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Questionable herpes vaccine research backed by tech heavyweight Peter Thiel may have jeopardized $15 million in federal research funding to Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. That's according to documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by The State Journal Register.
In August, Kaiser Health News reported that Thiel and other conservative investors had contributed $7 million for the live-but-weakened herpes virus vaccine, developed by the late SIU researcher William Halford. The investments came after Halford and his private company, Rational Vaccines, had begun conducting small clinical trials in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. With the off-shore location, Rational Vaccines' trial skirted federal regulations and standard safety protocols for human trials, including having approval and oversight from an institutional review board (IRB).
Experts were quick to call the unapproved trial "patently unethical," and researchers rejected the data from publication, calling the handling of safety issues "reckless." The government of St. Kitts opened an investigation into the trial and reported that health authorities there had been kept in the dark.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SunTzuWarmaster on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:56PM
...And the primary thing that an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Government Officials (GOs) do is to make sure that participants are informed of the risks and benefits of being in the trial - and that claims of the risk/benefit are true. Both of these governing bodies were neatly sidestepped by conducting the research overseas (IRB rules do not apply) and secretly (GOs left in the dark). Note that "traveling to a foreign country, getting people to sign a waiver indicating they won't sue and then injecting them with a live herpes sample" is, technically, legal (until a court says otherwise). Its hard to come up with something more unethical, however.
Note that following the IRB process would have added the ethical oversight (legally mandated for research in the States) and ~6 months to the project. Working with the Government could add more or less time depending on the structure/blessing/authority of the people involved.