The ‘Very, Very Bad Look’ of Remdesivir, the First FDA-approved COVID-19 Drug

At best, only 1 study out of all studies about this Big Pharma product, showed any positive result at all. The rest showed that it made NO DIFFERENCE. Then Trump stepped in and promoted the heck out of it, and like magic, it got approved, after his rising from the dead in 3 days, just like Jesus.A few smaller studies found no impact of treatment on the disease whatsoever. Then, on 15 October—in this month’s decidedly unfavorable news for Gilead—the fourth and largest controlled study delivered what some believed was a coup de grâce: The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Solidarity trial showed that remdesivir does not reduce mortality or the time COVID-19 patients take to recover.
Science has learned that both FDA’s decision and the EU deal came about under unusual circumstances that gave the company important advantages. FDA never consulted a group of outside experts that it has at the ready to weigh in on complicated antiviral drug issues. That group, the Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee (ADAC), mixes infectious disease clinicians with biostatisticians, pharmacists, and a consumer representative to review all available data on experimental treatments and make recommendations to FDA about drug approvals—yet it has not convened once during the pandemic.
The European Union, meanwhile, decided to settle on the remdesivir pricing exactly 1 week before the disappointing Solidarity trial results came out. It was unaware of those results, although Gilead, as the trial’s sponsor, began to review the WHO data on 23 September and knew the trial was a bust.
“This is a very, very bad look for the FDA, and the dealings between Gilead and EU make it another layer of badness,” says Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute who objected to remdesivir’s FDA approval.
The ‘Very, Very Bad Look’ of Remdesivir, the First FDA-approved COVID-19 Drug – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization