Teabringer and I had an interesting conversation last night. He told me his lab was sending some vaccine to Iran for human testing. Teabringer and the lab work on Leishmaniasis. This is a horrible third world disease. It is also very difficult to test the possible vaccines on humans, for obvious ethical reasons. However, Iran has already instigated a vaccination policy in its population; it injects a small amount of the weak parasite into the back or the arm of the person they are vaccinating (this is how quite a few vaccines work). This leaves a lesion, but the person becomes immune. A small amount contract the disease more seroiusly and die, but the government there is seeing this as the lesser of two evils.
On the bright side, this means that the vaccines which have been developed can be tested on those who were going to be vaccinated with the disease. If they work then the subjects will not get the lesions (and none of them will die as a possible side effect) and if it fails then no one is worse off. An interesting loophole, no?
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