Controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies involve the deliberate infection of healthy volunteers with malaria parasites under controlled conditions to study immune responses and/or test drug or vaccine efficacy. An empirical ethics study was embedded in a CHMI study at a Kenyan research programme to explore stakeholders’ perceptions and experiences of deliberate infection and moral implications of these. Data for this qualitative study were collected through focus group discussions, in‐depth interviews and non‐participant observation. Sixty‐nine participants were involved, including CHMI study (...) volunteers, community representatives and research staff. Data were managed using QSR Nvivo 10 and analysed using an inductive‐deductive approach, guided by ethics literature. CHMI volunteers had reasonable understanding of the study procedures. Decisions to join were influenced by study incentives, trust in the research institution, their assessment of associated burdens and motivation to support malaria vaccine development. However, deliberate malaria infection was a highly unusual research strategy for volunteers, community representatives and some study staff. Volunteers’ experiences of physical, emotional and social burdens or harms were often greater than anticipated initially, and fluctuated over time, related to specific procedures and events. Although unlikely to deter volunteers' participation in similar studies in furture, we argue that the dissonance between level of understanding of the burdens involved and actual experiences are morally relevant in relation to community engagement, informed consent processes, and ongoing support for volunteers and research staff. We further argue that ethics oversight of CHMI studies should take account of these issues in deciding whether consent, engagement and the balance of benefits and harms are reasonable in a given context. (shrink)

This article considers what can be learned regarding the ethical acceptability of intrusive interventions intended to halt the spread of infectious disease (‘Infection Control’ measures) from existing ethical discussion of intrusive interventions used to prevent criminal conduct (‘Crime Control’ measures). The main body of the article identifies and briefly describes six objections that have been advanced against Crime Control, and considers how these might apply to Infection Control. The final section then draws out some more general lessons from the foregoing (...) analysis for the ethical acceptability of different kinds of Infection Control. (shrink)

Upon separation of the protein from the nucleic acid component of tobacco mosaic virus by phenol, using a fast and gentle procedure, the nucleic acid is infective in assays on tobacco leaves. A series of qualitative and quantitative control experiments demonstrates that the biological activity cannot depend on residual proteins in the preparation, but is a property of isolated nucleic acid which is thus the genetic material of the virus.

Stuttering is one of the most well-known speech disorders, but the underlying neurological mechanisms are debated. In addition to genetic factors there are also major non-genetic contributions. It is here proposed that infection with group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus (GAS) was a major underlying cause of stuttering until the mid 1900s, when penicillin was introduced for the treatment of streptococcal infections about 1946. The main mechanism proposed is an autoimmune reaction from tonsillitis, targeting specific molecules, for example within the basal ganglia. (...) It is here also proposed that GAS infections may have continued to cause stuttering to some extent, to the present date, though more rarely. If so, early diagnosis of such cases would be of importance. Childhood cases with sudden onset of stuttering after throat infection may be particularly important to assess for possible GAS infection. The support for this hypothesis primarily comes from three lines of argument. First, medical record data from the 1930s strongly indicates that there was one type of medical event in particular that preceded the onset of childhood stuttering with unexpected frequency: diseases related to GAS throat infections. In particular, this included tonsillitis and scarlet fever, but also rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever is a childhood autoimmune sequela of GAS infection, which was a relatively widespread medical problem until the early 1960s. Secondly, available reports of changes of the childhood prevalence of stuttering indicates striking parallels between stuttering and the incidence of rheumatic fever, with (1) decline from the early 1900s, (2) marked decline from the introduction of penicillin about 1946, and (3) reaching a more stable level in the 1960s. The correlations between the data for stuttering and for rheumatic fever after introduction of penicillin are very high, at about 0.95. Thirdly, there are established biological mechanisms linking GAS tonsillitis to immunological effects on the brain. In addition, a small number of more recent case reports have provided further support for the hypothesis linking stuttering to GAS infection. Overall, it is proposed that the available data provides strong evidence for the hypothesis that GAS infection was a major cause of stuttering until the mid 1900s. (shrink)

