Vaccines, Peter Thiel and the Fine Art of the Journalistic Hatchet Job
Never let the facts get in the way of a good agenda-driven story.
Ridvan Arda/Dreamstime"Peter Thiel Funds 'Unethical' Offshore Herpes Vaccine Trial," blared a headline over at the DailyBeast. The single problem is that it's false.
The story is illustrated with a photoshop of venture capitalist Peter Thiel holding a menacing syringe. Even more damning, the editors added, "The Trump adviser is part of a group of wealthy businessmen spending millions to test the vaccine on people—while evading Food and Drug Administration regulations." Which is also false.
The DailyBeast article was published on August 27. The headline for the biotech news site genomeweb's summary of the story reads, "A Libertarian Vaccine?"
The headline and the story appear to be an instance of never letting facts get in the way. Unwary readers encountering the artfully constructed article would likely be led to conclude that a cabal of greedy libertarian venture capitalists had experimented on desperate people without their consent.
The problem that the startup in the story, Rational Vaccines, is taking on is huge. In the United States, more than 23 million people—about one in seven people ages 14 to 49 —have genital herpes. As many as three million suffer herpes outbreaks four to 24 times per year. Those who suffer frequent outbreaks experience open sores, considerable pain, frequent headaches, and the infection sometimes results in blindness and life-threatening bouts of meningitis. Chronic sufferers experience stigma and social isolation.
The vaccine trial referred to in the story took place more than a year ago. Thiel Capital actually invested on August 23. So what gives?
What actually happened is that in 2015 and 2016 Southern Illinois University viral immunologist William Halford set up a trial of his attenuated herpes simplex 2 (HSV-2) vaccine. He inoculated 20 volunteers from the U.S. and U.K. at a site on the Caribbean island country of Nevis and St. Kitts.
Rational Vaccines reported in an October, 2016 press release participants had, on average, experienced a 3-fold reduction in their herpes symptom-days per month relative to their experience taking standard treatment antiviral drugs.
Halford submitted his results to a peer-reviewed journal that initially rejected his paper and asked for further data. Halford had years earlier contracted a rare form of cancer and died in June at age 48.
Halford had been researching herpes viruses for more than two decades. Eventually he came to question the medical consensus that vaccines should be developed using viral protein subunits. Previous virus vaccines including polio, measles, rubella, and chickenpox had been created using live-attenuated viruses. Such vaccines used weakened versions of viruses that could not cause disease to prime the immune system protect against natural strains. By the 1980s, many vaccine researchers concluded that using proteins derived from disease-causing viruses was safer.
However, Halford's research convinced him an HSV subunit vaccine would be relatively ineffective because HSV genomes are much more complicated than simpler human papillomavirus and hepatitis B viruses. Attempts to develop HSV subunit vaccines have so far not borne fruit.
In lab mice his live-attenuated vaccine elicited 10 to 100 times greater protection against genital herpes than a subunit vaccine did, Halford reported. To check its safety, Halford injected himself with his own vaccine. Rational Vaccines is developing both a therapeutic vaccine for people who are already infected and a prophylactic vaccine to protect the rest of from becoming infected.
Halford and Augustin Fernandez III, CEO investor in Rational Vaccines approached Thiel Capital and other possible venture investors in April 2017, after the preliminary results of the initial trial were in. Fernandez says he never spoke with Thiel, but met with Jason Camm, chief medical officer of Thiel Capital. In an interview, Fernandez confirmed that Thiel Capital did not formally invest in the current $7 million round of financing until August 23.
Then all hell broke loose.
As usual with clinical trials, Rational Vaccines paid the travel expenses for the 20 trial participants who were already infected with the virus. I talked with trial participant Richard Mancuso, a 48-year-old New Jersey truck driver, about his experience. Mancuso told me he suffered painful herpes outbreaks two to three times per month since he had been infected 25 years ago. After the course of three inoculations during the trial, his outbreaks declined until he no longer had any.
When I asked about his informed consent, Mancuso said, "Halford sat me down for a three hour interview to see if I qualified. He explained to me that the vaccine was experimental, that it might not work, and that there were some risks involved."
Mancuso was interviewed for the DailyBeast article and he was shocked by the story's conclusions. Incensed by what he regards as the bias and unfairness, Mancuso has posted a heartfelt YouTube video aimed directly at the reporter. "You didn't even mention the fact that I gave informed consent and so did everyone else who signed off on the trial. They all gave signed consent," he says. "They were informed of the risks; they are informed of everything. You didn't put that into the article." Mancuso adds, "All you did was just attack and make it sound like it was just a money-grab between Trump and Thiel."
In fact, the article does not put too fine a point on its real motivations:
Defying U.S. safety protections for human trials, an American university and a group of wealthy libertarians, including a prominent Donald Trump supporter, are backing the offshore testing of an experimental herpes vaccine. …
The push behind the vaccine is as much political as medical. President Trump has vowed to speed up the FDA's approval of some medicines. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who had deep financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, slammed the FDA before his confirmation for over-prioritizing consumer protection to the detriment of medical innovations.
