Yes, that’s the standard because the existing vaccine for a given illness that the new candidate is tested against has already undergone randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trials. Meaning it was proven to be safe and effective against a placebo and, therefore, is the new standard. This makes sense ethically and scientifically.
This isn’t about liking or disliking RFK Jr. It’s about not trusting an anti-vaccine activist to shape vaccine policy using evidence-based reasoning instead of his distrust of scientists.
>s that because he’s factually correct with the claim that no randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trials for vaccines are run
This is factually untrue. Here are just a few recent examples:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00241-5/fulltext
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30843-4/fulltext
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30001-3/fulltext
Or if you’d like one that’s more relevant to recent history:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-022-00590-x
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M22-1300
This last one is not reporting on the vaccine trial, but is a follow-up to such a trial.
So, at this point, it’s difficult for me to feel like you’re having this conversation in good faith. But, nonetheless, ethically and medically, the appropriate and most relevant control is the standard of care—because we need to know if the novel vaccine/medicine/therapy outperforms what we are already doing. And, again, the standard of care is adopted after a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trial, or after replacing the previous standard of care that underwent such a trial. So, in reality we should be questioning his reasoning and motivation for making this false claim and using it as a bludgeon to shape vaccine policy.
>Vaccines are by law unavoidably unsafe
Speaking of using terms loosely… I’ll just parrot you and say “unsafe” is a relative term and I think it’s doing a lot of rhetorical heavy lifting here. Sure, they are “unsafe” in the way that any action or inaction is nominally “unsafe”.
>You seem to have had a false belief that needs updating, and if you just gloss over that, that’s not good reasoning.
This is needlessly antagonistic given that you are repeating an outright false claim that “no randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trials for vaccines are run”.
I’ve never made any claims about “absolute safety”. This line of attack by you feels, at best, like putting words into my mouth when I would prefer you simply ask a question about my position on something instead of assuming. I am aware that medicine comes with risks but it seemed tangential to the conversation at hand and so I made the reasonable assumption that “safe relative to the standard of care” was mutually understood. Apparently that assumption was wrong—but that doesn’t justify your strawmanning.
>As a relevant recent example, the increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis from mRNA Covid-19 vaccines was not picked up by the placebo-controlled trials that they ran.
Because it’s an incredibly rare side-effect that nearly invariably self-resolves. And the side-effect was picked up in follow-up, which is exactly why scientists continue to monitor vaccine recipients.
>Saying scientists who are not running enough placebo-controlled trials should be distrusted, is an evidence-based argument.
No. It is not. It is bad science to run a placebo controlled trial when an effective standard of care is already available. The medically relevant question is whether a new drug or therapy is safe and effective relative what what we are already doing.