Test of Anthrax Vaccine in Children Gets Tentative OK

March 19th, 2013

Oh sure.

Via: Reuters:

A presidential ethics panel has opened the door to testing an anthrax vaccine on children as young as infants, bringing an angry response from critics who say the children would be guinea pigs in a study that would never help them and might harm them.

Under a 2005 law, children in an anthrax-vaccine study would be prohibited from seeking damages through the legal system. The presidential commission, said Gutmann, “strongly recommended that a plan be in place to compensate any children” who are harmed.

3 Responses to “Test of Anthrax Vaccine in Children Gets Tentative OK”

  1. steve holmes says:

    It’s only a matter of time before politicians are being burned at the stake after Vlad the Impaler, Jr is done with them.

    That’s not off topic, BTW.

  2. tal says:

    From Meryl Nass at AnthraxVaccine blogspot:

    Schizophrenic Report on Testing Anthrax Vaccine and other Medical Countermeasures in Children is Issued: Where it is good it is very, very good, but where it is bad, it is horrid!</b<
    http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.ca/2013/03/schizophrenic-report-on-testing-anthrax.html

    and from Vera Sharav at Alliance for Human Research Protection:

    AHRP Opposes Gov Plan to Test Anthrax Vaccine on Children
    http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/912/9/

  3. tal says:

    More from AHRP:

    Behind the Smokescreen: Conditional Approval for Anthrax Vaccine Trial in Children

    …The Commission’s deliberations and its report and recommendations suffer from deliberate ignorance (ie., denial) about the body of evidence documenting the hazards posed by the vaccine and the lack of evidence for its effectiveness against the disease. I say deliberate because scientific reports and government documents have been submitted to the Commission by AHRP Board member, Meryl Nass, MD, beginning in February 2012 .

    On Feb. 18, 2013, AHRP submitted a comprehensive substantive report addressed to Amy Gutmann, Chair of the Commission, documenting the scientific evidence about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine from adult trials and military experience. We also laid out the ethical and legal standards that must guide pediatric research—and cited judicial rulings that explicitly restricted the use of children in non-therapeutic research that puts them at greater than “minimal risk.”

    But the Commission failed to take note of the vaccine’s known most serious hazards and lack of evidence for its efficacy. Nowhere does the Commission even acknowledge the warnings disclosed in the FDA-approved BioThrax (AVA) label…
    http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/914/9/

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.