Russia’s Top Doctor Quits Over COVID 19 Vaccine Testing Ethics
Russia: Russia's leading respiratory doctor has quit over 'gross violations' of medical ethics that rushed through Putin's coronavirus 'vaccine'.
Professor Alexander Chuchalin quit the Russian health ministry's ethics council after making a fierce attack on the new Sputnik V drug ahead of the body approving its registration.
Amid deep scepticism among Western experts over the drug, it appears that Chuchalin sought and failed to block its registration on 'safety' grounds before quitting the ethics council.
He specifically accused the two leading medics involved in its development of flouting medical ethics in rushing the vaccine into production.
Dr Chuchalin named Prof Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, and Prof Sergey Borisevich, a medical colonel and Russian army's top virologist.
The two men were the leading academics behind the new 'world-beating' vaccine.
Chuchalin allegedly asked them: 'Have you passed all the necessary paths approved by Russian Federation legislation and the international scientific community? Not!
'This job has not been done. Thus, one of the ethical principles of medicine has been grossly violated - to do no harm.'
He stressed: 'I am depressed by the position of some of our scientists who make irresponsible statements about ready-made vaccines.'
Although specific reasons for his resignation were not given, in an interview with journal Nauka i Zhizn (Science and Life) shortly before he quit, Chuchalin warned: 'In the case of a drug or vaccine, we, as ethical reviewers, would like to understand, first of all, how safe it is for humans.
'Safety always comes first. How to evaluate it? The vaccines that are being created today have never been used in humans, and we cannot predict how a person will tolerate it.
Chucalin, who created the Russian Research Institute of Pulmonology, and is head of the Department of Hospital Therapy, at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, added: 'It is impossible to determine this without weighing all the scientific facts.
'Therefore, our number one task is to extract scientific data based on evidence-based medicine in order to understand that the action performed by scientists will not harm a person.'
Chuchalin said it is vital to know 'the effect of the vaccine in the longer term', adding that 'the fact is that there are a number of biological substances that do not manifest themselves immediately, but only after a year or two.'
With Russia also preparing other vaccines to tackle Covid-19, he warned: 'Those vaccines that are now being developed by many of our research centres, the criteria for their safety can only be of a short-term nature.
'But the safety criteria for a vaccine must also be long-term and this becomes clear only with long-term observation - at least two years.'
And one of Russia's leading virologists has even warned that the vaccine could increase the spread of Covid-19.
In a separate attack on the vaccine, Prof Alexander Chepurnov said the 'danger exists' of 'increasing the disease with the wrong design of the vaccine'.
Chepurnov is former head of the laboratory for especially hazardous diseases at Vector Institute in Siberia which is also involved in developing vaccines for coronavirus.
He warned: “Time is needed….antibodies are different. In some situations - and for coronavirus, this is already known - the infection intensifies with some antibodies. It should be known which antibodies the vaccine produces.”
But the vaccine creators had not published scientific articles on the vaccine, he said.
They need to explain the level of neutralisation, and details of doses and 'whether it develops or not the ability to increase infection by antibodies'.
While this is not done 'it is impossible to talk about the release of a vaccine,' he said.
Another leading scientist Vladimir Chekhonin, vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claimed Russia was flouting the Nuremberg Code on human experimentation and the country's own laws in human clinical research involved in Covid-19 vaccine testing.
He also expressed concern about the use of serving military personnel as recipients of the vaccine.