Human infection challenge studies (HCS) involve intentionally infecting research participants with pathogens (or other micro-organisms). There have been recent calls for more HCS to be conducted in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where many relevant diseases are endemic. HCS in general, and HCS in LMICs in particular, raise numerous ethical issues. This paper summarises the findings of a project that explored ethical and regulatory issues related to LMIC HCS via (i) a review of relevant literature and (ii) 45 qualitative interviews (...) with scientists and ethicists. Among other areas of consensus, we found that there was widespread agreement that LMIC HCS can be ethically acceptable, provided that they have a sound scientific rationale, are accepted by local communities and meet usual research ethics requirements. Unresolved issues include those related to (i) acceptable approaches to trade-offs between the scientific aim to produce generalisable results and the protection of participants, (iii) the sharing of benefits with LMIC populations, (iii) the acceptable limits to risks and burdens for participants, (iv) the potential for third-party risk and whether the degree of acceptable third-party risk is different in endemic settings, (v) the conditions under which (if any) it would be appropriate to recruit children for disease-causing HCS, (v) appropriate levels of payment to participants and (vi) appropriate governance of (LMIC) HCS. This paper provides preliminary analyses of these ethical considerations in order to (i) inform scientists and policymakers involved in the planning, conduct and/or governance of LMIC HCS and (ii) highlight areas warranting future research. Insofar as this article focuses on HCS in (endemic) settings where diseases are present and/or widespread, much of the analysis provided is relevant to HCS (in HICs or LMICs) involving pandemic diseases including COVID19. (shrink)

Epidemiological data suggest that previous infections can alter an individual's susceptibility to unrelated diseases. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. Substantial research efforts have expanded the classical concept of immune memory to also include long‐lasting changes in innate immunity and antigen‐independent reactivation of adaptive immunity. Collectively, these processes provide possible explanations on how acute infections might induce long‐term changes that also affect immunity to unrelated diseases. Here, we review lasting changes the immune compartment undergoes upon infection and how (...) infection experience alters the responsiveness of immune cells towards universal signals. This heightened state of alert enhances the ability of the immune system to combat even unrelated infections but may also increase susceptibility to autoimmunity. At the same time, infection‐induced changes in the regulatory compartment may dampen subsequent immune responses and promote pathogen persistence. The concepts presented here outline how infection‐induced changes in the immune system may affect human health. (shrink)

The practice of HIV‐infected physicians who perform seriously invasive procedures calls for professional guidance to protect patient safety and the privacy of infected physicians.

On March 16, 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organization said: “We have a simple message to all countries—test, test, test.” This seems like sound advice, but what if limiting the number of tests has a positive effect on infection control? Although this may rarely be the case, the possibility raises an important ethical question that is closely related to a central tension between deontological and consequentialist approaches to ethics. In this paper, we first argue that early during the (...) COVID-19 pandemic, Japan offers an interesting case because it experienced few deaths due to COVID while the number of tests was limited, suggesting that there may be cases in which low testing contributes to infection control indeed. After that, we examine deontological constraints on such a “low-testing” policy, focusing on issues related to a supposed “right to know,” which is a central issue in medical ethics in general. (shrink)

An Institute of Medical Ethics working party argues that an ethically desirable relationship of mutual empowerment between patient and clinician is more likely to be achieved if patients understand the ground rules of medical confidentiality. It identifies and illustrates ambiguities in the General Medical Council's guidance on AIDS and confidentiality, and relates this to the practice of different doctors and specialties. Matters might be clarified, it suggests, by identifying moral factors which tend to recur in medical decisions about maintaining or (...) breaching confidentiality. The working party argues that two such factors are particularly important: the patient's need to exercise informed choice and the doctor's primary responsibility to his or her own patients. (shrink)

El presente artículo estudia las representaciones de mujeres con VIH/sida, en el libro Tiempos del SIDA. Relatos de la vida real, de Myriam Francis. El trabajo inicia con un análisis sobre la exclusión de los sujetos femeninos de la literatura “seropositiva” latinoamericana. Se plantea que las pocas representaciones que existen se enfocan en “mujeres sospechosas”, lo cual se repite, hasta cierto punto, en los textos de Francis seleccionados: “La última puerta”, “La viuda alegre” y “La chica alegre”. Luego, se ofrece (...) una explicación sobre el contexto en el que surgen las historias, un “pabellón-moridero” que se describe más bien como un espacio ameno, el cual, sin embargo, enfatiza la tragicidad que rodea a cada “caso”. Después, se estudian los tres relatos mencionados, en los que se mueven los símbolos primarios del mal (la mancilla, el pecado y la culpabilidad), de manera que una mujer es representada como una “víctima inocente” y otras, como “víctimas culpables” (fundamentalmente por sus “estilos de vida nocivos”). Finalmente, el trabajo concluye que la narrativa de Francis moviliza algunos principios de la “teoría de la degeneración”, para explicar las situaciones experimentadas por los personajes femeninos y ofrecer un mensaje didáctico-moralizante. (shrink)

