Many drug and vaccine approvals in the past have been done before the trial has run its full course. Many drug and vaccine trials have given the placebo group the real drug once safety and efficacy is clear - before the end of the trial.
This is not new, and frankly I’m a little surprised to see such conspiracy theories on HN.
Note the date on this article - this was back in February of this year: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...
Don't denigrate a perfectly valid criticism of deviations from historical norms of drug validation and approval by calling it a "conspiracy theory".
Continued assignment of subjects to placebo is unethical, once there is good evidence to support the efficacy of the trial therapy.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) since there was such strong evidence to prove the efficacy, it became unethical for the continued assignment of placebo.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCHEARTFAILURE.111...
Here's an article on the ethics of a placebo-controlled trial in the first place. It's complicated.
https://acrpnet.org/2018/12/06/ethical-deliberations-on-usin...
Anyway none of your comments actually address the science involved. A few factoids without any context is not useful.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fast-track-drug-approval-design...
Garasdil was approved by the FDA in 2006 and, as this press release shows [0], continued running studies into it as a condition of the approval. They conceded that full results could not be available before approval; “While the study period was not long enough for cervical cancer to develop, the prevention of these cervical precancerous lesions is believed highly likely to result in the prevention of those cancers.”
From what I can gather, the Phase III study participants continued to receive follow-up checks for at least a decade.
[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20091019080918/https://www.fda.g...
The completion date was changed multiple times since April 2020 and they clearly appended booster trials to the existing trials and pushed back the dates.
It truly is that simple.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fc...