can literally anyone be surprised by this?

we knew this all along.

this is why the NIH allowed gilead to change the primary endpoint of this trial 2 weeks before it read out: because it provided no survival benefit and they could see it in the data. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/health/coronavirus-remdesivir-who.html

this drug would have failed a fair trial. they literally changed the rules in the middle and found a subset (recovery) that was, frankly, not that efficacious either, and jammed it through

i'm sure it had nothing do do with the 8 people paid by gilead on the NIH panel for covid

how is that not a massive conflict of interest?

how were these people not recused?

this was an extreme and one might even say outlandish action to take.

it does not appear to have been done with clean hands.

is that how you want your drugs approved?

you can scam and bribe your way through the NIH and FDA, but that does not make the drug work.

many of us were talking about this back in july.

the fix was in on this drug, but that does not make it work. https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1284624464416854018?s=20

gilead can hem and haw all they like about "significant heterogeneity" but they failed their own trial too so this seems like PR, not science.

this was just a dishonest attempt to bribe a failed ebola drug into generating some revenue

and what revenue! this is $3000 a patient.

for basically no efficacy

they elbowed it into front line status by cheating.

now they are getting caught.

this has been a flat out scandal from end to end.

i look at A LOT of drug trials and you simply do not see this kind of shenanigans or tolerance for conflict of interest

amazingly, almost no reporters ever wanted to pick up this story (and i know as i shared it with several).

i suspect the coronovirus omerta was just too strong and drug companies are big spenders on ads.

but maybe now it will.

it's ripe and that facts are in.

we need some sunlight here, esp. given the pressure to approve a vaccine on a timeline that is short to the point of being utterly reckless, esp. for an mRNA vaccine (a type not used in humans before)

let's make remdesavir an object lesson, not a dinner bell for misbehavior