Numerous countries arounds the world–particularly in Europe–have halted the use of an experimental biological agent from AstraZeneca being tested on people via the emergency use authorization to combat the Wuhan CCP Virus.
Despite most being wholly new non-FDA approved forms of biological technologies, all Wuhan CCP Virus fighting technologies are often referred to as vaccines, even though vaccines have never been defined this way in the past. At least one of these vaccines is considered by more and more countries to be worrisome enough to halt its use. Now even Germany and France have halted its use.
…Austria was the first European country to sound the alarm regarding potential blood clots caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine while Denmark became the first one to suspend its use outright last Thursday.
It was swiftly followed by others such as Norway and Ireland before some of Europe’s largest economies also announced their own suspensions. Germany, France and Italy said they were halting use of the vaccine yesterday while several countries outside of Europe have also announced their own suspensions or halted rollout plans including Thailand, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Venezuela. British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has strongly defended its vaccine, stating that there is no link to increased risk of fatal brain hemorrhages and blood clots.
For its part, AstraZeneca has insisted that their experimental biological technology is safe and that any connections to problems are unfounded:
“Around 17 million people in the E.U. and U.K. have now received our vaccine, and the number of cases of blood clots reported in this group is lower than the hundreds of cases that would be expected among the general population”, Ann Taylor, the company’s chief medical officer, said in a statement. Experts have agreed, stating that instances of blood clots and rarer thrombocytopenia cases are no higher among those who received the jab than the general population. On Friday, the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis said that “the small number of reported thrombotic events relative to the millions of administered Covid-19 vaccinations does not suggest a direct link”.
Notably, it added that “it currently remains of the view that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing COVID-19, with its associated risk of hospitalization and death, outweigh the risks of side effects”.
If their data is true, is seems reasonable. But, it should always remain up to the individual whether or not they take the vaccine. It must never be forced or coerced–by governments inducing fear into a global population or corporations in bed with those government–especially given the extremely low death-rate from the virus. In addition, though, none of these vaccines are FDA-approved and they all lack proper long-term trials.
In fact, the short-term trials for these experimental biological agent injections have sometimes been truncated in favor of expediency.
For instance, Johnson and Johnson admits this on their website that they combine test phases in order to rush out their product:
Phase 1 and 2a clinical trials normally last several months to even a year before proceeding to Phase 2b or Phase 3 trials, in which the pool of people receiving the vaccine increases.
Janssen combined Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials for its investigational SARS-CoV-2 vaccine into one phase, known as Phase 1/2a—a step it often takes with its vaccine platform in order to answer many questions in one study, at one time.
…It can take up to a decade to go from vaccine discovery and development to approval, but scientists at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson are aiming to get it done in a much shorter time frame. The ultimate goal: supply a safe, effective vaccine in 2021.
So, testing has gone from ‘up to a decade’ to well under 2 years.
We are all for cutting out useless fat in program timing, but cutting out up to 8 years on a brand new technology seems quite unreasonable from a safety perspective. There is no way to get around the fact the it is physically impossible for any long-term testing to have been performed on any of these experimental therapeutics.
But due to unprecedented political and financial incentives, all of the companies producing these products are being allowed (or forced, depending on your view) to scuttle some scientific rigor in favor of expeditiousness. This has led some experts to beg them to reconsider. One such dissenter is Angus Dawson, the Director of Sydney Health Ethics and Professor of Bioethics in Australia and member of the Australian Academy of Sciences:
” In this article I argue that whilst there are some opportunities to expedite the production of a vaccine, it is a mistake to rush the research. We should retain the existing structures represented by clear and separate ‘phasing’ of trials. I offer three reasons for this view: the existing phases of trials is morally significant; rushing fails to appropriately weigh all of the relevant risks and benefits and consent is not sufficient for the justification of additional risk. Vaccines have played a central role in global health improvements and we should not endanger such achievements for an apparent short-term gain in response to a pandemic such as SARS-CoV-2.”
What do you think, Reader? Does the risk of death from the Wuhan CCP Virus outweigh the risk of death from these new experimental biological agents? Is there enough data to decide, yet, either way?
