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The title of this study is misleading. It states that vaccination during pregnancy is safe whereas all that was commented on was pre-term birth and gestational age. If the author is directed to the BNF, medication in pregnancy is not referred to as "safe", but "not known to be harmful". It would take years to establish the safety of any therapeutic intervention in pregnancy. I refer the author to the case of diethylstilbestrol (DES), an oestrogen prescribed to women, which was later withdrawn as shown to cause an increase in vaginal cancers in the female foetus. By this time it had been prescribed to 5-10 million pregnant women.
It took over a decade for this connection to made. Can we please stop calling the covid vaccination safe in pregnancy? The most anyone can say is that we do not not know it to be harmful (yet).
Re: Covid-19: Vaccination during pregnancy is safe, finds large US study
Dear Editor
The title of this study is misleading. It states that vaccination during pregnancy is safe whereas all that was commented on was pre-term birth and gestational age. If the author is directed to the BNF, medication in pregnancy is not referred to as "safe", but "not known to be harmful". It would take years to establish the safety of any therapeutic intervention in pregnancy. I refer the author to the case of diethylstilbestrol (DES), an oestrogen prescribed to women, which was later withdrawn as shown to cause an increase in vaginal cancers in the female foetus. By this time it had been prescribed to 5-10 million pregnant women.
It took over a decade for this connection to made. Can we please stop calling the covid vaccination safe in pregnancy? The most anyone can say is that we do not not know it to be harmful (yet).
Thank you
Dr Ayiesha Malik, GP
(1) BNF
(2) https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/women-exposed-des-womb-fac...
Competing interests: No competing interests