 "US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr. File Image/Reuters")
Vaccines will go through a different set of testing in the US after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a move that is aimed at increasing transparency.
According to a report by the Washington Post, new vaccines would undergo the placebo test, as the HHS makes a “radical departure from past practices.”
While vaccines for newly-discovered pathogens are run through placebo tests, experts say that testing vaccines this way for well-researched diseases, such as measles and polio, makes little sense and is, in fact, unethical.
HHS did not specify how the change would be carried out or which vaccines would be subject to the new testing requirements, and it left the term “new vaccine” . However, the agency made it clear that the flu vaccine, which is updated annually and has been in use for over 80 years, would be exempt from the new rules.
What is a placebo test?
A placebo test is basically administering the real drug or vaccine to one group of people and giving a “fake” treatment to another set of people to verify the real effects of a new vaccine or medicine.
If the controlled group, which received the placebo treatment, report similar results to the group that was administered the real drug, it is concluded that the new vaccine is not generally effective.
On the other hand, if the placebo has no impact, it strengthens confidence that the observed effects are truly due to the new drug.
Experts flag concerns
The HHS announcement sparked concern among medical and public health experts, who warned that it could represent a major departure from the nation’s long-standing approach to vaccine safety and potentially undermine confidence in vaccines that are proven to be safe, effective, and essential for public health.
The proposed change comes at a time when public trust in vaccines is already weakening, fueled by a rising measles outbreak and confusion over Kennedy’s inconsistent messaging on immunisation.