YippeeKi YOW !!
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It's shite like this that's the reason that I view BigPharma and its medical acolytes with suspicion and distrust, bordering, on my bad days, on paranoia ....
“I Take That as a Threat”: Big Pharma Is Meddling in the Race for a COVID-19 Treatment
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/big-pharma-meddling-in-race-for-covid-19-treatment?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HivePS_042520&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd6785b24c17c104801c463&cndid=41062334&hasha=5ed7439774137e71683f9f5143c8737f&hashb=d87c6d8af4fd18fd3861f4f413c51aa3dbc6201c&hashc=3687ad773d1a39d958c9b695663e9ba031619e791ed001501ec8512643ec4bc1&esrc=AUTO_MERGE&utm_campaign=VF_HivePS_042520&utm_term=VYF_Hive
The article is longish, but readable and important information to those of us hoping for, 1) New hope for ME/CFS, and ..... 2) Anyone hoping for a vaccine against COVID in the foreseeable future
Because I know that many of us have days when reading anything longer than a short index is monumentally draining, here are a few of the take-aways, and please don't shoot the messenger:
“I Take That as a Threat”: Big Pharma Is Meddling in the Race for a COVID-19 Treatment
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/big-pharma-meddling-in-race-for-covid-19-treatment?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HivePS_042520&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd6785b24c17c104801c463&cndid=41062334&hasha=5ed7439774137e71683f9f5143c8737f&hashb=d87c6d8af4fd18fd3861f4f413c51aa3dbc6201c&hashc=3687ad773d1a39d958c9b695663e9ba031619e791ed001501ec8512643ec4bc1&esrc=AUTO_MERGE&utm_campaign=VF_HivePS_042520&utm_term=VYF_Hive
The article is longish, but readable and important information to those of us hoping for, 1) New hope for ME/CFS, and ..... 2) Anyone hoping for a vaccine against COVID in the foreseeable future
Because I know that many of us have days when reading anything longer than a short index is monumentally draining, here are a few of the take-aways, and please don't shoot the messenger:
In New Haven, meanwhile, Dr. Joseph Vinetz, an infectious disease doctor at Yale School of Medicine, is seeking to launch a clinical study of the drug camostat mesylate, a generic medication approved in Japan to treat chronic pancreatitis that he hopes can be approved and marketed to treat COVID-19. If the trial succeeds, he said, this could be ”a total game changer.” But the process is proving fraught. Within hours of registering his trial on a National Institutes of Health website on April 20, he received an email from a large U.S. pharmaceutical company. “They are trying to take my project and engulf it for their proprietary [financial] gain,” Vinetz told me. “I take that email as a threat.”
The email Vinetz received on April 20, after he registered the trial, threatened to throw a wrench in proceedings. In the email, a copy of which was reviewed by the Hive, a representative for a large pharmaceutical company wrote that the company was itself “exploring the opportunity with BARDA,” the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, “and others to conduct clinical trials testing camostat mesylate in COVID-19,” and noted that it has an “open IND,” essentially a permission slip from the FDA to conduct a clinical trial. The email proposed that Vinetz, who has applied for an IND but has not yet received it, would need access to data the company has received through its IND, and that he’d need a letter of authorization from the company to get it. “We would appreciate gaining a better understanding of your study,” the email continued, proposing a call to discuss the matter.
Vinetz said he interpreted the email to mean “you have to go through us.” “They seem to want me to have to work under their authorization,” he said. “I viewed it as a threatening email,” he reiterated. “There is undoubtedly a financial motivation.”
As COVID-19 cases mounted, Gilead faced enormous public backlash for its handling of remdesivir, particularly after reports surfaced that it was difficult for critically ill COVID-19 patients to obtain the drug after Gilead halted its compassionate-use access. Later that month, Gilead posted a statement announcing that it “has submitted a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to rescind the orphan drug designation” and “is waiving all benefits that accompany the designation.”
“There was a rapid, vociferous, and powerful public outcry because the implications for possible profiteering were concerning,” Vinetz said of Gilead. Dr. Purvi Parikh, an immunologist and allergist in New York City, noted that “Those are bad optics for the company during a pandemic, to have a monopoly on a lifesaving drug.”
A biotech venture capitalist told me that, while they do not have direct evidence that big pharma is meddling in trials of drugs to treat COVID-19, “I have heard from several sources that they are muscling in and sequestering patients and trial sites. Pharmas have a lot of money and political clout to monopolize the infrastructure for clinical trials.”
) making big bucks - by an astoundingly awesome press, based on no much.