After receiving my first injection in a clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine last month, I spent the night tying my forehead and raising my arm to see if it hurt. Since I didn’t have a fever, I was wondering if the heat in our space was too low.
All this in a vain attempt to find out if I had been injected with a placebo or the genuine.
The use of placebo in medicine has been a major step forward in eliminating biases that can distort the effects of pharmacological studies and contribute to the marketing of useless or harmful products.
But all placebos are foolproof.
In clinical trials of pain treatments, others might suspect that they have not understood the truth if their pain does not or if they do not feel the narcotic effect that can occur with an opioid. be careful if your longing for smoking doesn’t diminish.
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For COVID-19 vaccines, one imaginable telltale sign that the user won a placebo was that they did not have a reaction such as mild fever, a little pain, headaches or arm pain.
It turns out that this small peculiarity in the science of the COVID-19 vaccine is no small thing. Now there are tens of thousands of people like me who have volunteered for a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine and suspect they have. won a placebo.
As approved and available vaccines in the coming weeks and months, many of us wonder whether to abandon our tests and get vaccinated with the genuine, but if we do, we will no longer be very useful for the tests we are conducting. because long-term protection and knowledge of the power we can necessarily generate will cease.
I’ve been obsessed with this since November 16, when I won my first injection in a clinical trial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
All I felt after receiving the vaccine was sadness because I didn’t have any of those symptoms. Although two out of 3 people in the trial won the vaccine and one in 3 people won a placebo, I began to think I was on placebo. Group.
Then I won an email from Kris Pfeiffer, a user who participated in the test and who had the same experience.
“I probably had no reaction to that,” said Pfeiffer, 49, who lives in Waukesha County. “My arm is less painful than what I experienced with the flu vaccine. I guess I got the placebo, but I can’t be sure. What’s the matter with you?”
The same thing, Kris. Ma’s wife touched my forehead the night I got my first shot. He said it was wet, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be one of the main reactions to the vaccine.
Maybe I’m just a non-reactor. In September, I won a high-dose flu shot and my shingles vaccine, or the same day. My arm hurt a little bit, I had no other reaction.
Anyway, Pfeiffer’s email has replaced my thinking a little bit. Since each of us had a one-in-three chance of receiving placebo, then the chance of us receiving placebo one in six, essentially the same possibility. of wasting a Russian roulette game with a genuine revolver.
Recently, I sought knowledge about the number of people who participated in COVID-19 vaccine trials who have experienced reactions. Headaches, muscle aches or fatigue were experienced through a minority of other people after the first vaccine, and other older people had less likely to have those reactions.
More people seem to have a reaction to the time of the shooting than to the first, said William Hartman, principal investigator of the UW branch of AstraZeneca’s trial.
“We listen all the time,” we must have received the placebo,” said Hartman, assistant professor of anesthesiology at the UW.
Therefore, it is imaginable that the AstraZeneca vaccine simply does not cause reactions in some people. I’ll stick to this story for a while, or at least until mid-December, when I have my injection moment, a reminder.
But this raises questions about what will happen to many AstraZeneca trial volunteers and other pharmaceutical corporations that have won more saltwater injections than genuine ones. While the AstraZeneca trial gave two genuine injections for a placebo, in other giant trials, the distribution is 50/50.
Once effective vaccines are on the market, which is likely to happen in the first 3 months of next year, some volunteers may need to withdraw from their trials if they think they have received a placebo because they need protection, Lipsitch said. , Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.
It is known when volunteers will go through pharmaceutical corporations if they have won a placebo.
“I don’t know how it’s going to move,” he says. You can’t stop someone, just because of the trial, from taking steps for their health. “
Once their vaccines are approved, pharmaceutical corporations can offer their vaccine to trial participants who won placebos, he said, especially those belonging to high-risk groups, which would increase the popularity of the volunteer user.
But they also report that placebo volunteers would have to wait two years for this.
I haven’t if I give up because I think I’ve won the placebo.
Would this be a double operation, I was wondering?
Looking for the peace of mind of a bioethics, which gave me less than one hundred percent acquittal.
“On the one hand, he has done more than many people; is commendable,” said Jennifer Miller, an assistant professor at Yale University, “but agreed to check the vaccine. “
I did. The consent form I signed says my participation will last two years and that I will have to go to the test thirteen times and provide blood and nasal samples. But the form also indicates from the beginning that I would possibly then replace my brain and that this will not oppose me.
I got my injection at the time in the clinical trial on December 14th. I expect a little more than wet.
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