Let’s welcome well controlled human infection studies

livemint.com:

Controlled human infection studies, also known as challenge trials, involve a process by which test subjects are intentionally infected with diseases under controlled circumstances to test a new vaccine or pharmaceutical drug to see if it can successfully achieve its medical aims. If intentionally infecting humans sounds awful, this is, by no means, a new technique.

During the 19th and early 20th century, many such experiments were carried out to find a cure for a number of vector-borne diseases, and it is thanks to one such experiment—conducted in 1898 by Battista Grassi in Italy—that we were able to confirm that malaria was transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. Over the second half of the 20th and early 21st century, human challenge studies contributed to the development of vaccines for as many as 15 major pathogens and the treatment of various diseases like cholera, typhoid and seasonal flu.

Challenge trials can be particularly efficacious in India, where infectious diseases contribute to as much as 30% of the country’s disease burden. Since many of the currently available treatment protocols for these ailments have their origins in Western science, they may not be ideally suited to the requirements of the local population—given how they may not adequately take into account relevant environmental factors that could have a bearing on treatment.

Controlled human infection studies carried out in endemic settings are far more likely to uncover immunity patterns, associated co-infections, existing pharmacogenomic data and other relevant factors such as nutrition, etc, that could help deliver more effective treatments. The problem is that since the very premise of this approach involves causing harm to another person, if not