The article says nobody has died from this at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
How far would you go to help wipe out one of the world's worst scourges?
Seattle-area residents will soon be able to go all the way: allowing themselves to be bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes to aid in the quest for new vaccines and drugs.
Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI) is announcing plans today for a facility where volunteers will be exposed to the deadliest form of the disease, which kills at least a million people a year. Most victims are African children.
But scientists are quick to point out that participating in the clinical trials won't be a life-threatening experience.
While many volunteers will actually contract malaria, the cloned strain used in the experimentscan be quickly cured, and does not cause a recurring form of the disease.
More than 900 people have participated in malaria trials at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, which pioneered the use of human tests more than 30 years ago. The only other two labs that conduct similar experiments are in England and the Netherlands.
There have been no deaths or hospitalizations in the trials, said Lt. Col. James F. Cummings, M.D., chief of Walter Reed's clinical trials center.
He volunteered for a trial and contracted malaria.
"I felt like I had the flu — chills and shakes for the first few hours," Cummings said. Within eight hours of treatment, he was on the mend. But symptoms will vary. One study found the average volunteer felt bad for about three days.
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