Annual Review 2025 | infosperber by Martina Frei

Reading the information leaflets for medications is horrifying for some and too lengthy for others. There are remarkable things in these texts – which were negotiated between the manufacturers and the pharmaceutical regulator. For example about vaccines.

For around four years, doctors and vaccination committees had been encouraging pregnant women to get vaccinated against Covid. Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna earned billions upon billions from their mRNA vaccines. They would have been obliged to investigate how the Covid vaccines work in pregnant women and how often which side effects occur.

Nevertheless, in February 2025, the package inserts for “Comirnaty” and “Spikevax” still stated that there was only limited experience or insufficient data on use during pregnancy. And it is not known whether the vaccine has an impact on fertility.

At the same time, scientists were puzzled as to why the mRNA vaccines had caused heavy menstrual bleeding and irregularities in many women. And they wondered about the reasons for the increased, record-high decline in birth rates.

This is how what led to this article began:

Infosperber published this article on February 17, 2025

It was the beginning of research that is still ongoing – one of the many outstanding projects on my desk. The first few weeks of pregnancy are of particular interest. The deeper I dug, the more questionable things I came across.

A Swiss professor’s answer to the question of whether he thought Covid mRNA vaccines were effective and safe during pregnancy was bizarre: He asked “Chat-GPT” and sent me its answer. I give him credit for answering the questions.

The current President of the Federal Vaccination Commission, Christoph T. Berger, for example, did not do this. Among other things, I asked him why Switzerland continues to recommend the Covid vaccination to pregnant women, while the USA and Great Britain no longer do this routinely. He is not the only one who did not respond to critical questions.

On the other side – in the vaccine-sceptical camp – press conferences are now taking place to which only journalists who have the “right” attitude are invited.

Both camps belittle each other and shower each other with malice, even to the point of a journalist remarking in a major newspaper that it would be welcome if the unvaccinated aluminum hats died.

While one camp can no longer write a specialist article without first having to emphasize how great vaccinations – and especially the mRNA vaccines – are, the other camp increases in descriptions of their danger and calls for an immediate stop to mRNA. The fronts have hardened, press offices are shielding their experts or they are refusing to provide information. Instead of dialogue, communication takes place within one’s own bubble. This is not good for journalism and society.

There used to be a rule of thumb in journalism: If experts who are knowledgeable in a subject contradict each other, then that means: “We don’t know for sure.” Since the Covid pandemic, this simple rule no longer applies.

For each medication, it can be discussed when it makes sense, what side effects it can have and whether the costs justify the benefits. But vaccines? Many large media outlets also wear blinders. However, it is always emphasized how safe and effective the vaccines are, according to the motto: just don’t give the opponents of vaccination any arguments.

As with other medications, there is also a need for discussion with vaccines. Established scientists from various countries – none of whom are anti-vaccine – repeatedly raise well-founded concerns. But their arguments are not taken up by the major media.

In May 2025, the partisan lawyer Aaron Siri pointed out to a US Senate committee on what thin data basis routine vaccinations recommended for children in the US were approved there. He took the information from the package inserts: For some vaccines, it was enough to observe the vaccinated children for three, four or five days to see whether any undesirable effects occurred – and approval was granted. For other vaccines, the observation period was at least 30 days or six months.

An exception was the dengue vaccination “Dengvaxia” with an observation period of several years. It turned out that under certain circumstances the vaccine led to more severe cases of dengue and more deaths in children. Independent scientists had previously warned about exactly this scenario. But their objections were brushed aside by the experts. I reported on this in 2024.

This example shows that not everything is understood when it comes to vaccines and that there can be unpleasant turns or long-term consequences. Fortunately, an experimental RSV vaccine for babies detected this before mass vaccination.

In order to know which undesirable effects really arise from the vaccine, studies with a comparison group are required before approval. However, this comparison group often does not receive a placebo, but rather another vaccine or the additives that are added to the vaccine to activate the immune system. Various renowned scientists repeatedly complain about this because comparing two active substances can lead to the frequency of undesirable effects of the vaccine being “clouded”.

When it comes to new medications, pharmaceutical companies often shy away from head-to-head comparisons with their competitors – even though it would be important for patients, doctors and health insurance companies to know which of two medications is more effective and safer. When it comes to vaccines, however, manufacturers prefer to compare them with other active substances. (However, this also has ethical reasons, because if a disease can be prevented thanks to a vaccine, it would not be fair to intentionally let the placebo group “go through the knife.”)

An example: The pneumococcal vaccine against certain PCV-7 pneumonia pathogens was compared in a study with another experimental and unapproved vaccine, according to Aaron Siri. The next, newer vaccine PCV-13 was then compared with PCV-7. This was followed by PCV-15, which was compared to its predecessor vaccine, PCV-13. And finally PCV-20 came onto the market, with the comparison group in the study receiving PCV-15.

Aaron Siri criticizes: Virtually every officially recommended routine vaccination for children “was approved without placebo control; was tested for safety typically for six months or less, often only days or weeks; and the studies often had too few participants to be able to identify safety problems.

The warning systems after approval are also notoriously weak, as many suspicious activity reports are not even made. And when monitoring – as happened with the Covid vaccination campaign – was supposed to be improved with the help of apps or other measures, the authorities such as the German Paul Ehrlich Institute did not release the data.

When concerns arose about possible side effects of the HPV vaccination, it turned out that the European Medicines Agency did not have all the studies that the manufacturer had done. Their assessment was based on only 6 of 14 studies.

The costs of vaccines would also be worth a broad discussion: Should we spend around 90,000 francs to prevent a single hospitalization for pneumonia (RSV) in older people with a new vaccination – or would they be better served if this money was used, for example, to pay for an additional nursing staff in a retirement home? And why are we currently shelling out almost 100 francs for a single dose of a Covid vaccination when it only costs an estimated one to three dollars to produce?

«Talking about vaccination [ist] “It has been a very heated debate for more than two hundred years, when the first vaccinations were introduced,” wrote Basel professor Eberhard Wolff in the “Swiss Medical Newspaper” in 2019.

It would be the job of journalists to present the best arguments from all sides – without blinders. Some people who don’t know me accuse me of being anti-vaccination. That’s not true. I have been vaccinated myself and as a doctor I also vaccinate patients. The reason why I report on the topic of vaccinations – one-sidedly from the point of view of some critics – is that major media outlets do not take off their blinders. You don’t have to be anti-vaccination to ask critical questions. When used sensibly, vaccinations are a blessing – but they need to be carefully examined. Like any medication.

PS: The Comirnaty and Spikevax package inserts have now been reformulated. It is still not known whether the two mRNA vaccines affect fertility in humans.