Dr. Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at the University of Oxford, says he supports the idea. The concept stretches back to 1796, when scientist Edward Jenner found that exposing patients to cowpox disease protected them against future infections of smallpox, the first step in eradicating the deadly disease.

He told the BBC that there was a “long history” of challenge studies and that the risk to young and healthy people is low. Besides that, Horby said that there are now some treatments for COVID-19 in the event a person in the challenge becomes unwell.

“It has real potential to advance science and get us to a better understanding of the disease and vaccines faster,” Horby said.

In May, the World Health Organization issued a report on the ethical considerations for conducting a challenge study. The U.N. health agency laid out criteria necessary for justifying such research, including minimizing all potential risks to participants by, among other things, making sure participants were young and healthy, providing supportive care if things went wrong, and mandating “rigorous informed consent.”

Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, an 18-year-old volunteer organizer at 1Day Sooner, a group that advocates for challenge study volunteers, told the BBC he wanted to take part because of the potential to save thousands of lives and bring the world out of the pandemic.