No takers? Here is my view of the story.

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What did the doctors say?

During a debate on French TV channel LCI, Camille Locht, head of research at Inserm health research group, was talking about a vaccine trial in Europe and Australia.

Jean-Paul Mira, head of intensive care at Cochin hospital in Paris, then said: "If I can be provocative, shouldn't we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?

"A bit like it is done elsewhere for some studies on Aids. In prostitutes, we try things because we know that they are highly exposed and that they do not protect themselves."

Mr Locht nodded in agreement at this suggestion, and said: "You are right. We are in the process of thinking about a study in parallel in Africa."

Dr Mira had earlier questioned whether the study would work as planned on healthcare workers in Australia and Europe because they had access to personal protective equipment (PPE) while working.

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The main thing I notice is that the doctors are "thinking about a study in parallel in Africa". This means that Africans would be subjected to the same human trials as the "planned [trials] on healthcare workers in Australia and Europe". The doctors are not treating Africans as "guinea pigs". The actual guinea pigs were the ferrets which received the vaccine during the initial phase. Once it is proven that the vaccine is safe in these animals, only then do human trials begin. Clearly our health workers are a precious and scarce resource, so if we think it is safe to test the vaccine on them, then we cannot be accused of exploitation and discrimination against the general population.

Moreover, Africa is a third world continent with underdeveloped health care systems and rampant HIV infection rates and military conflicts. For example, the HIV infection rate in South Africa is around 18%. Clearly there are massive societal differences between Africa and Europe, and social distancing and lockdowns are unlikely to work in Africa as they have in Europe. This means that we will have two distinct real world scenarios which would more accurately tell us whether the vaccine is working. As the doctor explained, we are less likely to obtain useful data from heavily protected health care workers than we will from a populace that doesn't protect itself.

If a vaccine trial were made available to me, I would gladly participate.