Would you volunteer to be deliberately infected with COVID-19? It's a question some people are seriously considering. In an effort to speed up the development of a vaccine, 1 Day Sooner is asking volunteers to sign up for human challenge trials that will expose them to the virus in an effort to study the disease and develop a cure.
Josh Morrison, the co-founder of 1 Day Sooner, told Cheddar Wednesday that these human challenges have been used to study other diseases in the past, including malaria, typhoid, and cholera.
"The drug Tamiflu, for example, was developed with challenge trials, as well as the malaria vaccine RTS,S that's being deployed in Africa right now," he said. "You can find out much more quickly whether a vaccine might work, than a traditional trial which might have thousands or even tens of thousands of volunteers."
The National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization have shown interest in the human challenge trials, according to Morrison. The WHO recently published an ethics report to which the 1 Day Sooner team offered suggestions, though they were not accepted for the publication.
Morrison said that there has been growing interest in the trials, adding, "It's not universal acclaim or an immediate 'we need challenge trials right away from every possible corner,' but the message today is immensely different, immensely more positive than what the public message was a month ago."
He acknowledged that the risk of injecting people with COVID-19 could be deadly, but he said he believes that the potential value of finding a vaccine from these challenges is worth it.
"If you look at the risks of getting COVID-19 for the young, healthy group that would participate in challenge trials, they're roughly on a par with childbirth or with kidney donation. So, again, significant risk and we're not understating that, but these are risks that we commonly allow people to accept normally, and given the tremendous possible value we think it's worth accepting them in this case," the 1 Day Sooner co-founder said.
Carlo and Baker cover the latest developments with the Omicron variant, and break down what we know and what we still don't. Plus, a relatively tame Black Friday, and more.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, joined Cheddar to discuss the nations joining in on a travel ban against several African nations after South Africa reported the emergence of the omicron variant of COVID-19 currently worrying health experts. Adalja also added his own voice to the World Health Organization's objection to the travel ban at this time. "When you do a travel ban, you basically waste a lot of resources implementing the travel ban, you give people a false sense of security when the virus is likely already outside of the area of the travel ban, and then you punish countries like South Africa." He noted that South Africa should be praised for its transparency and not punished with restrictions, an act he thinks will lead to a chilling effect among other nations sharing data freely.
Blue Origin is gearing up for its next launch, set to blast off on December 9th. Michael Strahan is one of the six crew members who will snag a seat on the the New Shepard rocket. Jim Cantrell, CEO and co-founder at Phantom Space, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Donald Pettey, Program Manager for Strategic Initiatives for MassDOT, and Mohammed Siddiqui, Vice President of Public Relations at Ko-Solar, join Cheddar Climate, where they discuss their plan to test highway barriers that absorb sound and solar energy, with construction expected to begin in the first half of 2022.
Over 100 world leaders signed on to a pledge at the United Nations COP26 climate meeting with the aim of ending and reversing deforestation by 2030. Leaders agreed to conserve forests and ecosystems, support developing countries on deforestation prevention, and more. Rod Taylor, Global Forests Director at the World Resources Institute, joins Cheddar Climate to discuss the pledge, whether it will have a significant impact, whether 2030 is a suitable deadline, and how we can verify if forests are actually being protected.
President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" bill could mean cheaper electric bicycles and scooters as the nation attempts to shift away from gas-powered cars. Noa Banayan, the director of federal affairs at PeopleForBikes, joined Cheddar's "Closing Bell" to provide some background on the E-Bike Act included in Biden's reconciliation bill that would provide tax credits for qualified purchases. "We want to make sure, from the bike industry's perspective, that this is a technology and a product that is available to the majority of Americans who want to lower their carbon footprint and get around town faster and do everything that they would normally do in a short car trip but by bike, because it's healthier, it's fast, it's efficient, you're not in traffic," she said.
It's being called the next big trend in crypto. A decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, is an internet community of different types of groups and businesses. The purpose is to allow people to commit funds to a specific cause in a safe way. Now, one social platform is creating a do-it-yourself kit for those who want to step into the space. Upstream Collective just launched the beta mode of its platform with the goal of putting all facets of running a DAO in one place. Alex Taub, co-founder and CEO of Upstream, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
A NASA spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid is preparing to launch this week. The goal of the DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is to hit the smaller of the two asteroids, Dimorphos, with the spacecraft at about 15,000 miles per hour and see how the impact changes the asteroid’s trajectory. Joey Roulette, space reporter at The New York Times, joins Cheddar News to talk more about it.
NFL Hall of Famer and "Good Morning America" host Michael Strahan will be able to add space travel to his list of accomplishments as he prepares to launch into orbit with the next Blue Origin mission.
