03-22-2016, 12:21 PM
I remember when I was getting my rabies vaccine* and I asked the nurse, "how do they know this really works?" She replied, "That is a very good question!" She came back a few minutes later with the yellow paper insert that came packaged with the vaccine. The insert unfolded into this huge manuscript, sort of like a road map (remember those?) that once unfolded is nearly impossible to re-fold correctly again.
She let me keep the insert. I saved it for years because it was so fascinating. It said the vaccine was developed by a French pharmaceutical company and was tested by measuring titre responses blah blah blah... but the interesting part was when they "allowed" 46 (I don't remember the exact number any longer but 46 sticks out in my mind) condemned prisoners in Iraq to be bitten by rabid canines. Half of the "volunteers" had previously been vaccinated, the other half did not. All of the prisoners who received the placebo vaccinations got rabies and died. Nobody who received the rabies vaccine got sick.
I'm not exactly sure how they could "fast track" a vaccine like that nowadays.
* This was the "newer" vaccine that consists of a series of three shots in the arm or ass, not the old-school vaccine that was developed using duck eggs that had to be injected multiple times into the diaphragm that frequently took several courses of the vaccine to elicit an immune response.
She let me keep the insert. I saved it for years because it was so fascinating. It said the vaccine was developed by a French pharmaceutical company and was tested by measuring titre responses blah blah blah... but the interesting part was when they "allowed" 46 (I don't remember the exact number any longer but 46 sticks out in my mind) condemned prisoners in Iraq to be bitten by rabid canines. Half of the "volunteers" had previously been vaccinated, the other half did not. All of the prisoners who received the placebo vaccinations got rabies and died. Nobody who received the rabies vaccine got sick.
I'm not exactly sure how they could "fast track" a vaccine like that nowadays.
* This was the "newer" vaccine that consists of a series of three shots in the arm or ass, not the old-school vaccine that was developed using duck eggs that had to be injected multiple times into the diaphragm that frequently took several courses of the vaccine to elicit an immune response.