Subjects sometimes desire to participate in medical trials that seem to have adverse risk-benefit ratios for them.  Why do they desire to participate, and is it ethically permissible to allow them to do so?  In 'Why high-risk, non-expected-utility-maximizing gambles can be rational and beneficial: The case of HIV cure studies', I apply my recent work on risk to both of these questions. 

Subjects also sometimes desire to participate in medical trials where the probability of harm is unknown. In the recent cases of covid-19, I join with Robert Steel and Nir Eyal to argue that unknown probability needn’t be a reason to prohibit trial participation in ‘Why continuing uncertainties are no reason to postpone challenge trials for coronavirus vaccines’.