As stories unfold about piles of unused and nearly out-of-date H1N1 “swine flu” vaccinations, I was interested to come across the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly ‘s enquiry into the “pandemic” – WHO challenged at public hearing on the handling of the Swine Flu pandemic.
I’m glad to see that some of the concerns I’d written about a few months back – the new definition of “pandemic” being one of them – being brought to light. The conclusions will be published and debated later this year.
My endeavour to find a trial of vaccination against placebo to which I or my under-5 year old could be entered has drawn a blank. As to why it’s important, this commentary - Why the MRC randomized trials of whooping cough (pertussis) vaccines remain important more than half a century after they were done – from the James Lind Library is about trials for whooping cough vaccine.
Note – immune response from vaccines was independant of clinical response. “i) it is difficult to forecast the field performance of any whole-cell pertussis vaccine without randomized placebo controlled trials using clinical outcome measures; and (ii) it is impossible to extrapolate from the result of an assessment of one type of whole-cell vaccine to reliable assessments of the effects of another vaccine.”
Margaret McCartney
Clive Cookson
Andrew Jack