However, during the trial, the companies decided to break protocol and tell everyone in the control group they were not vaccinated and offered them a choice of staying in the study or accepting the vaccine. Virtually all them asked for the vaccine. The final FDA authorization and approval for the vaccines are based on the outcome of these trials, but the control group had been removed, which means a safety study was never conducted. This is such a gross violation of standard scientific procedure that could not have been accidental. -GEG

According to NPR, the doctors lost the control group in the Johnson County Clinicial Trial (Lexena, Kansas) on purpose: "Dr. Carlos Fierro, who runs the study there, says every participant was called back after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine. "During that visit we discussed the options, which included staying in the study without the vaccine," he says, "and amazingly there were people — a couple of people — who chose that."