“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
On Oct. 14, 2020, Pfizer, Inc. of New York City, New York announced it had received approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to enroll children in the Phase 3 human clinical trial on its experimental messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid) BNT162b1 vaccine for COVID-19. The trial, which last month was expanded to include adolescent […]
If you look at the human clinical trials that have been conducted this year by drug companies developing experimental vaccines for COVID-19, the participants in those trials have all been “healthy adults.” Take, for example, Moderna’s Phase 1 clinical trial for its mRNA-1273 vaccine, which included 45 healthy adults 18 to 55 years old. The same […]
News update, Sept. 15, 2020—U.S. regulators paused AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial in the U.S. while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launches an investigation of its own into a serious side effect in an unnamed patient in Britain. “The highest levels of NIH are very concerned,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, intramural clinical director and a leader […]
Vaccines Europe, a pharmaceutical industry lobbying group, has issued a memo to its member companies saying it would seek liability protection from the European Union (EU) for corporations manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines. The memo, obtained by the Financial Times, expressed concern about the “inevitable risks” of rushing the development and global marketing of COVID-19 vaccines.1 2 3 […]
When Moderna, Inc. announced on May 18, 2020 the results of a Phase 1 human clinical trial for its experimental mRNA-1273 vaccine for COVID-19, the biotechnology company said the vaccine had produced no “serious adverse events” (SAEs) among the 45 people who participated in the trial and that it considered the vaccine to be “generally […]
The first generation of COVID-19 vaccines may not prevent people from becoming infected with or transmitting SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). According to Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and other infectious disease experts, the best that COVID-19 vaccines may do is prevent people becoming severely ill and […]
The University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group in the United Kingdom has announced that its researchers have begun recruiting children aged five to 12 years for phase II and phase III clinical trials testing an experimental COVID-19 vaccine the university is developing in partnership with AstraZeneca plc.1 Oxford’s ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (“chimpanzee adenovirus […]
On Mar. 17, 2020, European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen said she was hopeful a vaccine for COVID-19 could be available this September. Her view was based on conversations she had had with managers of German biotechnology firm CureVac AG which has developed an experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine that it plans to […]