In April, when a key enzyme couldn’t be delivered to his shuttered laboratory, Northwestern University researcher Thomas McDade hunted for the package across the empty campus near Chicago, finally locating it at a loading dock. To verify the test’s accuracy, the biological anthropologist and his colleague, pharmacologist Alexis Demonbreun, asked friends and family if they’d be willing to spot them some blood. McDade took a sample from his wife over their kitchen table.

A paramount tenet of conducting human research, dating to the Nuremberg Code, is informed consent — in which people fully understand the risks and limitations of participating. “Most ethicists agree there is an upper limit of risk,” said Seema Shah, an ethics professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “It wouldn’t be okay to sacrifice one individual for the benefit of many others.”

“It’s important for the general public and physicians to be aware of this, because a SARS-COV-2 infection may present with neurologic symptoms initially, before any fever, cough or respiratory problems occur,” said researcher Dr. Igor Koralnik. He is chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology, and a professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

Dr. Ruchi Gupta, a professor of pediatrics who is the director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at Northwestern and Lurie Children Hospital, studies these conditions which, like eczema, represent forms of atopy, hypersensitivity in which the body’s defenses overreact, potentially causing harm.

The 10-hour surgery was more difficult and took several hours longer than most lung transplants because inflammation from the disease had left the woman’s lungs “completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine, which includes Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in an interview.

Fast-forward three months, and that sense of immediacy may have faded. Caution fatigue “occurs when people show low motivation or energy to comply with safety guidelines,” said Jacqueline Gollan, who holds two professorships at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine: one in psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and another in obstetrics and gynecology.

That would be “life-changing” for people who live in fear of anaphylaxis, according to senior researcher Dr. Bruce Bochner. Right now, he said, those people largely depend on avoiding their allergy trigger, which can be difficult. Otherwise, there are some options for warding off certain severe reactions, said Bochner, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“A lot of people of color are tired. We’re tired of being the unseen and misunderstood,” says Inger E Burnett-Zeigler, a psychologist and associate professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She’d like to see more voices at the table.