An additional compartment of vaccinated individuals is considered in a SIS stochastic epidemic model with infection reintroduction. The quantification of the spread of the disease is modeled by a continuous time Markov chain. A well-known measure of the initial transmission potential is the basic reproduction number $$R_0$$, which determines the herd immunity threshold or the critical proportion of immune individuals required to stop the spread of a disease when a vaccine offers a complete protection. Due to repeated contacts between the (...) typical infective and previously infected individuals, $$R_0$$ overestimates the average number of secondary infections and leads to, perhaps unnecessary, high immunization coverage. Assuming that the vaccine is imperfect, alternative measures to $$R_0$$ are defined in order to study the influence of the initial coverage and vaccine efficacy on the transmission of the epidemic. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is good reason to believe that we can be influenced by fictions in ways that matter morally, and some of the time we will be unaware that we have been so influenced. These arguments fall short of proving a clear causal link between fictions and specific changes in the audience, but they do reveal rather interesting and complex features of the moral psychology of fiction. In particular, they reveal that some Platonic worries about (...) the dangers of art cannot be dismissed lightly. (shrink)

In the midst of the recent Ebola outbreak, scientific developments involving infection challenge experiments on nonhuman primates (NHPs) sparked hope that successful treatments and vaccines may soon become available. Yet these studies pose a stark ethical quandary. On the one hand, they represent an important step in developing novel therapies and vaccines for Ebola and the Marburg virus, with the potential to save thousands of human lives and to protect whole communities from devastation; on the other hand, they intentionally expose (...) sophisticated animals to severe suffering and a high risk of death. Other studies that infect NHPs with a lethal disease in order to test interventions that may prove beneficial for humans pose the same ethical difficulty. Some advocates have argued that all research on primates should be phased out, and ethicists have questioned whether a moral justification of primate research is possible. A 2010 European Union directive banned virtually all research on great apes, and 2013 guidelines from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), based upon recommendations in an influential 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, eliminated most biomedical research with chimpanzees in the United States. But studies involving other NHPs face no comparable restrictions.Should research on NHPs other than great apes be subject to tighter restrictions than it currently is? In this article, we explore this general question in the context of one particular type of biomedical research: infection challenge studies. We advocate a presumptive prohibition on infection challenge experiments in NHPs, but we also argue that exceptions to this prohibition are permissible, subject to strict substantive and procedural safeguards, when necessary to avert substantial loss of human life or severe morbidity for a substantial number of people. (shrink)

Clear guidelines addressing the ethically appropriate use of anti-infectives in the setting of hospice care do not exist. There is lack of understanding about key treatment decisions related to infection treatment for patients who are eligible for hospice care. Ethical concerns about anti-infective use at the end of life include: (1) delaying transition to hospice, (2) prolonging a dying process, (3) prescribing regimens incongruent with a short life expectancy and goals of care, (4) increasing the reservoir of potential resistant pathogens, (...) (5) placing unreasonable costs on a capitated hospice system. Although anti-infectives are thought to be relatively safe, they can place a burden on patients and be inconsistent to particular care plans. The current complex, and at times fragmented, medical care often fails to address these issues in decision-making. In many ways, the ethics governing the end of life decisions related to dialysis, hydration/nutrition, and hypercalcemia parallel those of anti-infectives. In this article we articulate important elements in ethical decision-making in the application of anti-infectives for patients who are eligible for hospice care, and we point to the need for prospective studies to help refine particular guidelines in these cases. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Clear guidelines addressing the ethically appropriate use of anti‐infectives in the setting of hospice care do not exist. There is lack of understanding about key treatment decisions related to infection treatment for patients who are eligible for hospice care. Ethical concerns about anti‐infective use at the end of life include: (1) delaying transition to hospice, (2) prolonging a dying process, (3) prescribing regimens incongruent with a short life expectancy and goals of care, (4) increasing the reservoir of potential resistant (...) pathogens, (5) placing unreasonable costs on a capitated hospice system. Although anti‐infectives are thought to be relatively safe, they can place a burden on patients and be inconsistent to particular care plans. The current complex, and at times fragmented, medical care often fails to address these issues in decision‐making. In many ways, the ethics governing the end of life decisions related to dialysis, hydration/nutrition, and hypercalcemia parallel those of anti‐infectives. In this article we articulate important elements in ethical decision‐making in the application of anti‐infectives for patients who are eligible for hospice care, and we point to the need for prospective studies to help refine particular guidelines in these cases. (shrink)

