‘Political pressure has been mounting for scientists to deliver an economy-saving result, and reports of corner-cutting emerge daily... Nor is it just politicians who are in a hurry. On 2 August, Steven Salzberg, a computational biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggested in Forbes magazine that a promising vaccine be rolled out to a wider pool of volunteers before clinical trials had been completed, triggering an outcry (and some sympathy) that prompted him to recant the next day. Meanwhile, a research group with links to Harvard University continues to defend its publication in July of a recipe for a DIY Covid-19 vaccine – one that only the group’s 20-odd members had previously tested.’
Read here (The Guardian, August 30, 2020)
