Vaccines are under fire, accused of not being tested against a placebo. That’s wrong. Here’s how they are tested for safety

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to require all new vaccines be tested against a placebo in human trials, and has said that almost no shots used in the United States have undergone such rigorous testing, which is not accurate. In order to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, most new medical treatments must be tested in large trials to confirm their effectiveness and safety.

In many randomized trials, a new therapy is compared to an older, well established therapy. If no standard therapy already exists, the new treatment is compared to a placebo – an inert sham treatment without any therapeutic or physiological effect.

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After successful testing in randomized controlled trials, all vaccines are then monitored in “real world” studies, which usually include more diverse patient populations and reflect actual use in routine healthcare settings.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here