this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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politics

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[–] antisocialite@lemmy.today 119 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, wow, clearly no one has ever thought of that one.

As the adage goes, it's easy to be a conspiracy theorist when you don't know how anything works.

[–] einlander@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago

If only someone invented control trials.

[–] vegeta@lemmy.world 63 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What about placebo required studies for Vitamin A and Cod Liver Oil?

[–] AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Vitamin A, cod liver, anthrax, and cyanide are all naturally occuring so they must be healthy. Duh -s

[–] blakenong@lemmings.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And ivermectin, and Elon’s ketamine

[–] blakenong@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Funny how both ivermectin and ketamine we’re originally designed for farm animals.

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Ivermectin too

[–] Blade9732@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Welp, I guess I can check off "Do unethical medical experiments on people" from my "Are Republicans actually Nazis?" Checklist. Next up: Get Bayer to restart pesticide production to clean up the migrant detention centers.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 year ago

Dude he hired Mengelev's (spiritual) grandchild to head up research and vaccine efficacy. We are already there.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Get Bayer to restart pesticide production to clean up the migrant detention centers.

bonus points: it’s prison slave labour and Bayer does indeed get to sell the pesticides for huge profit (saving the government so much money and contributing to the economy!!!) and they don’t provide any PPE so the work area is entirely contaminated

that sounds like the state of 2025

… and actually the next step is that they dump the contaminants into the river next to the detention centre and poison the drinking water of the next 10 towns over and face no repercussions at all

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Oh what's that? They just purchased a bunch of cargo vans, piping and zyklon b? Nah that'll be fine.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 39 points 1 year ago

So he wants to expose unvaccinated people to diseases to test the efficacy of vaccines? Sounds ethical and not psychotic at all ..

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Sigh.

It's unnecessary. It's stupid. ~~But at least it's not actively harmful, I guess.~~

Edit: Nope, actually, it definitely is.

[–] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, the reason we don't do this is because it's unethical to deny people a potentially lifesaving vaccine in place of a placebo when it may just be a small change from a previous vaccine that doesn't add any more danger.

This shit is still going to kill people.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Whoa, dang. I did not know that.

Thank you for the info.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

From the article, it's probably going to be actively harmful:

The Trump administration plans to impose a new testing requirement for new vaccines — a demand that could delay the availability of the next round of COVID-19 vaccines and complicate the approval of other vaccines.

Additionally, this all but insures people will catch diseases - potentially fatal diseases like COVID - when they don't need to because they'll be given a placebo:

In addition, experts say that giving someone a placebo to protect them against a potentially deadly disease when an effective vaccine already exists would be unethical.

"Are they really planning on doing a placebo-controlled trial where a certain group of people are not given that vaccine, knowing that the virus can cause infection and disease, including serious disease in anyone? Anyone can be felled by this virus," Offit says. "So it's not an ethical trial."

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Great point. Someone else noted it's also unethical to give a placebo to someone who then thinks they're protected. So great job, leatherface. We need to put the "Health" in your job title in very heavy scare quotes.

Edit: You added in that exact same thing right after I posted the reply. Nice.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, sorry for the shadow edit - I was having trouble getting my app to copy the text.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

No worries, I do that all the time.

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

At least he hasn't outlawed vaccine studies yet

[–] baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

truck barreling down hillside towards river rapids

Well, at least we haven't sunk into the river yet.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Right, see, that's what I was concerned would happen.

The administration is young, though. I mean, they're definitively not, but like... it's early in the term.

[–] Pichu0102@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

As someone disabled, I have a bad feeling about how they'll decide which groups of people get the placebo vaccine...

[–] SpaceShort@feddit.uk 17 points 1 year ago

So basically, people will have to smuggle vaccines into the US.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  1. Have there been any studies that show placebo effect doesn't really apply to infectious disease? I would wager that there is one, if not several.

  2. Wouldn't the unvaccinated public, exposed in the early days of a pandemic, then be an effective control?

[–] Mohamed@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago

I think it's more that placebo studies of vaccines could be unethical. Vaccines are preventative treatment. A placebo study would mean that, say, we give the vaccine to 50, and a placebo to 50, and then wait some time (or, for much more unethical, deliberately inject people with the virus), and compare the results.

For something like the common flu, this might be fine, but for something as dangerous as measles, this can be deadly.

I am interested to hear from someone knowlesgeable how vaccines are supposed to be tested.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

1: afaik placebos have no effect on vaccines that’s correct, because it’s not something that’s subjective… you either have an infection or you don’t: you can’t think yourself better

2: the way we do efficacy trials is already exactly this: we give trial participants the vaccine and compare their infection rates to known infection rates in the general population that match the demographics of the trial participants as closely as possible

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

This administration won't be happy until dumbass brain worm kills a lot more Americans.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

This is going to do wonders for the travel industry as Americans go abroad to get vaccinations they can no longer get at home.