. My son was gone, because like I've scrapped it,
Speaker 1: but I'll already know why it is, and I'm just
Speaker 1: not on it, and that'd be just nothing there at all,
Speaker 1: like not a thing. His smell doesn't come back until
Speaker 1: about five days later. Human challenge trials have been used
Speaker 1: a lot in the past, some ethical, some not. Edward
Speaker 1: Jenner created the first ever vaccine for smallpox and tested
Speaker 1: it on his gardener's eight year old son. He deliberately
Speaker 1: exposed the boy to smallpox, but he didn't get sick.
Speaker 1: There have also been challenged trials for flu throughout the
Speaker 1: past eighty years, and as recently as the late two thousands,
Speaker 1: and there have been challenge trials for cholera, malaria, typhoid,
Speaker 1: and Danae fever. It's not a new thing. Among the
Speaker 1: arguments against human challenge trials is that they expose healthy
Speaker 1: people to unacceptably high risks. But in normal life, non
Speaker 1: pandemic life, we're happy to have people exposed to risks.
Speaker 1: Think about volunteer firefighters running into burning buildings, EMTs doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses just at the beginning of this pandemic alone,
Speaker 1: and how much they risked. We don't tell them all
Speaker 1: to stay home because we know the benefits of their services.
Speaker 1: We also know the benefits of human challenge trials, and
Speaker 1: yet for COVID, at least in the US, we just
Speaker 1: didn't do them. I spoke with a bioethicist named near
Speaker 1: Ayal at Rutgers University. He was a co author on
Speaker 1: the first paper suggesting that human challenge trials should be
Speaker 1: used to test coronavirus vaccines. That was back in March
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, right at the beginning of the pandemic. Remember,
Speaker 1: people were talking about risings of five years yeast one
Speaker 1: and a half years for developing vaccines, and we thought
Speaker 1: that human challenge trials would expedite the process. That was
Speaker 1: the main benefit of arriving at vaccines at the and
Speaker 1: the potential end of COVID, which is a very important
Speaker 1: thing obviously to reach. Nier says that the reason we
Speaker 1: haven't done human challenge trials is that the powers that
Speaker 1: be simply haven't properly weighed the risks versus rewards, not
Speaker 1: even close. He says, overall, we had a skewed, excessively
Speaker 1: precautious approach to the risk in these challenge trials compared
Speaker 1: to our actual approaches in many other areas of life.
Speaker 1: We're talking here about thousands, millions of lives. How can
Speaker 1: this be regarded as too risky? With an adult participants
Speaker 1: fully informed and comprehending consent. Nier also believes that even
Speaker 1: though we have vaccines now, it doesn't mean there's no
Speaker 1: reason left for challenge trial else, particularly when it comes
Speaker 1: to future pandemics. Here he gives a hypothetical example of
Speaker 1: what we could have done to get vaccines faster for
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen and what we should do for the next
Speaker 1: virus outbreak. Our chances of having the next pandemic are
Speaker 1: just as high now as they were before COVID. COVID
Speaker 1: did not spare us of the next thing, and it's
Speaker 1: just a proof that those things can happen. If I
Speaker 1: could advise people what now, what to do? I would
Speaker 1: say the minute you hear that there is a pandemic,
Speaker 1: so back in January, before we even wrote, back in
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty, start growing virus, Start preparing a protocol,
Speaker 1: start working just in case it will be needed, so
Speaker 1: that you know, if we did that in January, then
Speaker 1: a month or two after we wrote one could have
Speaker 1: started a human channel draw and gotten a very reliable
Speaker 1: read on the impact of these vaccines on infections, information
Speaker 1: about the so called core protection the duration of immunity,
Speaker 1: long before the trials that authorized the vaccines took place.
Speaker 1: Nier also says that challenge trials can run alongside the
Speaker 1: more standard clinical trials. It's smart to run both, to
Speaker 1: basically throw all of our spaghetti pieces at the problem.
Speaker 1: There's so much value in getting any piece of information
Speaker 1: quicker and more reliably on a pandemic. So many human
Speaker 1: lives are going to be lost if we get things inaccurately,
Speaker 1: or if we get them later. Jake went into the
Speaker 1: trial with the intention of getting a lot done while
Speaker 1: he was quarantined in the room, like he wanted to
Speaker 1: take a sign language course, but there are so many
Speaker 1: tests every day that he doesn't have big chunks of time. Instead,
Speaker 1: he watches a lot of Netflix and zooms with friends
Speaker 1: and family. He's not allowed to leave until at least
Speaker 1: two weeks after the day he was inoculated with the virus,
Speaker 1: but even then they're testing him to see how much
Speaker 1: virus has left in his system, and he's got a
Speaker 1: bit too much, so they keep him a couple extra days.
Speaker 1: Then on the nineteenth day in the hospital, around four
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, they tell Jake he can go home.
Speaker 1: He's got an arrow to pack up and get ready.
Speaker 1: He was so rushed because yes, for everything you way
Speaker 1: you introduced by your hazard bags, because like everything can
Speaker 1: be effecto technically, he said, Like you know, you can't
Speaker 1: pack the same way you're packed ting because you can't
Speaker 1: fold your close into the case because it just dumped
Speaker 1: into these big red bags they give you to the
Speaker 1: end up leading to all these bags, and like you
Speaker 1: have to shower to get everything, wash everything off you.
