Let’s Talk About Saline Placebos Yet Again
All kinds of vaccine studies, including many with saline placebos, have been done that show vaccines work well and are safe, with few risks.
Why are we talking about saline placebos again?
Of course, it is because anti-vaccine influencers won’t let go of the idea of vaccines being tested against saline placebos.
Let’s Talk About Saline Placebos Yet Again
As a recap, remember that anti-vaccine influences believe that:
vaccines have never, ever been tested against saline placebos before, and
that all vaccines being used now should be tested against saline placebos
And they would rather that vaccines not be used until they are tested against saline placebos, risking kids getting and dying with polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis, and other vaccine preventable diseases.
Let’s also recap the real story about vaccines and saline placebos!
it is highly unethical to use a saline placebo in a vaccine clinical trial when control subjects could instead get a similar vaccine or a vaccine against a similar disease
it is much harder to keep up the randomized, double-blind nature of a clinical trial when you use a saline placebo, since it is so much different than the vaccine itself, which introduces bias into the study
What else?
“Most people who received a placebo in the Gardasil trials got aluminium adjuvant. However there was one protocol (Protocol 18) conducted in 9-15 year old girls and boys where the placebo used was a saline solution. In this study 1184 were randomised to receive the vaccine and 596 randomised to receive the saline solution placebo. The proportion of participants completing the study was similar in each group. The proportion of systemic events was comparable in each group.”
Was the Gardasil vaccine ever compared with a placebo?
Once again, many vaccines have undergone testing in clinical trials with saline placebos!
“The immunogenicity of GARDASIL was assessed in 23,951 9- through 45-year-old girls and women (GARDASIL N = 12,634; AAHS control or saline placebo N = 11,317) and 5417 9- through 26-year-old boys and men (GARDASIL N = 3109; AAHS control or saline placebo N = 2308).”
Package Insert - GARDASIL
Vaccines that were studied with saline placebos include:
acellular pertussis
BCG
oral polio
Hib
measles
rubella
mumps
typhoid
Prevnar 7
pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines
HPV
live flu
inactivated flu
COVID-19
cholera
dengue
So why do anti-vaccine influencers continue to say that vaccines were never tested with saline placebos?
Well, even though all of those vaccines were tested with saline placebos, those might not be the studies used to get them approved by the FDA, different versions might have been approved by the FDA, and they are not the versions that we use today. After all, many of these vaccines have now been in use for over 50 to 75 years. And they have been updated since they were first discovered!
Still, think about it, isn’t it enough that they didn’t find any differences between the vaccine and the saline placebo control in all of those vaccine studies?
If there was really a problem with vaccines, wouldn’t that have been picked up in all of those studies that used a saline placebo?
Yes, indeed it would have!
Studies with Unvaccinated Controls
There’s more too!
In addition to all the studies that used a saline placebo, others have actually used an unvaccinated control.
Which vaccines?
The list includes:
These are the long sought after vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies that anti-vaccine influencers are always asking for!
And what did they find?
As expected, they simply found that the people who were unvaccinated in the trials got sick more often than those who were vaccinated!
So can we finally stop talking about saline placebos now?
All kinds of vaccine studies have been done that show vaccines work well and are safe, with few risks.
More on Saline Placebos
How the Modern Anti-Vaccine Movement Resembles a Religious Cult
Why Was RFK Jr.’s New Hepatitis B Vaccine Study So Controversial?
Yes, there have been placebo-controlled studies on childhood vaccines
The New Placebo Mandate for Vaccines: Unethical, Unscientific, and Impossible
All Childhood Vaccines Were Tested Against Placebos - Here’s the Evidence
Arron Siri is a Death Maker for Americans, as is his leader Rfkjr.
The placebo "story" that some anti-vaxxers use is one of the stupidest arguments anti-vax arguments that I've heard. It shows a mix of laziness (the folks who spout this haven't actually done any reference checking), or ignorance about the purpose and ethics of medical trials.