Article Summary:
The Trump administration plans to impose a new testing requirement for all new vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines. This would require testing against an inert placebo substance, a “radical departure from past practices.” Vaccine experts warn this could significantly delay the availability of new and updated vaccines.
The administration claims the requirement is aimed at ensuring vaccine safety. However, experts dispute the assertion that key vaccines have not been rigorously tested against placebos in the past. They argue the definition of a “new” vaccine is unclear, as vaccine formulations are often updated to match evolving virus strains, without fundamentally changing the vaccines.
The administration’s actions are seen as an attempt by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now a senior HHS official, to undermine public confidence and access to vaccines. Experts like Dr. Paul Offit and Dr. Peter Hotez describe Kennedy as a “dangerous” science denialist who is trying to make vaccines “more expensive, less available and more feared.”
Experts warn that these measures, if implemented, would be “a recipe for paralysis” in the face of public health threats like COVID-19 and future pandemics. They argue that placebo trials for updated vaccines would be prohibitively expensive, time-consuming, and unethical, as it would withhold effective vaccines from participants. Overall, the proposed changes are seen as a significant threat to public health and vaccine confidence.
Article Excerpt:
“Are they really planning on doing a placebo-controlled trial where a certain group of people are not given that vaccine, knowing that the virus can cause infection and disease, including serious disease in anyone? Anyone can be felled by this virus, so it’s not an ethical trial.”