“Research with public money, data must be shared” – Il Tempo

“Without transparency, I will not receive the Covid vaccine. In Italy, a provincial scientific environment. “Andrea Crisanti, director of the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padua, in relation to“ Non è l’Arena ”, the broadcast by Massimo Giletti in La 7, reaffirms his position after the controversy about vaccines and experimentation.

In the episode of “Non è l’Arena” on Sunday, November 29, the virologist connected via Skype with the host and confirmed his position: “I said that I would like to be sure that this vaccine has been properly tested and satisfies everyone the criteria of safety and efficacy because much of this research is done with public money and I have not seen the data. If I do not know it, I do not get vaccinated. I do not think I am asking something absurd, I would like transparency and vision of the data, I would like to understand how this sample is made and if there are imbalances. Why was I attacked? Because the Italian scientific environment is provincial. The editor of the British Medical Journal was very critical of the procedures. And also that of Nature. So I feel in good company. I only asked for transparency. If politics press for the vaccine? It is natural! We are in an emergency and the expectation of citizens is to get out of it and politics intercepts these expectations. But what I want to say one thing: transparency builds trust ”.

Massimo Giletti asks him what is the difference between the three types of vaccine and Chrysantis: “There are three types of vaccine. One is generic, of the RNA type and they are those of Moderna and Pfizer, they differ because Modern exploits a patent on the stabilization of the RNA molecule which is very unstable and therefore does not really need the extreme cold chain. Then there is the AstraZeneca vaccine which is a viral vector vaccine, basically packaged, encapsulates part of the nucleic acid of the virus that is unable to replicate and stimulates an infection. And then there is a third more traditional vaccine, the results of which are not yet available, which is made with protein components of the virus, but we will know more about this in 5 or 6 months. The vaccine development capacity surprised everyone, it usually takes 5 to 8 years, we got here in less than a year. In January or February we will see the first doses of the vaccine ”.

Giletti also focuses on another problem: Italy is not ready for the storage and distribution of the vaccine. Crisanti responds: “In fact, it is a great challenge, the distribution at -80 ° requires a great investment. We’ll see. It must be said that we are not as prepared as Germany, but most Italian hospitals have refrigerators at -80, so in a first phase we could think about using these cells in stock “.