The United Stated which adds itself in the list of countries to roll out the Covid 19 vaccine recently, the authorities find themselves in an ethical dilemma as when to give trial participants who received a placebo the real deal. The Q&A is very hard for studies involving Pfizer-BioNTech's two-shot regimen, which has received emergency approval.
The study result of nearly 44,000 people in the United States and other countries published recenty in a Medicine journal says around half were randomly chosen to receive injections containing the companies' patented messenger RNA molecules, while the rest got saline solutions. The crucial revelation is that the experiment was "blinded," that is neither the volunteers nor their health care providers knew who was given what, a crucial element in ensuring people go about their everyday lives as they would have otherwise done. However, on a promising note the results confirmed that receiving the vaccine reduced the risk of developing Covid-19 by 95 percent compared to not receiving it, and that no serious side effects could be attributed to the drug.
A high-level committee convened by the Food and Drug Administration discussed this critical issue on Thursday. Stanford professor Steven Goodman said, since trial participants are aware that the study is for the benefit of society, they have no absolute right to jump to the front of the line. One suggestion by Pfizer says that it would allow participants to request that they be told which group they're in even earlier, and offered the vaccine. The professor said another idea, it is "crossover" plan in which people who got the vaccine in the first round would then get the placebo, and vice versa, which would still yield useful data. Placebo participants will receive the vaccine from trial organizers, Moncef Slaoui, chief advisor to the US government's Operation Warp Speed said in a recent briefing.
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