Ford, Norman There has been some confusion in the media over what Pope Benedict XVI meant by his comments on the use of condoms. He was discussing acts of sexual intercourse performed by male prostitutes in relation to HIV (human immune deficiency virus) infection in reply to a question put to him during an interview with Peter Seewald. The Vatican spokesman Fr Lombardi SJ said the Pope 'had confirmed to him that the example was valid in the case of all (...) prostitutes. The point of the example, he said, "was not the sex of the prostitute but the process of growing awareness of the risk [to] the life of the other person".' He was not referring to married couples nor contraception but the prevention of HIV infection from acts of prostitution. (shrink)

Control measures directed at carriers of multidrug-resistant organisms are traditionally approached as a trade-off between public interests on the one hand and individual autonomy on the other. We propose to reframe the ethical issue and consider control measures directed at carriers an issue of solidarity. Rather than asking “whether it is justified to impose strict measures”, we propose asking “how to best care for a person’s carriership and well-being in ways that do not imply an unacceptable risk for others?”. A (...) solidarity approach could include elevating baseline levels of precaution measures and accepting certain risks in cases where there is exceptionally much at stake. A generous national compensation policy that also covers for costs related to dedicated care is essential in a solidarity approach. An additional benefit of reframing the questions is that it helps to better acknowledge that being subjected to control measures is a highly personal matter. (shrink)

Here we identify approximately 40,000 healthy human volunteers who were intentionally exposed to infectious pathogens in clinical research studies dating from late World War II to the early 2000s. Microbial challenge experiments continue today under contemporary human subject research requirements. In fact, we estimated 4,000 additional volunteers who were experimentally infected between 2010 and the present day. We examine the risks and benefits of these experiments and present areas for improvement in protections of participants with respect to safety. These are (...) the absence of maximum limits to risk and the potential for institutional review boards to include questionable benefits to subjects and society when weighing the risks and benefits of research protocols. The lack of a duty of medical care by physician–investigators to research subjects is likewise of concern. The transparency of microbial challenge experiments and the safety concerns raised in this work may stimulate further dialogue on the risks to participants of human experimentation. (shrink)

The paper advances a consequence-based argument in support of the American Medical Association's policy that a physician may not ethically refuse to treat a person with HIV solely because the patient is seropositive. A limited number of alternative arguments, both in support of and in opposition to this policy are also considered, but are found wanting. The paper then concludes with a discussion of some of the other obstacles to quality health care that persons with HIV must often confront.

The AIDS epidemic calls for an ethical analysis of conflicting obligations surrounding HIV-infected psychiatric patients and confidentiality, as well as issues that go beyond confidentiality. Although laws pertaining to HIV infection have been enacted in a number of states, these statutes leave much discretion to health professionals. The ethical principle known as "the harm principle" can permit disclosure of confidential information and detention or isolation of psychiatric patients who pose a threat of infecting other patients. From an ethical point of (...) view, however, the circumstances under which traditional protections may be weakened or abandoned remain limited. (shrink)

Global fatalities related to COVID-19 are expected to be high in 2020–2021. Developing and delivering a vaccine may be the most likely way to end the pandemic. If it were possible to shorten this development time by weeks or months, this may have a significant effect on reducing deaths. Phase II and phase III trials could take less long to conduct if they used human challenge methods—that is, deliberately infecting participants with COVID-19 following inoculation. This article analyses arguments for and (...) against such methods and provides suggested broad guidelines for regulators, researchers and ethics committees when considering these matters. It concludes that it may be possible to maintain current ethical standards yet still permit human challenge trials in a context where delay is critical. The implications are that regulators and researchers need to work together now to design robust but short trials and streamline ethics approval processes so that they are in place when applications for trials are made. (shrink)

Recent findings regarding the cellular biology and immunology of BST‐2 (also known as tetherin) indicate that its function could be exploited as a universal replication inhibitor of enveloped respiratory viruses (e.g., influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, etc.). BST‐2 inhibits viral replication by preventing virus budding from the plasma membrane and by inducing an antiviral state in cells adjacent to infection via unique inflammatory signaling mechanisms. This review presents the first comprehensive summary of what is currently known about BST‐2 anti‐viral function against (...) respiratory viruses, how these viruses construct countermeasures to antagonize BST‐2, and how BST‐2 function might be targeted to develop therapies to treat respiratory virus infections. The authors address the current gaps in knowledge, including the need for mechanistic understanding of BST‐2 antagonism by respiratory viruses, that should be bridged to achieve that goal. (shrink)

