Vera Sharav points out that in a rational universe, a poison like remdesivir would have no hope of winning regulatory approval—unless, of course, the company could somehow distract attention from the overwhelmingly catastrophic scientific evidence by getting the world’s most powerful health official—the man who conducted the clinical trial—to pronounce the drug a “miracle cure” at a globally attended press conference while lounging on an Oval Office divan beside the president of the United States. Says Sharav, “What better free advertisement?”59
Sharav adds, “Dr. Fauci had a vested interest in remdesivir. He sponsored the clinical trial whose detailed results were not subject to the peer review he demanded for the drugs he regarded as rivals, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Instead of showing transparent data and convincing results, he did ‘science’ by fiat. He simply declared the disappointing results to be ‘highly significant,’ and pronounced remdesivir to be the new ‘standard of care.’ Fauci made the promotional pronouncement while sitting on a couch in the White House, without providing a detailed news release, without a briefing at a medical meeting, or peer review for publication in a scientific journal—as is the norm and practice, to allow scientists and researchers to review the data.”
“Standard of Care”
FDA’s recognition of remdesivir as the new “Standard of Care” for COVID meant that Medicaid and insurance companies could not legally deny it to patients and would have to fork over Gilead’s exorbitant price tag on a product US taxpayers had, by then, spent at least $85 million to develop.60 Improving Gilead’s business even more, doctors and hospitals that failed to use remdesivir could now be sued for malpractice, leading some medical experts to believe that coercing the use of this worthless and dangerous drug on COVID patients almost certainly cost tens of thousands of Americans their lives.
As we shall see, Dr. Fauci copied the choreographed script for winning remdesivir’s EUA from the worn rabbit-eared playbook that he developed during his early AIDS years, and then used repeatedly across his career to win approvals for deadly and ineffective drugs. Time and again, he has terminated clinical trials of his sweetheart drugs the moment they begin to reveal cataclysmic toxicity. He makes the absurd claim that his drug-du-jour had proven so miraculously effective that it would be unethical to deny it to the public, and then he strong-arms FDA to grant his approvals. This time only, the brazenness of the fraud earned Dr. Fauci some rare criticism even in mainstream science and press, and from academic institutions that customarily maintain silence about his shenanigans, given their addictions to whopping NIH and BMGF funding.
On October 24, 2020, Umair Irfan noted that “The FDA is once again promoting a Covid-19 therapy based on shaky evidence.”61
The British Medical Journal pointed out, “None of the randomized controlled trials published so far, however, have shown that remdesivir saves significantly more lives than standard medical care.”62
Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute scolded that, “This is a very, very bad look for the FDA, and the dealings between Gilead and EU make it another layer of badness.”63
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, told a reporter: “I was really surprised when I saw that news.”64
Science Magazine said Dr. Fauci’s move had, “baffled scientists who have closely watched the clinical trials of remdesivir unfold over the past 6 months—and who have many questions about remdesivir’s worth.”65
University of Oxford Professor of Clinical Therapeutics Duncan Richard scathingly observed that, “Research based on this kind of use should be treated with extreme caution because there is no control group or randomization, which are some of the hallmarks of good practice in clinical trials.”66
Professor Stephen Evans in Pharmacoepidemiology, at the Gates-funded London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, offered a particularly scathing assess-ment—“The data from this paper are almost uninterpretable. It is very surprising, perhaps even unethical, that the New England Journal of Medicine has published it. It would be more appropriate to publish the data on the website of the pharmaceutical company that has sponsored and written up the study. At least Gilead has been clear that this has not been done in the way that a high-quality scientific paper would be written.”67
Even Bill Gates raised an eyebrow about the audacity of the caper. When Wired magazine in August 2020 asked Gates what therapeutic treatment he’d ask for if hospitalized with COVID-19, he did not hesitate. “Remdesivir,” Gates replied, adding a comment that put daylight between him and the embarrassing clinical trial fiasco. “Sadly the trials in the US have been so chaotic that the actual proven effect is kind of small. Potentially the effect is much larger than that. It’s insane how confused the trials here in the US have been.”68
*
Then, on October 19, 2020, three days before remdesivir’s FDA approval, the World Health Organization published a definitive study on remdesivir involving 11,266 COVID-19 patients in 405 hospitals and 30 countries.69,70 The power of this study dwarfed the Fauci/Gilead project, which had recruited 1,062 patients. In the WHO’s trial, remdesivir failed to reduce mortality, and failed to reduce the need for ventilators OR the length of hospital stays. WHO researchers found no detectable benefits from remdesivir and recommended against its use in COVID-19 patients.71 WHO published its devastating indictment of remdesivir one month after FDA issued the remdesivir EUA for children less than 12 years of age. Dr. Fauci and the FDA knew about the WHO study before the FDA issued the EUA for remdesivir, and almost certainly read the preprints and understood the findings. It appears, in fact, that Dr. Fauci once again hurried the approval through FDA so as to beat the publication of a negative study.
On July 15, 2021, a large Johns Hopkins Study in Original Investigation | Infectious Diseases once again confirmed that “Remdesivir treatment was not associated with improved survival but was associated with longer hospital stays.”72 (Emphasis added.)
On October 2, 2020, the European Union released its own safety review of remdesivir. The study reported serious side effects.73,74
“Every independent randomized controlled trial of remdesivir has shown either a lack of benefit or a clear trend to harm,” says Dr. Pierre Kory. “It’s only those two Pharma studies (with Dr. Fauci) that show any benefits and even then, the benefits are minor.”
“It makes no sense to give an antiviral in late stages of a viral infection,” Dr. Kory adds. “The viral replication mainly takes place prior to day seven. If an antiviral works, that’s when you administer antivirals. Remdesivir might work early on, but we don’t know, because it’s IV administered and you can’t really do that to ambulatory patients.”