From the comments, on HCTs

The box most bioethicists are in is so small their thinking can’t extend beyond a few target people. In this case, the control group in a vaccine trial.

The subjects could be paid for the risk, which is what we do for jobs all the time. Those risk/reward amounts for risky jobs are used to make estimates for the value of human life. Life insurance would allow high-risk people (us geezers) to join the trials.

Their box doesn’t even consider human challenge trials (HCT) that give you very rapid and accurate data on efficacy even with pay and insurance to cover the risk. The lives saved by a month faster approval is in the 10’s of thousands more than offsetting and risk to a few people. Tracking the first million doses for side effects would provide the side effect data that is usually within days of injection.

Outside their mental box, 1000 people per day are dying for each day they study the issue and delay a decision, but those lives are not included in their thinking and analysis.

That is from Dallas.  I would stress there are higher costs yet from delay, noting the hundreds of millions of people in developing nations who are falling back into poverty while the pandemic continues to rage.  Some of them are dying too.