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Everyone wants an effective COVID-19 vaccine. Are there reasons to worry the Trump administration may push through a vaccine before it’s undergone complete clinical testing?

Rival nations China and Russia have already announced they have vaccines, while COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. continue to rise. Meanwhile, a presidential election is just months away.

A new article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists asked Seema Mohapatra, IU McKinney Associate Professor of Law, who noted that the Trump administration’s recent announcement of authorization for convalescent plasma exacerbated those worries.

“The most recent announcement was the most troublesome, because it seemed like it was being politicized,” Professor Mohapatra said. “The release was unlike other press releases that the FDA puts out. It looks a lot more like a campaign-type ad.”

Professor Mohapatra worries that the perceptions of politicization that the FDA’s emergency authorization decisions have had to date could spill over into how people view the authorization of an eventual vaccine. “There’s a concern that when there is a [COVID-19] vaccine, if it is, you know, literally warp speed, kind of rushed to market to coincide with the election, that people are not going to have faith that the vaccine is effective, that people are not going to actually sign up to take the vaccine,” she said.

Professor Mohapatra is a Dean’s Fellow at IU McKinney Law. Her research has focused on equity issues, centering on race and gender, in bioethics, public health law, and biotechnology and the law. She is an expert in the areas of health care law, public health law, bioethics, torts, and international family law.