{"id":225999,"date":"2021-01-28T06:46:15","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T06:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=225999"},"modified":"2021-01-30T07:06:26","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T07:06:26","slug":"vaccine-giant-merck-pulls-plug-on-covid-trials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=225999","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine giant Merck pulls plug on Covid trials"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">The Irish Times \u2013 Jan 25, 2021<\/h1>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">US vaccine giant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_company=Merck\">Merck<\/a> is discontinuing development of its two experimental <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_event=Covid-19\">Covid-19<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_event=vaccines\">vaccines<\/a> after early trial data showed they failed to generate immune responses comparable to a natural infection or existing vaccines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">The US drug giant, known in Ireland as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_company=MSD\">MSD<\/a>, has a history of successfully developing vaccines, and had adopted a different strategy from rivals <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_company=Pfizer\">Pfizer<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_company=Moderna\">Moderna<\/a> and Johnson &amp; Johnson, using a more traditional approach of focusing on shots based on weakened viruses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">Merck received interim results from its early-stage trials this month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">The results were \u201cdisappointing, and a bit of a surprise\u201d, said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/topics\/topics-7.1213540?article=true&amp;tag_person=Nick+Kartsonis\">Nick Kartsonis<\/a>, senior vice-president of clinical research for infectious diseases and vaccines at Merck Research Laboratories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">Both shots generated fewer neutralising antibodies to halt infection than other Covid-19 vaccines, and produced inferior immune responses compared with people who had naturally contracted the coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">\u201cWe didn\u2019t have what we needed to be able to move forward,\u201d Mr Kartsonis said in an interview Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\">After evaluating the data, Merck\u2019s senior leadership decided to discontinue the programmes and divert resources to the company\u2019s efforts to develop Covid-19 treatments. \u2013 Bloomberg<\/p>\n<p class=\"nonameselectionshareable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/health-pharma\/vaccine-giant-merck-pulls-plug-on-covid-trials-1.4467455\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Merck abandons plans to develop a Covid vaccine after it was found that the body produced antibodies more effectively than the vaccine. So why has the world been shutdown until everyone is vaccinated when, given time, our bodies produce safe, natural antibodies anyway?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":226000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225999"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226003,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225999\/revisions\/226003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/226000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}