This article analyzes computer security rhetoric, particularly in the United States, arguing that dominant cultural understandings of immunology, sexuality, legality, citizenship, and capitalism powerfully shape the way computer viruses are construed and combated. Drawing on popular and technical handbooks, articles, and Web sites, as well as on e-mail interviews with security professionals, the author explores how discussions of computer viruses lean on analogies from immunology and in the process often encode popular anxieties about AIDS. Computer security rhetoric about compromised networks (...) also uses language reminiscent of that used to describe the “bodies” of nation-states under military threat from without and within. Such language portrays viruses using images of foreignness, illegality, and otherness. The security response to viruses advocates the virtues of the flexible and adaptive response—a rhetoric that depends on evolutionary language but also on the ideological idiom of advanced capitalism. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 151-152, December 2021.

This paper places Leo Tolstoy’s often dismissed aesthetic treatise, What is Art?, in the context of the philosophical debate concerning aesthetic judgment. I examine Tolstoy’s argument for the very possibility of making aesthetic judgments, and suggest that his aesthetics proceed from an attempt to reconcile the subjective and the normative aspects of our aesthetic experience. Moreover, I show that Tolstoy, like Kant, seeks to preserve the autonomy of aesthetic judgment so that it may inform moral judgment. His polemics, his moralizing, (...) and his denunciations of the greatest works of Western culture have tended to obscure this fact. (shrink)

While social research has documented the prevalence and ill effects of hepatitis C related stigma, there has been little analysis of the ways in which this stigma is constituted. This article addresses this gap in the literature by providing a phenomenologically informed account of the ways in which societal attitudes and regulations draw from and feed back into corporeal processes and experiences of embodiment in the creation of hepatitis C related stigma. The case is made that three components are central (...) to hepatitis C stigma: associations with illicit drug injecting, infectiousness and societal aversion to chronic illness. The article draws upon qualitative interviews with 40 people living with chronic hepatitis C in New Zealand and Australia, as well as the researcher’s embodied experience of living with the virus. The works of Julia Kristeva and Mary Douglas are utilized to provide an analysis that moves beyond acknowledgement of societal reinforcers of stigma, such as prohibitory drug laws, to address underlying notions of boundary crossing in the production of stigma and exclusionary practices. (shrink)

In spring, summer and autumn 2020, one abiding argument against controlled human infection studies of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has been their impact on local communities. Leading scientists and bioethicists expressed concern about undue usage of local residents’ direly needed scarce resources at a time of great need and even about their unintended infection. They recommended either avoiding CHI trials or engaging local communities before conducting any CHIs. Similar recommendations were not made for the alternative—standard phase III field trials of these same (...) vaccines. We argue that the health effects of CHI studies on local residents not participating in the study tend to be smaller and more positive than those of field trials. That is all the more so now that tested vaccines are being rolled out. Whether or not local community engagement is necessary for urgent vaccine studies in the pandemic, the case for its engagement is stronger prior to field trials than prior to CHI studies. (shrink)

Many countries have implemented infection control measures directed at carriers of multidrug-resistant organisms. To explore the ethical implications of these measures, we analyzed 227 consultations about multidrug resistance and compared them with the literature on communicable disease in general. We found that control measures aimed at carriers have a range of negative implications. Although moral dilemmas seem similar to those encountered while implementing control measures for other infectious diseases, 4 distinct features stand out for carriage of multidrug-resistant organisms: carriage presents (...) itself as a state of being; carriage has limited relevance for the health of the carrier; carriage has little relevance outside healthcare settings; and antimicrobial resistance is a slowly evolving threat on which individual carriers have limited effect. These features are of ethical relevance because they influence the way we traditionally think about infectious disease control and urge us to pay more attention to the personal experience of the individual carrier. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If we have a duty not to infect others, how far does it go? This question is often discussed with respect to HIV transmission, but reflection on other diseases like influenza raises a number of interesting theoretical issues. I argue that a duty to avoid infection not only yields requirements for persons who know they carry a disease, but also for persons who know they are at increased risk, and even for those who definitely know they are completely healthy. (...) Given the numerous ways in which human interaction facilitates the spread of communicable diseases, a maximum level of precaution would be very demanding – possibly unreasonably demanding. The ‘over‐demandingness problem’ is mostly invoked as a criticism of utilitarianism, as this theory requires moral agents to always maximise general welfare, even at significant cost for themselves. However, I argue that, with respect to precautions against infectious diseases like influenza, utilitarianism is able to avoid the over‐demandingness problem. A contractualist account, on the other hand, whilst able to explain how one's obligations to avoid infection can be limited, given that other persons have opportunities and responsibilities to protect themselves, in the end requires precautions that raise the over‐demandingness problem. (shrink)

