"Swiss drugmaker Novartis has begun injecting its swine flu vaccine into people in the company's first human tests, a spokesman said Wednesday. The vaccine is being tested in a yearlong trial of 6,000 people of all ages in Britain, Germany and the United States," Full Story »
Posted by Margarita Persico
Though the article is a well-written article, it is missing important information. The article starts to mention what is in the vaccine, really, where it is incubated: in eggs. But abruptly does not finish just leaving the reader with partial knowledge and wondering what ingredients are used. Since the writer started to mention where it is incubated, the article needs to follow up with the subject and add one more sentence or paragraph explaining what goes into this vaccine, otherwise leave it out since as a reader one wonders what is so mysterious and why it is not reported. There was no transparency here. As a reader and consumer of this news media one expects the reporting to look after the audience, the readers. And this perhaps was an oversight from most news medias who are reporting on the ingredients in the vaccine. A piece of information the consumers must know.
“Half of Novartis’ vaccines being tested are grown in chicken eggs, the traditional way of making flu vaccines, while the other half use a new cell-based technology.”
What is the traditional way of making vaccines? The writer assumed the reader knows this. What is the other half? What is cell-based technology? What are the ingredients in vaccines? Are they human cells? Animal cells? Which animals? The article left me with unanswered questions.