A virology journal has retracted a paper detailing the first human trials of an Iran-made vaccine against the COVID-19 virus following criticism from scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
Published in 2022 in the Journal of Medical Virology, the now-retracted study described the clinical development of the Noora vaccine, which had been licensed for emergency use in Iran in the same year.
Scientists worldwide, including Donald Forthal, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, raised doubts about the validity of the study. Despite the critiques, the paper had undergone multiple rounds of review before publication.
In January, additional concerns regarding data integrity and potential conflicts of interest were raised by epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz on PubPeer. Subsequently, on March 2, the Journal of Medical Virology announced the retraction of the paper citing inconsistencies in the data and the authors' failure to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
Corresponding author Hassan Abolghasemi of the IRGC-affiliated Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences in Tehran disputed the retraction, alleging it was politically motivated. Abolghasemi claimed that pressure was exerted on the journal due to "apartheid scientific issues" and stated that their response to criticisms was not accepted for publication.
Last year, a report claimed that over 75,000 Covid deaths could have been prevented in Iran if the regime had permitted global vaccines, banned by Iran's supreme leader who ruled out importing United States and British made Covid vaccines in January 2021, arguing that Western countries could not be trusted.
He claimed Iran was well placed to develop its own vaccines or should take them from more reliable sources as at the time, the US-German Pfizer, US-made Moderna and the British-made AstraZeneca were the only vaccines approved internationally.
A paper published in association with the British Medical Journal and Yale last year called, ‘A quantitative evaluation of the impact of vaccine roll-out rate and coverage on reducing deaths from COVID-19: a counterfactual study on the impact of the delayed vaccination programme in Iran,’ a team of experts have found evidence to show mass neglect on the part of the regime.