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Experts dispute completeness of vaccine trial controls and highlight gaps in U.S. safety surveillance systems
Summary
Witnesses diverged over whether randomized trials and safety surveillance provide adequate evidence: Stanford's Dr. Jake Scott described a database of randomized vaccine trials and placebo controls; critics said many trials cited are irrelevant or used non‑saline comparators; attorneys cited v‑safe FOIA data and VAERS underreporting concerns.
Debate at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing centered on the evidence base underlying routine childhood vaccines and the robustness of safety surveillance systems.
Stanford infectious‑disease physician Jake Scott described an open database his team compiled covering 1,088 randomized controlled vaccine trials dating from 1941 to 2025 and said 661 of those trials used inert placebo controls. "Every entry is publicly verifiable through PubMed links," Scott told the committee and said the catalog is intended to improve transparency.
Attorney Aaron Siri and researcher Toby Rogers challenged Scott’s interpretation. Siri argued that when the 661 trials are examined, most are irrelevant to routine childhood injected vaccines: "567 of these trials were not…
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