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According to a new report by medical experts, the problem is global. New vaccines are rarely designed with the specific needs of pregnant women in mind, leaving many women vulnerable to diseases which, a few months earlier, they might have been able to receive protection from. “The decisionto continue to withhold this vaccine from pregnant women is notjustifiable,” says Ruth Faden, a professor of biomedical ethics at Johns Hopkins University and one of the lead authors of the report. “We must listen to the voices of pregnant women in the midst of an outbreak. If they’re saying, ‘Give me the choice, I want to decide,’ how can we not respond to that? How could you not give them that choice?”

The report, penned by the Pregnancy Research Ethics for Vaccines, Epidemics, and New Technologies (PREVENT) Working Group, a team of experts specializing in disciplines including bioethics, maternal-fetal medicine, philosophy, and vaccine research, examines the urgent need to address the welfare of pregnant women in public health crises. It lays out 22 recommendations for policymakers in the United States and abroad, including directions to improve data collection so vaccines can be developed—and clinical trials conducted—with pregnant women in mind. In the event of an outbreak, the experts say, maternal and neonatal health experts should be closely consulted, and decisions should be informed by the perspective of affected women themselves—many pregnant women, Faden says, would likely opt into research to protect them and their babies, born or otherwise, from disease. And during an epidemic, the default should be to offer vaccines to pregnant women, not the reverse.

…continue reading ‘Vaccine Studies Still Exclude Pregnant Women. That’s a Big Mistake.’

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