Ram Duriseti, MD, PhD, joins Christine’s and my podcast today. He was part of the University of Southern Denmark’s recent reanalysis of the phase 3 trials of mRNA vaccines to children, part of Urgency of Normal and a strong voice of reason in California during the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, we discuss what it was like to work as an Emergency Physician during Covid in the Bay Area. Ram also talks about why he mostly stayed out of academic research despite his PhD prior to Covid-and then why he felt compelled to get involved. I discuss why, for financial reasons I chose to turn down doing a PhD in the US and it why it was economically feasible for a young MD and mom to pursue a PhD in Denmark.
Then we cover their mRNA vaccine analysis, its results including increased risk of non-Covid infections in young children and the implications for this and other vaccines. Christine mentions many new mRNA vaccines are underway for different pathogens. We all agreed the Covid mRNA vaccines were not sufficiently tested for their potential non-specific effects. The new mRNA vaccines will provide new opportunities for this but the FDA and EMA are unfortunately unlikely to require these types of studies for approval. Finally Ram discusses losing his clinical position at Stanford due to the booster mandate.
Other scientific papers Ram and I have been co-authors on
NEJM on Israeli healthy vaccinee bias: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683
BMJ-ADC: Systematic review of masks in children https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/3/e2
Preprint re-analysis of the Cowger et al Boston mask study: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11974
Discussion with Ram Duriseti, MD, PhD