Thanks 4 this @ekemma. Here are some of my thots, whilst we all squish in this sticky, smelly mud. First this is not about health-worker access to #CovidVaccines . I would easily argue that those battling in HICs with shockingly high mortality #s shld be vaccinated 1st.../2 https://twitter.com/ekemma/status/1354177243078123522

This is about my questioning what it means that health workers elsewere aren't prioritized, & what it says about the ethics of therapeutic testing researched so eloquently by Adriana Petryna (2009) https://books.google.com.ng/books?id=BnG1-VigFi8C&dq=petryna&source=gbs_navlinks_s. .../3

Science truly stepped up creating new vaccines & trialing a variety of options for improving treatment & preventing high-risk individuals (like health workers) from contracting #COVID19. Trial infrastructure is ready-to-go in HIC where most studies have taken place, but.../4

Quite a few LIC trials are in play & #COVID19 is improving capacity for LIC trials, even in spite of the fear that these might be ethically fraught. You see.../5

Early on, we displayed what looked like global disgust at commentary 2 French physicians, who proposed that trials should be done in African settings to would make for less confounding bcos access to protective interventions would be impossible... https://twitter.com/JNkengasong/status/1246494405474820096/5 .../6

As no one dared say, they were statistically right. But there was what I then thot was global consensus that they were morally wrong. How could anyone possibly say that in 2020 when lessons from Tuskegee and other historical abominations were well ingrained? ...7

But, we have confounded HIC trials but the necessary roll out of vaccines and had a moral imperative to do so. Conveniently, trials on-going in LMICs are unlikely to be 'messed up' by vaccine deploymnet for perhaps >1 year, allowing the world to reap full benefits from them../8

Sadly, we have taken yet another new disease (after HIV) and again created the bio-politically charged, epidemiologically dangerous and morally untenable situation where ‘testing fields’ exist away from access to effective therapies.../9

Those that generously provide consent for their bodies to be exploited do so for a "greater good" that they cannot benefit from (my anthropology #STS colleagues would state this more scholarly).../10

These inequities in contributions to knowledge-production and use are, I state without the eloquence of @DrTedros, or the Igbo proverbs highlighted by @ekemma, represent yet another terrifying dimension of our #VaccineNationalism -inspired #MoralFailure .../END