Another Pharmaceutical Company Suspends Clinical Trials, 'Politicization of Scientific Research' Deteriorating American Public Confidence

On October 13, local time, the U.S. pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced that it would suspend a Phase III clinical trial of the new coronavirus antibody therapy for 'safety considerations'. This is the third large pharmaceutical company to suspend clinical trials of the new coronavirus vaccine or antibody therapy for similar reasons after AstraZeneca in the United Kingdom and Johnson & Johnson in the United States. With the current political involvement in scientific research, this series of news has increased the public's distrust of new coronavirus drugs and vaccines. This may be an unexpected consequence of those politicians who are eager to manipulate 'politicization of scientific issues'.
 

Safety Hazards Cause Clinical Trials to Stop
 

According to multiple media reports in the United States, an independent data security monitoring committee recommended on October 13 that Eli Lilly suspends an experimental clinical trial of new coronavirus therapy funded by the federal government because of safety risks. As soon as the news came out, Eli Lilly's stock price fell nearly 4%.
 

Eli Lilly previously announced the initiation of the Phase III clinical trial ACTIV-3 of antibody therapy, which mainly studies whether the LY-CoV555 antibody can effectively prevent new coronavirus infections. According to the company, the LY-CoV555 antibody is a monoclonal antibody against the spike protein of the new coronavirus, isolated from a blood sample of an early recovery patient in the United States. It can prevent the virus from attaching and entering human cells and is expected to be used to prevent and treat new coronavirus infections. The main test site of the ACTIV-3 project is located in the United States, and the others are in Denmark and Singapore. The goal is to recruit 10,000 confirmed patients and divide them into two groups for observation: The experimental group receives Eli Lilly’s antibody therapy while taking the antiviral drug, Reid Civir, the control group only took Redcivir.
 

Eli Lilly, headquartered in Indianapolis, said on the 13th that the ACTIV-3 trial data security monitoring committee recommended that the registration of subjects be suspended due to cautious considerations. Eli Lilly said it supports the decision of the independent committee to carefully ensure the safety of patients participating in the trial. However, the company did not provide more details on the nature of the potential safety hazards. And it is not yet clear whether the suspension of this trial will affect the company's other clinical trial projects. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded the trial, said on the 13th that 326 patients had participated in the trial before the above-mentioned independent committee recommended a suspension of the trial. The committee will re-evaluate the data at a scheduled meeting on October 26 and will make recommendations on whether to resume registration of subjects.
 

One day before Eli Lilly announced the suspension of clinical trials, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would suspend clinical trials of the new coronavirus vaccine of its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals because of an 'unexplainable disease' in a subject. The company said that the trial is only 'temporarily suspended'. It is not uncommon for large trials to have subjects sick. In some cases, the disease may be only partially or completely unrelated to the trial. AstraZeneca, a British pharmaceutical company, also said before that it suspended a global clinical trial of a vaccine jointly developed with Oxford University due to a 'probably unexplainable disease' in a subject. However, after the safety of the vaccine was approved by independent committees and regulatory agencies, clinical trials of this vaccine in the United Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa and India have subsequently resumed, but trials in the United States are still suspended.
 

Analyst believes that the suspension of clinical trials of the new coronavirus prevention and treatment is theoretically normal, and does not mean that there are problems with the vaccine or the drug itself. As research and development progress, people will become more and more accustomed to hearing suspended reports, and as the number of subjects increases, the probability of illness will increase. Even so, the stagnation of vaccine and drug research and development will undoubtedly greatly delay the anti-epidemic process, especially when the current conflict between politics and science in the United States is becoming increasingly prominent.

Political Involvement Continues to Shake Public Confidence
 

Regarding the distrust of American public opinion on vaccine development and other issues, Bloomberg commented that many American politicians are eager to shorten the long-term vaccine development process to a few months, so as to control the epidemic in time and accelerate economic recovery, thereby gaining political benefits. Nowadays, the pursuit of vaccines has become a political topic. Some observers worry that U.S. President Trump is eager to introduce vaccines before the election, even at the expense of scientific progress.
 

As the U.S. election approaches, worries about 'politicization of scientific research' are increasing. More and more Americans are worried that the Trump administration will further affect the rigor and scientific nature of vaccine and drug development. In addition, under the influence of political propaganda, more and more people have gradually become skeptical about the safety of vaccines. As John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medical College, said the public opinion consequences of the 'politicization of the epidemic' just show that the vaccine development process should not be affected by human factors.
 

In addition to concerns from all walks of life about political influence on science, the potential side effects of the vaccine itself have also made public opinion restless in the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, many authoritative experts in the medical and health industry have stated that the side effects of the vaccine may bring safety risks to children, pregnant women and other vaccinators. In addition, in clinical trials of combination drugs, it is sometimes difficult to determine which drugs have caused adverse reactions. Such hidden dangers will shake the American people's confidence in vaccines and the initiative of vaccination.
On the other hand, due to many uncertainties in vaccine research and development, some scientists have revisited the 'herd immunity' method, that is, infecting most healthy people in order to cut off the chain of transmission and protect vulnerable groups. Even the White House has also proposed this proposal and expressed some degree of approval.
 

However, most medical and health experts said that the prerequisite for the realization of 'herd immunity' is that almost everyone in the United States is infected with the new coronavirus. But at least according to official data, 85% to 90% of people in the United States have not yet been infected with the new coronavirus. Therefore, the proposal of 'herd immunity' currently seems extremely unrealistic, and it is suspected of 'emergency medical treatment'. As Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said, 'It is nonsense to think that an infection rate of 10% to 20% can bring about herd immunity.'
 

At present, due to extensive political involvement, the American public’s distrust of the vaccine development process is increasing day by day, coupled with the fact that politicians from time to time write empty checks and even endorse unrealistic new coronavirus prevention methods, which has further generated public opinion on the current scientific research situation with doubts. Just as many experts worry, one of the public opinion consequences of the 'politicization of scientific issues' is precisely that science incurs public suspicion and counterproductive political motives. This also reflects the value of scientific independence.