Sounds like a money-grab conspiracy, doesn't it?
In an October 2016 article in the local newspaper, the State Journal-Register, Halford made it clear he was anxious to jumpstart his vaccine with a trial abroad to avoid excessive regulation. Avoiding excessive bureaucracy to some is endangering patients to others. The DailyBeast article quotes Jonathan Zenilman, the chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, who said, "What they're doing is patently unethical. There's a reason why researchers rely on these protections. People can die."
The DailyBeast also notes that Zenilman cited research in the late 1940s in which the U.S. government deliberately infected study participants in Guatemala with sexually transmitted diseases without their consent. I am no bioethicist, but trying to cure people of sexually transmitted diseases with their informed consent somehow seems like a different case.
Of course, there are medical charlatans who do take advantage of desperate people, but the DailyBeast failed to make the case that Halford and Rational Vaccines are engaged in any such thing. The main complaint is that Halford did not submit his vaccine trial to an institutional review board (IRB) for review. Although he thinks Halford was wrong to conduct his trial without IRB supervision, former Obama administration FDA commissioner Robert Califf does in the article concede, "It may be legal to be doing it without oversight."
What happens now? CEO Fernandez vows to go forward. Halford's SIU colleague immunologist Edward Gershburg has agreed to work as the company's chief technology officer. Fernandez says that aim of the company has always been to eventually obtain FDA approval of the vaccines. Now backed with $7 million in seed capital, Fernandez says that the company intends to launch new trials that will adhere to all of the bureaucratic niceties.
Halford and Rational Vaccines were open and transparent about what they were doing and all of this information was available year ago. So why the hullabaloo now? Agenda-driven politics. Let's hope that the DailyBeast article does not end up delaying the badly needed FDA drug approval reforms and the development of effective treatments that could prevent and alleviate the suffering of millions.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.
-
Peter Thiel is a 21st Century Dr. Mengele!1!!
Rational Vaccines should be put o trial for infecting these marginalized PoC with herpes in the first place.
-
You're an idiot/troll/asshole.
-
Do you know what sarcasm is?
-
Dunno, but he seems to have SIV pretty well pegged.
-
Sorry, I assumed troll because that is literally like the 5th comment about Thiel and this herpes story stating he is a "21st century Dr. Mengele." So now I'm wondering if you have made the same statement on other sites as well? That would seem to be a coincidence if not. So was that you? No it does not sound like sarcasm to me.
-
I for one hope to see Facebook and other leading internet web destinations doing more to purge #FakeNews.
-
Never going to happen. They thrive on click volume, not accuracy. Wouldn't doubt it if they manufactured most of the fake news.
-
You do know that they actually have been caught doing this exact same thing.
BTW, please remember that the entire main stream news media is under the (nearly) direct control of western intelligence. DCI William Colby testified to such in the Church Committee hearings in 1975. Said that it took up about 40% of CIA's budget. Since the industry is far more concentrated now, I would imagine that the control is even tighter.
Just look at every newspaper article and TV/cable news show and remember that the CIA wants you to know [x].
-
The news industry is more concentrated now than when there were three networks and not much else?
Dude, don't bogart that joint, pass it around.
-
"The story is illustrated with a photoshop of venture capitalist Peter Thiel holding a menacing syringe. Even more damning, the editors added, "The Trump adviser is part of a group of wealthy businessmen spending millions to test the vaccine on people—while evading Food and Drug Administration regulations." "
You can call a guy crazy for holding a syringe. You can call him a slimy, wealthy businessman. You can call him a crook for evading FDA regulations. But by God I'm not going to sit here quietly and listen to you call him a Trump advisor!!!
-
Defying U.S. safety protections for human trials
Fuck off, slaver.
-
"Avoiding excessive bureaucracy to some is endangering patients to others."
And to others yet, it may well be saving lives and preventing illness.
-
the Fine Art of the Journalistic Hatchet Job
Time to turn those hatchets around.
-
Indeed
-
I just don't get how you can defend the guy when he obviously snuck off to the one tiny island in the entire world not subject to the jurisdiction of the FDA to do his little experiments - obviously he was up to no good. You don't see scientists in France or Japan or Argentina sneaking off to evade oversight by the FDA do you?
-
He was offshoring his research!
-
Halford injected himself with his own vaccine.
You know who else ...?
-
David Bruce Banner?
-
Because, of course, IRBs are purely forces for good.
-
Credit where due:
The hack who wrote the piece is Ms.Marisa Taylor, with some apparent connection to Kaiser Health News.
And you can contact Kaiser Health News right here:
http://khn.org/contact-us/
I did. -
""Journalistic Hatchet Job""
hmmm why does that sound familiar....
-
And while we're considering journo-bullshit, let's take a look at this:
Yep, it's hot in Northern California, given that this is our "summer" with the fog now blown to the west. It hit 106* according to one source, which is hot in SF which is hot. How hot?
"All-time record high temperature broken in San Francisco
Friday shattered this record."
KTVU
SHATTERED, I tell you! SHATTERED!
