Prashant Bhushan kicks off row with anti-vaccine remarks

Activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan kicked off a row on Monday as he questioned the universal Covid-19 vaccination drive of “experimental and untested vaccines” especially to young and those recovered from the infectious disease.

Health experts called out Bhushan and termed his remarks as irresponsible, saying such comments could affect the vaccination drive against Covid-19.

Bhushan claimed the healthy young hardly have any chance of serious effects of dying due to Covid, but have a higher chance of dying due to vaccines.

Twitter marked Bhushan’s tweet on the young dying due to vaccines as “misleading”.

“I would strongly advise him (Prashant Bhushan) not to make statements of this kind which can only hinder India's struggle to vaccinate even the most vulnerable. This is the nth time he is making such irresponsible statements on Covid-19 vaccines,” Rijo M John, health economist and Adjunct Professor Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Kochi, said.

Also read: Karnataka to get nearly 60 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses in July

“Prashant Bhushan is questioning the foundations of 2 existing and well-understood sciences, those of immunology and vaccinology .. and incorrectly,” Gautam Menon, professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University said.

“I am not anti vaccine per se. But I believe it is irresponsible to promote universal vaccination of experimental & untested vaccines especially to young & Covid recovered,” Bhushan said adding that he had not taken the Covid vaccine and neither did he intended to.

Unfazed by the criticism, Bhushan penned an elaborate response claiming suppression of information regarding alternative treatments and “censorship of the truth in pursuit of vaccine profits”.

“Apart from the vaccines being untested & having serious adverse effects, I am shocked by attempts to censor such contrarian views,” Bhushan said.