Law Commons^™

Vaccine Clinical Trials And Data Infrastructure, Ana Santos Rutschman

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We find ourselves at a momentous turn in the history of vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a quasi-global vaccine race that not only compressed vaccine research and development (R&D) timelines, but also paved the way for the administration of a new type of vaccine technology – mRNA vaccines, which work in substantially different ways from the vaccines in use before the pandemic.

While the process of bringing emerging COVID-19 vaccines to market has taken place in an unusually short timeframe, it was largely predicated on the same scientific and regulatory processes that govern the development, approval and deployment of new …

FacebookʼS Latest Attempt To Address Vaccine Misinformation — And Why ItʼS Not Enough, Ana Santos Rutschman

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On October 13, 2020 Facebook announced the adoption of a series of measures to promote vaccine trust “while prohibiting ads with misinformation that could harm public health efforts.” In the post written by Kang-Xing Jin (head of health) and Rob Leathern (director of product management), the company explained that the new measures were designed with an emphasis on encouraging widespread use of this yearʼs flu vaccine, as well as in anticipation of potential COVID-19 vaccines becoming available in the near future.

The changes focus mainly on the establishment of a multiprong informational campaign about the seasonal flu vaccine, which includes …

The Reemergence Of Vaccine Nationalism, Ana Santos Rutschman

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This short essay explores the reemergence of vaccine nationalism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay traces the pre-COVID origins of vaccine nationalism and explains how it can have detrimental effects on equitable access to newly developed vaccines.

Why The Government Shouldn't Pay People To Get Vaccinated Against Covid-19, Ana Santos Rutschman

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As several pharmaceutical companies approach the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking authorization to bring COVID-19 vaccines to market, concerns about vaccine mistrust cloud the prospects of imminent vaccination efforts across the globe. These concerns have prompted some commentators to suggest that governments may nudge vaccine uptake by paying people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. This post argues that, even if potentially viable, this idea is undesirable against the backdrop of a pandemic marked by the intertwined phenomena of health misinformation and mistrust in public health authorities. Even beyond the context of COVID-19, paying for vaccination is likely to remain …

Vaccine Hesitancy: Experimentalism As Regulatory Opportunity, Ana Santos Rutschman, Timothy L. Wiemken

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This symposium on patient innovation has prompted us to explore problems related to departures from official vaccination schedules. At a time in which vaccine confidence has been plummeting across the world, we argue that a more granular understanding—and ultimately a more finely tuned regulatory framework—is needed to reflect the current behavioral heterogeneity among indicated patients who choose to forego or delay administration of recommended vaccines. In particular, we focus on a phenomenon we term “vaccine staggering:” a departure from vaccination schedules in the form of delays in receiving one or more vaccines, which is motivated by the desire to boost …