Speaker 1: You have to ship everything in your room put into
Speaker 1: like all your bedding and stuff that they provided, you
Speaker 1: have to put that. Him to buy has bags as
Speaker 1: well for them to keep. And then he finally leaves
Speaker 1: the room and the weirdest thing happens. So I leave
Speaker 1: my room pretty much the first time in like eighteen days,
Speaker 1: I've left this room, and I'm walking down this corridor
Speaker 1: on the hospital ward and all the ducts and nurses
Speaker 1: that I crafty, they kind of come out and kind
Speaker 1: of just like clap as you're walking out, which is
Speaker 1: like a really just it's mental or they not a
Speaker 1: nurse to come from there thanking you, but like you know,
Speaker 1: you're also thanking then because they took care of you
Speaker 1: for this time. Kind of like this line of people
Speaker 1: like clapping as you're walking out, which is like why
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that's really weird sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Jake gets one less CT scan and then has pushed
Speaker 1: through the hospital in a wheelchair all the way there
Speaker 1: was taxi. When you actually leave a hospital and you
Speaker 1: go outside, that was the first time I breathed fresh
Speaker 1: air in like three weeks, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like over that, you kind of get outside and kind
Speaker 1: of you kind of want to go for a run,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like enjoy the outdoors, but
Speaker 1: like you kind of put straight into this taxi and
Speaker 1: sent up home and then you just back home and
Speaker 1: like it's it's just weird, like you got from me
Speaker 1: in this huge thing when one day you've gone from
Speaker 1: being in hospital apart from this huge human kind of sharper.
Speaker 1: It's like a really significant thing to back seeding in
Speaker 1: your own bed after if after being clapped out of
Speaker 1: the hospital. I kind of expect to really like triumphant
Speaker 1: return home and like, you know, everybody excited. I kind
Speaker 1: of got there. My mom was kind of like hi.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh Hi. I was kind of like
Speaker 1: we hugged and we said him. I was going, like
Speaker 1: I went to bed. Going home is a bit bizarre
Speaker 1: for Jake. He spent so long wanting to be part
Speaker 1: of this trial that when it's finally over, he doesn't
Speaker 1: know what to want next. And I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of dead to the world for at least a
Speaker 1: few days after that, because like just exhausted and in
Speaker 1: a way a little bit emotional from it. He goes
Speaker 1: back to work at the supermarket and his co workers
Speaker 1: get him some beers and some pretty appropriate chocolates, and
Speaker 1: we also got me a Brandonby's chocolates him that I
Speaker 1: called Heroes. It's like a selection box. And then they
Speaker 1: got me back and we got to hobb a box
Speaker 1: up being like hero and I like, because you're over here,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, it's so cheesy. Jake the
Speaker 1: Hero is now fully recovered from all his COVID symptoms
Speaker 1: and the Human Challenge trial he participated in. We'll officially
Speaker 1: end some time next The trial and his work volunteering
Speaker 1: for One Day Sooner have made Jake rethink what he
Speaker 1: wants to do with his life. He told me he's
Speaker 1: now interested in working in effective altruism, using evidence and
Speaker 1: logic to help others in the most effective way through charity.
Speaker 1: He'll continue to go in for follow up appointments until
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty two, and then his particular contribution to
Speaker 1: coronavirus science will be over. Thomas Smiley still volunteers for
Speaker 1: One Day Sooner, but he's now vaccinated and won't be
Speaker 1: participating in any coronavirus human challenge trials even if the
Speaker 1: US does start doing them, and he still believes they
Speaker 1: should be done. We need to know more, we need
Speaker 1: to be able to kind of rid ourselves of this,
Speaker 1: and that's not going to happen anytime really, quote unquote soon.
Speaker 1: So there's a place for challenge trials. There's a place
Speaker 1: for more vaccines. There's a place for speeding up the
Speaker 1: process of new vaccines. There's a place for understanding variants.
Speaker 1: There's a place for understanding cores of protection. There's a
Speaker 1: place for understanding some people's natural nunity to it. We
Speaker 1: need to know all these things, and Challenge trials can
Speaker 1: help that because we can narrow those factors down. We
Speaker 1: can isolate variables and really pinpoint what's good and what's bad,
Speaker 1: so we don't have to concern ourselves with what may happen.
Speaker 1: Thomas finds a lovely comparison between his passion advocating for
Speaker 1: human Challenge Trials and his day job stress testing metals
Speaker 1: for airplanes, from a person that is literally testing unknown
Speaker 1: alloys in some points in his day. Literally, we don't
Speaker 1: know if this will hold up to this many psi.
Speaker 1: We don't know if it will hold up under this
Speaker 1: kind of heat. We have no idea if this corrosion
Speaker 1: will make the thing weaker or stronger, this coding will
Speaker 1: do you have this effect on it? Well? Can we
Speaker 1: just put it in the air? Can we just make
Speaker 1: a plane out of this? No, of course not, that's preposterous.
Speaker 1: You have to test these things, and there's really no
Speaker 1: better way to do so than doing a live test.
Speaker 1: There are some sacrifices you're gonna have to make, and
Speaker 1: there are some trials you're gonna have to go through,
Speaker 1: and failures that might have to happen regarding those but
Speaker 1: failure is always progress in a certain sense. On the
Speaker 1: next episode of long Shot, we'll speak with an American
Speaker 1: living in Sweden who had to do the unthinkable during quarantine.
Speaker 1: Long Shot is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Today's episode of long Shot was produced, written, and narrated
Speaker 1: by me Sean Revive. A co producer is Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeartRadio, Aby Rowerk at
Speaker 1: One Day Sooner, and Alistair Fraser Erkett. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and L. C. Crowley. Long Shot
Speaker 1: was scored by Jason Shannon. The score was mixed by
Speaker 1: Vic Stafford. Sound design and audio mix was by Harper
Speaker 1: Harris with Tone Moothers. School of Humans