Well, maybe not so much:
"Story updated Sept. 1 at 3 p.m.: San Francisco broke its highest temperature record of 103 degrees set in 2000 today. On Friday afternoon, the mercury shot up to 104."
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/.....164923.php
But you'll notice the mercury "SHOT UP TO" a reading 1*F higher than the one recorded in 2000.
You're welcome to check the comments; I'm betting they are predictable. -
Here's an early brickbat for Saturday. Enjoy.
Wubbels was working her shift as a charge nurse, or a liaison between patients and doctors and hospital managers, at University Hospital's Burn Unit when she was handcuffed in the middle of her work area, pulled outside and put into a police patrol car for about 20 minutes.
She was arrested after refusing to give Payne vials of blood that he needed for an investigation because she said he did not have a warrant or meet any of the mandatory criteria needed for taking blood.
-
-
Apologies accepted by the nurse.
-
It always amazes me that the police chiefs don't know what happened with their own employees until after the video is made public, and THEN they apologize.
-
covered yesterday
-
Ouch. Should have known -- I missed it somehow.
-
Hmmm. I agree that they should have gone through an IRB. But it is possible that none would accept jurisdiction. I dunno. There are private IRBs that review things like this but I have never used one for a foreign trial.
-
"I agree that they should have gone through an IRB."
OK, then:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017.....nightmare/ -
I was about ready to give up at this point, but Dr. W insisted on combing through various regulations and talking to various people, until he discovered some arcane rule that certain very safe studies with practically no risk were allowed to use an "expedited consent form", which was a lot like a normal consent form but didn't need to have things like the name of the study on it. Faced with someone even more obsessive and bureaucratic than they were, the IRB backed down and gave us preliminary permission to start our study.
I LOLd.
-
Huh? I thought progs loved vaccines and fuckin loved science. I guess that only applies to government-funded science...
-
Duh. If it's not government funded, it's not real science. Nobody did real science until the government started funding and organizing and managing it. And now just look how many issues have been settled!
-
At risk of getting banned again by Reason - I fucking LOVE the pic of Thiel and Trump holding hands. It's like Trump really believes that Thiel will make him young again.
-
That picture of the Trump/Thiel handshake posted on quartz on Dec. 15th caused me to have a mind blowing cognitive shift that lead to hours of laughing.
-
DajjaI|9.2.17 @ 2:49AM|#
"It's like Trump really believes that Thiel will make him young again."No, it's like most of your posts; a lefty fantasy.
-
Very good article! Thanks for respecting the facts and trying to put some sanity back into the political debate.
Of course, the liberal press is only interested in the political angle. They only want to discredit Thiel, and never let facts stand in the way of their nonsense.
-
Totally agree. Watching most media pile on Thiel with their bullshit and outright lies shows that journalism barely exists. Most so called journalists need to quit and pursue something else in life.
-
Thank you Mr. Bailey for reporting the facts on this. I read close to around 20 articles about Peter Thiel funding the herpes vaccine and just about every one of them were lies and sensationalistic; even pbs newshour.
-
You want hatchet jobs re vaccines? What about the one right here on Rand Paul when he said he knew of people who'd suffered brain damage from vaccination? He was then accused of jumping on the ill-founded bandwagon re autism & vaccine preservatives. Actually he was referring to encephalopathies associated w pertussis vaccination.
I hate when people who don't know enough about a subject, including those whose memory (or lifespan) is too short to know of stuff from what's now hx for them, who then jump to conclusions to "refute" what somebody who knows or remembers more was saying. It's especially bad when the ignorance floats like rumor to refute actual knowledge. Like somebody who wrote to me saying my "clone theory" of Lost was refuted by a statement by the show's creator (a friend of mine). True, no clones—but I never said they were clones. I said lookalikes, doubles; people whose imagination couldn't conceive any other way to find (or create) doubles than via biologic cloning just took for granted I meant clones.
-
Good point. Vaccines can cause damage. To pretend otherwise is dishonest. Just as dishonest as claiming that vaccines are ineffective, or statistically dangerous.
I know nothing of "Lost", so no comment on that one.
-
A client of mine is pursuing human trials in Mexico of a virus-based immune-modulating biological because it's too expensive to do so in the USA. Maybe via Trump the extra expense will start to diminish.
-
So, a Progressive and anti-Trump reporter has the ethics of a Stalin era Party hack.
Not too surprising.
-
I have had HSV1 since I was a young child. I got sent home from school in 2nd grade because I had so many sores on my lips I could be Crusty Sr. :o)
I now usually only get a "cold sore" when my immune system is working on something else- I know it means a cold or flu is in my near future... or I've been drinking too much.
-
This sort of story is why I hate the left-wing media.
An effective Herpes vaccine is a major accomplishment. These ass-holes are willing to throw it away to score a few political points with their idiot acolytes.
This sort of thing is why Trump became president.
-
And it's these same people that claim to FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE.
-
If the FDA existed in its current state 100 years ago, tens of millions of more people would have died of polio. Many of the early tests were disastrous.
