Top Russia doctor quits over 'gross violations' of medical ethics in rushing through Putin's Covid-19 vaccine
A leading respiratory doctor in Russia, Professor Alexander Chuchalin, has reportedly quit over "gross violations" of medical ethics that led to Putin's rushed coronavirus vaccine in the country. The expert quit the ethics council of the Russian health ministry after denouncing the new Sputnik V vaccine ahead of it being approved for registration, reports state.
It is believed that Dr Chuchalin sought and failed to block the registration of the new Covid-19 drug on "safety grounds" before leaving the ethics council. The expert reportedly has accused two leading medics involved in flouting medical ethics in an effort to rush the vaccine into mass production. Dr Chuchalin specifically accused the director of the Gamaleya Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Prof Alexander Gintsburg, and a medical colonel and Russian army's top virologist, Prof Sergey Borisevich - the two men heading the academics backing the "world-beating" vaccine being touted by Moscow.
Dr. Chuchalin, who formulated the Russian Research Institute of Pulmonology, had allegedly asked the medics: "Have you passed all the necessary paths approved by Russian Federation legislation and the international scientific community? Not! This job has not been done. Thus, one of the ethical principles of medicine has been grossly violated - to do no harm," he stated, according to the Daily Mail. "I am depressed by the position of some of our scientists who make irresponsible statements about ready-made vaccines."
Days before Dr. Chuchalin quit the top position, he had warned in an interview with journal Nauka i Zhizn (Science and Life), saying: "In the case of a drug or vaccine, we, as ethical reviewers, would like to understand, first of all, how safe it is for humans. Safety always comes first. How to evaluate it? The vaccines that are being created today have never been used in humans, and we cannot predict how a person will tolerate it."
"It is impossible to determine this without weighing all the scientific facts," the expert, who is also the head of the Department of Hospital Therapy, at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, added. "Therefore, our number one task is to extract scientific data based on evidence-based medicine in order to understand that the action performed by scientists will not harm a person."
Dr Chuchalin had also stated that it was crucial to know the "effect of the vaccine in the longer term," adding that "the fact is that there are a number of biological substances that do not manifest themselves immediately, but only after a year or two." The top expert warned: "Those vaccines that are now being developed by many of our research centers, the criteria for their safety can only be of a short-term nature. But the safety criteria for a vaccine must also be long-term and this becomes clear only with long-term observation - at least two years."
One of the leading virologist in the country, Prof Alexander Chepurnov, amid the reports of Russia's new Covid-19 vaccine, has warned that the drug could increase the spread of the novel coronavirus in the region. Chepurnov, former head of the laboratory for especially hazardous diseases at Vector Institute in Siberia, said that the "danger exists" of "increasing the disease with the wrong design of the vaccine."
"Time is needed….antibodies are different. In some situations - and for coronavirus, this is already known - the infection intensifies with some antibodies. It should be known which antibodies the vaccine produces," the virologist warned.