Wikipedia

Draft:Josh Morrison

Josh Morrison
Born
Joshua Charles Morrison

1985 (age 40–41)
EducationColumbia College (BA)
Harvard Law School (JD)
OccupationsNonprofit entrepreneur, advocate
Known forFounder of 1Day Sooner, Waitlist Zero, and the Rikers Debate Project

Joshua Charles Morrison (born 1985) is an American nonprofit entrepreneur and public health advocate. He is the co-founder and president of 1Day Sooner, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of human challenge trial volunteers, and previously founded the kidney donation advocacy group Waitlist Zero and the Rikers Debate Project.[1][2][3]

Early life and education

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Morrison graduated from Columbia College in 2007, where he was active in competitive debate.[2] He earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 2010.[2][4]

Career

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Law and kidney donation advocacy

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Morrison began his career as a corporate lawyer at a Boston law firm.[1] In 2011, he donated a kidney to a stranger, an experience that led him to leave legal practice for advocacy work.[1][2] He subsequently joined the transplant field as general counsel at the Alliance for Paired Donation, an organization focused on living-donor kidney transplantation.[4]

By 2014, Morrison had relocated to Brooklyn, New York, and co-founded Waitlist Zero with Thomas Kelly with a grant from Open Philanthropy.[1][4] The organization advocates for federal and state policies to expand living kidney donation.[5]

Rikers Debate Project

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In 2016, after serving as a judge at a debate event at the Rikers Island jail complex, Morrison founded the Rikers Debate Project, a nonprofit that teaches competitive debate to currently and formerly incarcerated people.[2] Its founding members included Pat Andriola, Radhe Patel, Mary Crippen, and Rocky Lotito.[4] By 2020, the program had expanded to roughly a dozen correctional facilities in several states.[2]

1Day Sooner

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In March 2020, during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, Morrison read a paper in the Journal of Infectious Diseases by bioethicist Nir Eyal, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, and epidemiologist Peter G. Smith arguing that human challenge trials could accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development.[1] Persuaded, Morrison co-founded 1Day Sooner with Sophie Rose, a recent Stanford University graduate whom he recruited after reading a literature review on challenge studies she had co-authored.[1][6]

By the end of June 2020, volunteers from 162 countries had registered through the organization's website, and by September it had recruited more than 37,000 prospective volunteers and raised over US$1 million, part of which was intended to fund development of a weakened challenge strain of SARS-CoV-2.[1] In July 2020, Morrison organized an open letter to National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins urging immediate preparations for challenge trials, signed by 125 researchers and ethicists, including 15 Nobel laureates.[1] The organization's advocacy provoked significant ethical debate among scientists and bioethicists.[1] The world's first COVID-19 human challenge trial was approved in the United Kingdom in February 2021.[7]

Under Morrison's leadership, 1Day Sooner broadened its work beyond COVID-19 to challenge trials for other diseases, including hepatitis C, tuberculosis, and group A streptococcus, and to promoting indoor air quality interventions such as far-UVC germicidal light.[8] The organization also engages in clinical-trial policy reform; Morrison co-authored a 2024 policy memo with Alastair Fraser-Urquhart arguing for regulatory changes to enable wider use of human challenge trials, published as part of the Institute for Progress's "clinical trial abundance" series.[9]

Morrison serves on the boards of directors of the Transplant Recipients International Organization[4] and Sentinel.[10]

Writing

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Morrison's writing on clinical research ethics, organ donation, and pandemic preparedness has appeared in general-audience outlets including The Washington Post,[11] STAT,[12][3] and MedPage Today.[13] His co-authored academic work on human challenge studies has appeared in journals including The American Journal of Bioethics,[14] Clinical Infectious Diseases,[6] and Vaccine.[15]

Recognition

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In 2022, Vox named Morrison to its inaugural Future Perfect 50, a list recognizing people working to improve the future.[16]

Personal life

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Morrison lives in Brooklyn, New York.[1] In November 2025, he participated as a volunteer in an enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) challenge study at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Vaccine Development, undergoing a blinded vaccine series followed by deliberate exposure during a nine-day quarantine.[13] During 1Day Sooner's 2020 COVID-19 advocacy he had been too old to qualify for a challenge study under the proposed age limits.[6]

References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Parker, Laura (September 16, 2020). "To find a vaccine for COVID-19, will we have to deliberately infect people?". National Geographic. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Teaching Debate — and Confidence — to the Incarcerated". Columbia College Today. Fall 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  3. 1 2 Morrison, Josh (February 9, 2022). "Covid-19 challenge trial results are (finally) in". STAT. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Board". Rikers Debate Project. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  5. ↑ "Waitlist Zero — General Support". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 Cohen, Jon (2020). "Controversial 'human challenge' trials for COVID-19 vaccines gain support". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  7. ↑ "U.K. Approves Study That Will Deliberately Infect Volunteers With Coronavirus". The New York Times. February 17, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  8. ↑ McKenzie, Patrick (January 9, 2025). "The future of pandemic preparedness, with Joshua Morrison". Complex Systems. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  9. ↑ "The Case for Clinical Trial Abundance". Institute for Progress. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  10. ↑ "Team". 1Day Sooner. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  11. ↑ Morrison, Josh; Rose, Sophie (2020). The Washington Post. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
  12. ↑ Morrison, Josh (May 28, 2020). "Challenge trials can speed development of a Covid-19 vaccine. Planning for them needs to start now". STAT. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  13. 1 2 Morrison, Josh (December 4, 2025). "Why I Chose to Get E. Coli". MedPage Today. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  14. ↑ O'Neill McPartlin, Seán; Morrison, Josh (2021). "What Fairness Demands: How We Can Promote Fair Compensation in Human Infection Challenge Studies and Beyond". The American Journal of Bioethics. 21 (3): 48–50. doi:10.1080/15265161.2020.1870775.
  15. ↑ Kleinwaks, Gavriel; Schmit, Virginia; Morrison, Josh (January 21, 2022). "Considering human challenge trials for tuberculosis vaccine development". Vaccine. 40 (2): 173–174. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.11.024. PMID 34922788.
  16. ↑ "Josh Morrison". Vox. Future Perfect 50. 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
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