Some things in Life should never be rushed. Real love. Grilled meat. And vaccines.
In a New York Times article, Katherine J. Wu and Katie Thomas said today: “The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca halted large, late-stage global trials of its coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday because of a serious suspected adverse reaction in a participant, the company said.” This report said that, according to some sources, that adverse reaction in one participant of the United Kingdom’s trial might have been transverse myelitis, a serious neurological inflammatory reaction to viruses.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca product is one of the most advanced vaccine candidates for the SARS-CoV-2 infection, with almost 30,000 participants in Phase 3 clinical trials around the globe. In a previous article, we discussed the encouraging early results of the Phase 1-2 clinical trials of this vaccine, which uses a viral vector to insert the SARS-CoV-2 genetic material into the human cells to provoke an inflammatory response. After assessing its efficacy, it is now being tested for its safety for humans, with extended Phase2/3 trials conducted in the United Kingdom and the Republic of India plus additional Phase 3 trials in Brazil, South Africa and 60 US testing sites.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca administrators did exactly what they were trained to do: once a major clinical complication arises, the whole process must be halted and the case (or cases) must be thoroughly studied by an institutional review board. That clinical complication could have been just a coincidence, but the possibility of a harmful side-effect must be carefully, patiently studied and vetted out. Moreover, large segments of the public in modern nations are already skeptical of vaccines; the emergence of a grave complication, like it happened with an early Polio vaccine in the 1950s, could drastically undermine the trust in this candidate, and others as well.
Aware of the above mentioned profound public suspicion about the safety of any vaccine candidates, nine pharmaceutical companies that are developing them recently signed a formal pledge not to seek any regulatory approval before all the necessary clinical trials have been completed and the data duly examined by them.
This is a welcome backstop to the various political pressures exerted, openly and surreptitiously, on pharmaceutical companies to rush a candidate to market to pander to the scared electorate. We should only pay heed to the “scientific date” for the vaccine’s arrival and not it’s “political one.”Governments that advanced many millions of dollars to speed the development and production of a good vaccine, must realize that they were in fact using “our money” for it.
Crossing fingers, they cannot cavalierly gamble our Health at the roulette table of Blind Hope.
Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.
What do you think? Please tell us.
Don’t leave me alone.