Operation Warp Speed and the FDA let America down when we needed them the most. Our hospitals are overrun with COVID-19 patients, thousands of us are dying daily and the FDA is continuing their streak of blunders when it comes to Emergency Use Authorizations. From their bailout of Gilead, allowing them to recoup lost research and development money for their failed Ebola treatment Remdesivir, to Operation Warp Speed’s narrow focus on vaccine and monoclonal antibody treatments that have cost American tax payers upwards of $18 billion, we are still to this day without an effective COVID-19 treatment for our hospitalized patients.
Monoclonal antibodies were once thought to be the key to fighting COVID have now shown no benefit in use with hospitalized patients, and Remdesivir, the only drug approved by the FDA for treatment of COVID-19, has been said to have no benefit in patient-important outcomes, according to the World Health Organization.
Other treatments like hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma have followed similar paths.
While Big Pharma corporations like Pfizer, Gilead, and Eli Lilly bring in huge profits, potentially lifesaving treatments like Aviptadil sit in clinical trials, showing great promise but still shelved until the FDA decides if it’s “safe and possibly effective,” the standard for which an Emergency Use Authorization is granted.
While the uncertainties of vaccine long-term safety and effectiveness are still up in the air, they may eventually pull us out of the worst public health crisis in our nation’s history, but when and to what toll did the narrow mindedness and pandering to Big Pharma play in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans?
Curt Bertsch
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 12/10/20