Can a controversial philanthropic philosophy navigate the thorny ethics of human experimentation?
Click hereParesh Patel used to be afraid of needles. Then he volunteered to catch COVID-19. When an email arrived with news that scientists at the University of Oxford in the U.K. were looking for volunteers willing to be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Patel signed up. He had already caught and survived COVID in October 2020. Other than losing his senses of smell and taste for a few days, the experience was unremarkable.
While scientists and ethicists disagreed about whether the trials would be useful — let alone ethical — to conduct, 1Day Sooner’s founders forged ahead, organizing a congressional briefing, penning op-eds and enrolling volunteers. The system that regulates clinical trials is overly paternalistic, says Josh Morrison, president and co-founder of 1Day Sooner, which is based in the U.S. and has chapters in the U.K. and Africa.
The Against Malaria Foundation, which provides anti-malaria mosquito nets to at-risk populations, is EA’s single most common donation target. Effective altruism’s philosophical roots lie in the concept of utilitarianism. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, theorists like John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham proposed that it was in society’s best interest for individuals to promote happiness and to decrease misery as much as possible.
For 1Day Sooner co-founder Josh Morrison, the EA community and philosophy incentivize him to be the best person he can be. In 2011, Morrison was a successful but unfulfilled corporate lawyer when he decided to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger, a move inspired by Singer’s ideas. “It was just this incredibly positive experience for me,” he says.
For example, one of EA’s most common donation targets is the Against Malaria Foundation, an organization that distributes anti-malaria nets in Africa. The nonprofit reports distributing 200 million nets and estimates it’s prevented 150,000 deaths. At $2 per net, that’s a pretty good return on investment — and, in theory, it means that anyone can make a difference.
Although many laws — both in the U.S. and abroad — have been adopted since the horrors of Willowbrook and Tuskegee, among others, American ethicists remain wary of repeating history. Those previous, egregious mistakes were instrumental in creating the current research structure. While idealists like Morrison might call the system paternalistic, Sulmasy says those protections are crucial.
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