[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by Chris

Thalidomide was not a vaccine, and its repeated use as a comparison to the development of any vaccine is ignorant in the extreme.

Drug treatments that deploy novel chemical compounds, designed deliberately to alter body chemistry for therapeutic effect may at the same time alter it in such a way as to cause damaging side effects. This is what clinical trials are supposed to identify. In fact modern modelling techniques would aim to identify such serious possible side effects before wide-scale clinical trials even start.

A vaccine does not set out to invent a new chemical, or to purify and utilise a discovered chemical. In one way or another, a vaccine uses bits of the target virus itself (or a close relative) to provoke an immune response. The cure comes from persuading the human body to do more effectively what it is already capable of doing, not in chemically altering the human body.

Obviously there are always risks in injecting something into someone, however the risks from a vaccine simply aren't in the same category as thalidomide, which was itself a once in a generation catastrophe whose most famous unwanted side effects were caused in a patient group which had not even been tested (pregnant women).

No one has claimed it was.