So earlier this year, after the Food and Drug Administration approved two vaccines for adults 60 and up, approved antibodies for babies and toddlers, and approved a vaccine for pregnant individuals to protect newborns, the new capability to effectively deal with R.S.V. was hailed as a medical breakthrough. And it is.
The new vaccines have been thoroughly tested in accordance with today’s clinical trial standards. But this breakthrough has a history, one tangled up in questions of medical ethics and racial exploitation.
A fascinating report published this week in Undark, a nonprofit digital magazine affiliated with M.I.T. (I’m a member of the magazine’s advisory board), found that in the 1960s, some of the first and youngest subjects to receive experimental shots, in a clinical trial of early attempts to develop R.S.V. vaccines, were Black and poor children, some in foster care. And though questions remain about what parents knew, “archival documents...
