By Joseph Mercola
\nMercola.com<\/p>\n
While reports of side effects from COVID-19 gene therapies, including life-threatening effects and deaths, continue to climb at breakneck speed,1<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0a one-sided narrative of safety and effectiveness permeates mainstream media and medical news.<\/p>\n These \u201cvaccines\u201d are so safe and so effective, according to this narrative, that keeping control groups intact for long-term study and comparison of outcomes is now being derided as \u201cunethical,\u201d despite the fact that there is absolutely no non-fraudulent data to support their perverse assertions. Truly, what we\u2019re watching is the active destruction of basic medical science in a surreal dystopian nightmare.<\/p>\n Vaccine Makers to Ditch Control Groups<\/strong><\/p>\n Consider this report in JAMA by Rita Rubin, senior writer for JAMA medical news and perspectives, for example.2<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0According to Rubin, the launch of \u201ctwo highly efficacious\u201d COVID-19 vaccines has \u201cspurred debate about the ethics, let alone the feasibility, of continuing or launching blinded, placebo-controlled trials \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Rubin recounts how Moderna representatives told a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel that rather than letting thousands of vaccine doses to go to waste, they planned to offer them to trial participants who had received placebo.<\/p>\n Pfizer representatives made a similar announcement to the advisory panel. According to a news analysis published in The BMJ,3<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0the FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are both onboard with this plan, as is the World Health Organization.4<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n In the JAMA report by Rubin, Moncref Slaoui, Ph.D., chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, is quoted saying he thinks \u201cit\u2019s very important that we unblind the trial at once and offer the placebo group vaccines\u201d because trial participants \u201cshould be rewarded\u201d for their participation.<\/p>\n All of these statements violate the very basics of what a safety trial needs, which is a control group against which you can compare the effects of the drug or vaccine in question over the long term. I find it inconceivable that unblinding is even a consideration at this point, seeing how the core studies have not even concluded yet. The only purpose of this unblinding is to conceal the fraud that these vaccines are safe.<\/p>\n None of the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market are actually licensed. They only have emergency use authorization \u2014 which, incidentally, also forbids them from being mandated, although this is being widely and conveniently ignored \u2014 as trials are still ongoing.<\/p>\n At the earliest, they may be licensed two years from now, at the completion of the follow-up studies.5<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0This is why those in the military are allowed to refuse it, and refuse they have. Among Marines, the refusal rate is nearly 40%.6<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n So, before the initial studies are even completed, vaccine makers and regulatory agencies are now deciding to forgo long-term safety evaluations altogether by giving placebo recipients the real McCoy, and so-called bioethicists are actually supporting this madness. As reported in The BMJ:7<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the FDA has granted the vaccines emergency use authorization, to get full license approval two years of follow-up data are needed. The data are now likely to be scanty and less reliable given that the trials are effectively being unblinded.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hypocrisy Abounds<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s ironic in the extreme, because vaccine mandates are being justified on the premise that the benefit to the community supersedes the risk of individual harm. In other words, it\u2019s OK if some people are harmed by the vaccine because the overall benefit to society is more important.<\/p>\n Yet here they\u2019re saying that participants in the control groups are being harmed by not getting the vaccine, so therefore vaccine makers have an obligation to give it to them before the long-term studies are completed. This is the complete opposite argument used for mandatory vaccination.<\/p>\n If we are to accept the \u201cgreater good\u201d justification for vaccination, then people who agree to participate in a study, and end up getting a placebo, need to roll the dice and potentially sacrifice their health \u201cfor the greater good.\u201d Here, the greater good is the study itself, the results of which are of crucial importance for public health decisions.<\/p>\n Without this data, we will never know whether the vaccines work in the long term and\/or what their side effects are. If an individual in the control group gets COVID-19, then that\u2019s the price of scientific participation for the greater good of society, just as when a vaccinated person gets harmed, that\u2019s considered an acceptable price for creating vaccine-induced herd immunity.<\/p>\n Put another way, when it comes to mandating vaccines, harm to the individual is acceptable, but when it comes to doing proper safety studies, all of a sudden, harm to the individual is not acceptable, and protecting the controls is more important than protecting the integrity of the research. The fact that they\u2019re this inconsistent in their \u201cethics\u201d could be viewed as proof positive that public health isn\u2019t even a remote concern.<\/p>\n Scientific Ethics Are Eroding<\/strong><\/p>\n Apparently, concern about risk to the individual only matters when vaccine makers have everything to gain. By eliminating control groups, we\u2019ll have no way of really proving the harm that these \u201cvaccines\u201d might impart over time, as all participants will be in the same proverbial boat.<\/p>\n I remain confident that we\u2019ll continue to see many more health problems and deaths develop in time, but without control groups, these trends can more easily be written off as \u201cnormal\u201d and\/or blamed on something else. As noted by Dr. Steven Goodman, associate dean of clinical and translational research at Stanford University, who is quoted in Rubin\u2019s JAMA article:8<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n \u201cBy unblinding trial participants, \u2018you lose a valid comparison group,\u2019 Goodman said. \u2018There will be this sense, and it will be sort of true, that the study is over.\u2019 Unlike, say, a highly effective cancer drug, \u2018the vaccine is not literally a life-and-death issue today and tomorrow\u2019 for most trial participants, Goodman said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, he noted, those running COVID-19 vaccine trials shouldn\u2019t feel obligated to unblind participants and vaccinate placebo recipients right away. Doing so implies \u2018you can just blow up the trial\u2019 on the basis of promising preliminary results, establishing \u2018an ethical model for future trials that we maybe don\u2019t want to set,\u2019 Goodman said.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed, this strategy will set a dangerous precedent that will probably lead to vaccine and drug studies being conducted without control groups in the future, which could spell the end of medical science as we know it. At bare minimum, future variations of the current COVID-19 vaccine trials are likely to be conducted without control groups.<\/p>\n Trial Participants Told Not to Unblind Themselves<\/strong><\/p>\n Goodman is also quoted in another article,9<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0this one in MedPage Today, discussing the problems with trial participants unblinding themselves by taking an antibody test:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018There is no good scientific reason for someone to do this,\u2019 he told\u00a0MedPage Today.<\/em>\u00a0\u2018I can understand why they want that information, but it can only serve to diminish the value of the trial. Getting tested is not right unless there is a pressing need for unblinding for health reasons.’\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here, yet another hypocritical irony arises, as the reason they don\u2019t want trial participants to unblind themselves is because if they know they got the vaccine, they\u2019re statistically more likely to take more risks that might expose them to the virus.<\/p>\n This, then, will skew the results and \u201ccould make the vaccine look less effective than it is,\u201d Dr. Elizabeth McNally of Northwestern University explained to MedPage Today.10<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0So, whether vaccine scientists agree with unblinding or not, unblinding really only has to do with whether it will skew results in their favor.<\/p>\n Trial participants unblinding themselves might make the vaccine appear less effective if they alter their behavior as a consequence, whereas vaccine makers unblinding the entire control group will allow them to hide side effects, even if participants alter their behavior.<\/p>\n Justification for Elimination of Controls Is Flimsy at Best<\/strong><\/p>\n While pro-vaccine advocates insist the elimination of control groups is justified on the \u201cmoral grounds\u201d that it\u2019s unethical to not provide volunteers with something of value, this argument completely ignores the undeniable fact that no vaccine is 100% safe.<\/p>\n