COVID-19 Controversies: Researchers From Establishment Famed For Fraud and Deceit Publishes Study Showing That Remdesivir Has ‘Efficacy’ Against SARS-CoV-2
Source: COVID-19 Controversies Jul 10, 2020 4 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, 12 hours, 37 minutes ago
COVID-19 Controversies: Despite the fact that Pharmaceutical giant Gilead has huge resources and research facilities, it was never demonstrated that Remdesivir had any direct effects in terms of inhibiting the SARS-CoV-2 replication capability in vitro or vivo studies. The only things it had that made the Trump administration pass the FDA approval as a drug for COVID-19 was 'half-baked' studies showing a reduced hospitalization period and that it was really expensive. Also, to date there are still no long term safety studies ever done on the drug.
With many critical of the drug’s efficacy, and growing concerns and suspicions especially with Trump’s administration buying up more than half a million doses at really high inflated prices and despite months of no true studies that shows the drug really have an effect on the virus per say, researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee and also researchers from North Carolina University, both Republican influenced territories and also Gilead researchers themselves have now published a study in the journal: Cell Reports that is owned by a Dutch company called Elsevier to claim that the drug has efficacy against the virus.
Now for some interesting details: Vanderbilt University Medical Center and its group are famous for fraud, deceit and are also supporters of Trump administration. In March 2014, the institution was sued by the federal government in a whistle-blower case for a decade-long
Medicare fraud scheme.
https://www.law360.com/articles/520083/vandy-stuck-with-whistleblowing-docs-fca-claims
The university also admitted one of its scientists fraudulently falsified six years of biomedical research in high-profile journals.
https://retractionwatch.com/2014/11/20/former-vanderbilt-scientist-faked-nearly-70-images-will-retract-6-papers-ori/
They are more on the list but for simplicity and for readers to get an idea, we will simply stop at these two.
Now for the medical journal group Elsevier which is an entity that is very money driven company with lots of ongoing deals in China ie CDS (Clinical Decision Support) systems, Chinese language journals etc
At a 2009 court case in Australia where Merck & Co. was being sued by a user of Vioxx, the plaintiff alleged that Merck had paid Elsevier to publish the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, which had the appearance of being a peer-reviewed academic journal but in fact contained only articles favorable to Merck drugs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090506064629/https://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25311725-5013871,00.html and
https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/e
lsevier-published-6-fake-journals-44160 and
https://www.theage.com.au/national/merck-accused-of-ghost-writing-medical-article-20090422-afdk.html?page=-1
In fact the list of wrong doings from not peer-reviewing studies properly, to fake journals and fake studies etc, runs long. Some details can be found on a wikipedia website:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier and many more by doing some diligence.
That is not to say that Elsevier publications are not reliable, on the contrary they have put a lot of new measures into place and are extremely professional and trustworthy these days.
But the fact remains, no university, research facility, academic staff or medical journal is beyond the reach of the extremely rich pharmaceutical giants and political influence.
Coming fact to this study that was published, the authors of the study also declared to have ties to Gilead company and some even owned shares in the company!
The research was led by Dr Andrea J. Pruijssers, a research assistant Professor of
Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center along with a list of other researchers.
They claim to be the first to perform ‘detailed studies’ to demonstrate that the drug, which was developed by Gilead Sciences to combat hepatitis C and respiratory syncytial virus, and later the Ebola virus but was never used, ‘showed ‘broad and highly potent activity against coronaviruses in laboratory tests.
As of press time, we could not locate the article study in Cell report journal despite the media announcement but we did find the earlier preprint version published in bioRxiv.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.064279v1
We will let readers to figure out the truth if Remdesivir really works against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus after reading the study.
For more on
COVID-19 controversies, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.
Read also:
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/generic-remdesivir-while-americans-have-to-pay-up-to-us$3120-for-gilead%E2%80%99s-remdesivir,-price-war-in-india-has-led-prices-dropping-to-below-us$50
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-remdesivir-gilead-sets-price-at-us$2,340-to-us$3,120-for-drug-that-has-no-safety-studies-or-true-efficacy-except-that-it-shortens-hospitaliza
