Pharma’s Windfall

While the COVID-19 pandemic has decimated lives and livelihoods, the pharmaceutical industry has experienced a windfall—from the billions of dollars for experimental vaccines¹ and their expensive new drugs for treatment.

On October 22, 2020, US FDA approved Veklury (remdesivir) for the treatment of COVID-19. Although other treatments have gained emergency use authorization (EUA), remdesivir is the only treatment that has FDA approval. Remdesivir is given by intravenous infusion for five to ten days and costs about $2600 per course (₤2000; €2205).² Remdesivir does not keep people out of the hospital. It is not an outpatient treatment. It is also not particularly effective.

The World Health Organization conducted an international study of remdesivir that involved thousands of patients. The interim results of its Solidarity trial showed “that the drug has no significant impact on mortality, length of hospital stay, or need for ventilation among hospitalized patients.”³ Moreover, animal studies indicate that the drug can cause kidney damage.³

At a December 8, 2020, US Senate hearing, pulmonologist Pierre Kory, part of Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (https://covid19criticalcare.com/), questioned why federal agencies have not focused on repurposing already approved drugs: “…I am severely troubled by the fact that the NIH, the FDA, and the CDC—I do not know of any task force that was assigned or compiled to review repurposed drugs in an attempt to treat this disease. Everything has been about novel and/or expensive pharmaceutically engineered drugs….We have hundreds of years of medicine development. We are expert in all the medicines we use, and I do not know of a task force that has been focused on repurposed drugs.”

Why haven’t agencies looked to repurpose medicines we already have in use? It’s a good question.  Why are doctors who repurpose approved drugs and use nutrients to prevent and treat COVID-19 being censored?⁵ The government agencies seem to have other priorities.

Jule Klotter

1. Weintraub K, Weise E. Federal spending on COVID-19 vaccine candidates tops $9 billion, spread among 7 companies. USA Today. August 8, 2020.
2. Dyer O. Covid-19: Remdesivir has little or no impact on survival, WHO trial shows. BMJ. October 19,2020.
3. Hsu J. Covid-19: What now for remdesivir?  BMJ. November 19, 2020.
4. Medical Response to COVID-19. December 8, 2020. https://www.c-span.org/video/?507035-1/medical-response-covid-19
5. Klotter J. The Censorship Pandemic. Townsend Letter. December 2020. https://www.townsendletter.com/article/449-censorship-pandemic-covid-19-editorial/