Human infection challenge studies have been proposed as a means to accelerate SARS-CoV2 vaccine development and thereby help to mitigate a prolonged global public health crisis. A key criterion for the ethical acceptability of SARS-CoV2 HCS is that potential benefits outweigh risks. Although the assessment of risks and benefits is meant to be a standard part of research ethics review, systematic comparisons are particularly important in the context of SARS-CoV2 HCS in light of the significant potential benefits and harms at (...) stake as well as the need to preserve public trust in research and vaccines. In this paper we explore several considerations that should inform systematic assessment of SARS-CoV-2 HCS. First, we detail key potential benefits of SARS-CoV-2 HCS including, but not limited to, those related to the acceleration of vaccine development. Second, we identify where modelling is needed to inform risk-benefit assessments. Modelling will be particularly useful in comparing potential benefits and risks of HCS with those of vaccine field trials under different epidemiological conditions and estimating marginal risks to HCS participants in light of the background probabilities of infection in their local community. We highlight interactions between public health policy and research priorities, including situations in which research ethics assessments may need to strike a balance between competing considerations. (shrink)

Prior research has demonstrated that the adverse consequences of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic may go beyond its economic hardships and physical health concerns, having a significant influence on psychological distress for individuals under quarantine. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has been paid to exploring the risk and protective factors in the link between COVID-19 infection risk and psychological distress among young adults. Following a socioecological framework, the current study examines the moderating role of grit and social support in the association (...) between COVID-19 infection risk and depressive symptoms. A sample of 1,251 young adults under home quarantine was involved in this study, and they were asked to complete a set of self-reported questionnaires online. Results of a linear regression analysis exhibited that COVID-19 infection risk was positively associated with depressive symptoms in young adults in quarantine. Moreover, moderation analyses showed that this association was moderated by perseverance and social support. To be specific, for those reporting higher levels of social support, this linkage was not significantly positive; in contrast, for those reporting lower levels of social support, perseverance was a significant protective factor for depressive symptoms when young adults were exposed to a high infection risk of COVID-19. The current study suggests that greater social support is essential to helping young adults deal with possible negative emotions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, university-based counseling services should pay specific attention to those young adults with relatively insufficient social support resources and low levels of perseverance. (shrink)

Using theories in medical anthropology, especially the ideas inspired by Hector Avalos and George Foster, the study explains three activities associated with the early Christian healthcare system: (1) touching infectious people, (2) hospitality towards possibly infectious people and (3) the practice of itinerary evangelism as an activity that earned Christianity the dubious role of being a carrier of infectious diseases. Discussed alongside the issues associated with the advent of COVID-19, the study aims at (1) reflecting that early Christian healthcare system, (...) which was an offshoot of Jewish healthcare systems, had practices that were perceived to exacerbate infection. In addition, (2) in view of the advent of COVID-19 pandemic, although of lesser catastrophe to ancient plagues, the study proposes that such epidemics call upon the collective actions of mercy and kindness, as Jesus did towards the infected. Theoretically, Victor Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas assist in imagining the discursive ideas concerning labelling and marginalisation of the Jesus movement, with comparative implication towards those suspected to have contracted the deadly COVID-19 virus. The study concludes with a warning against Christian practices that may further inflame infection by suggesting alternative practices for love and empathy towards others. Contribution: Using ideas concerning infectious diseases in antiquity, the study reinterprets the Jesus movement as a movement that was perceived as carriers of infectious disease. Due to fear of infectious diseases, the rituals associated with hospitality towards the outsiders, the touch and laying of hands and iternary lifestyle were seen as promoting infection. Taking this perspective, the Jesus movement whose modus operandi is mostly associated with the periphery of the villages and cities created alternative rituals for the outcast. In view of the spread of COVID19, such stance by the Jesus movement provides lessons for the church and society to reach out to people who are considered infectious and burden to main society. (shrink)