April 10, 2021

This is why blood from newborn cattle is being used to develop Indian Covid vaccine

n a research paper recently released by the Indian Council of Medical Research and Bharat Biotech about Covaxin, the Covid-19 vaccine they are developing, scientists have mentioned that one of the ingredients used is blood serum from newborn cattle.
April 10, 2021

Vaccines Use Bizarre Stuff. We Need a Supply Chain Now.

We’ve already seen the costs of supply-chain failures during the Covid-19 pandemic: Delays in the production of simple nasal swabs slowed testing by months even as the pandemic exploded in the U.S. The world is now eagerly awaiting a vaccine, and will need billions of doses as quickly as possible. If
April 10, 2021

Covid-19 Vaccines With ‘Minor Side Effects’ Could Still Be Pretty Bad

The risk of nasty side effects in the Moderna and Oxford trials should be made clear now, before it ends up as fodder for the skeptics. MORE GOOD NEWS on progress toward an escape route from this pandemic: On Monday, vaccine researchers from Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced results from a “Phase I/II
April 10, 2021

We Don’t Monitor Deaths, We Monitor Adverse Events

Responding to concerns raised in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics regarding the deaths of children following vaccinations, the government said they don’t monitor deaths, but monitor all adverse events following immunisation (AEFI). “Adverse events include
April 9, 2021

Secret, powerful panels will pick Covid-19 vaccine winners. Can they be trusted?

Most Americans have never heard of Dr. Richard Whitley, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Yet as the coronavirus pandemic drags on and the public eagerly awaits a vaccine, he may well be among the most powerful people in the country.
April 9, 2021

Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Reportedly Caused Headache, Hangovers In Volunteers

This surely generated a ton of positivity among people since it meant that we’re almost nearing the end of this dreadful pandemic. However, vaccines do come with their fair share of side-effects, and some volunteers who were the first to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have revealed that their experience wasn’t so pleasant as they’d expect.
April 9, 2021

Controversial Vaccine studies: Why is Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under fire from critics in India?

In 2009, several schools for tribal children in Khammam district in Telangana — then a part of undivided Andhra Pradesh — became sites for observation studies for a cervical cancer vaccine that was administered to thousands of girls aged between nine and 15. The girls were administered the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine in three rounds that year under the supervision of state health department
April 9, 2021

How The Oral Polio Vaccine Can Cause Polio

One of the vaccines used to prevent polio has actually been causing some people to get the disease. Just last month, the World Health Organization announced that two of three strains of polio had been eradicated. It’s been one of the great success stories of modern medicine. The disease, which, of course, can lead to paralysis, has been reduced to just a handful of cases around the world. But now scientists say there’s been a troubling
April 9, 2021

The Astronomical Cost of Lockdown

To laugh or to cry. It is difficult to know which response is more appropriate to the Government’s attempt to quantify the impact of lockdown, published last night with the title “Analysis of the health, economic and social effects of COVID-19 and the approach to tiering“. If you wanted a chuckle, then imagine you had the job of the unfortunate civil servant who had been given the job of cobbling together this strange hotch-potch of information. The document is clearly a rushed job, published with the political aim of persuading the growing number of Conservative MPs who are sceptical about the need for tighter restrictions that the