How do they actually test vaccine efficacy?
Just wondering out loud............. I mean, I suppose they have a group of educated, informed-consent-signing victi -er- volunteers (
) which they divide into smaller groups.
And, I suppose these people are evenly divided into those smaller groups as to age, health, race, social levels, lifestyle, etc.
One group is given the vaccine being tested, the other a placebo.
Now, here is where I wonder what happens.
Do they just wait and see what goes on in each group? Do these folks go about their lives and then some of them get sick naturally? Both the vaxxed and unvaxxed? This would have to take an incredibly long time, years even.
Some of the testing is done a pretty small groups of people. What are the statistical chances that X number of people in that small group would get a disease? Especially if they are not particularly at-risk for that disease (say, Aids or HPV).
And, exposure to some diseases could be really difficult under normal circumstances and in many locations. Wouldn´t testing results done on people in say, sub-Saharan Africa or South America be skewed because of their geographical locale and health conditions versus those done in North America or Europe?
As an example: They´ve done testing of Aids vaccines on prostitutes in SE Asia. Do they actually think these women (and, possibly, men) are going to do exactly what the researchers tell them and use condoms everytime and avoid body fluid transfer? How can it be a reliable testing? Wouldn´t they need to be exposed to Aids to see if the vaccine really works?
Do you think researchers actually expose volunteers to the diseases in vaccine testing? For something as relatively harmless like chicken pox, this wouldn´t necessarily be dangerous (there are exeptions to everything, of course. But, what about Aids? Or, Hep? Or, Anthrax or any other horrible diseases that, no doubt, are on the vaccine creation conveyer belt.
This would be courtroom drama if a man or woman, with full knowledge they had a disease, knowingly infecting others without their knowledge (I have heard of an actual case like this not that long ago dealing with an HIV+ man sleeping with multiple unknowing partners, knowing he was HIV+ and he went to prison).
How would the legal world handle it if it was, theoretically-speaking, of course, being done by pharmaceutical companies in the search for vaccines?
Random thoughts, anyone?
