Informed Consent on Vaccine Trials

In Week 4, we covered the ethical standards that guide and regulate research. These standards include providing participants with informed consent and ensuring that the research study will do no harm. Before you go any further with this assignment, ensure that you have a solid understanding of these two standards for ethical research and what they entail. The textbook chapters (Babbie Ch3, Wilkins Ch 6) can assist, beyond what is covered in lecture.
The Issue:
Tens of thousands of people volunteered to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials during 2020. As part of the enrollment process, they were informed that they would either receive the vaccine or a placebo and that they would not know which group they were in (i.e., a double-blind study). They agreed to participate having been informed of those conditions.
By the end of 2020, those vaccine trials revealed that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness and death—information we could only generate because these people volunteered to be trial participants. The success of the trials set off a debate a debate about research ethics.
The most basic questions are these: Given the high efficacy of the vaccine, do participants in the placebo group need to be informed that they have not, in fact, been vaccinated? In other words, does keeping participants in the dark as to their vaccine status violate the ethical standards to do no harm and provide informed consent?
Read this summary of positions on both sides of the argument from December 2020, just before Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines were approved for U.S. use. Use that article and this week’s lecture and reading materials to do the following in your memo:
Consider how the vaccine trial outcomes have changed (or have not changed) researchers’ responsibilities with regard to providing participants with informed consent
Or
Consider how the vaccine trial outcomes have affected (or not affected) researchers’ responsibilities to do no harm
Regardless of which option you choose, your answer must:
Define the bolded term above in your own words.
Explain both sides of the ethical challenge related to that term, to the best of your ability.
Finally, spend no more than 3 sentences summarizing what you think is the most ethical course of action based on what you have presented in your Memo, and why.
300-400words