| ...last Friday. Possibly at the end of the day when nobody was paying attention? |
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication that targets the RNA in viruses to prevent replication. The FDA first authorized remdesivir for emergency use in May 2020 to treat people with severe COVID-19. It has since been approved for adults and children as young as 28 days who weigh at least 6.6 pounds.Remdesivir is the first and only FDA-approved antiviral COVID-19 treatment for people with renal disease.
On the one hand --
"The approval by the FDA of Veklury for the treatment of patients with renal impairment reflects the urgency to make this medicine available to these patients, and underscores the established safety profile for Veklury," Anu Osinusi, vice president of Clinical Research for Hepatitis, Respiratory, and Emerging Viruses at Gilead Sciences said in a press release.
On the other hand --
"Remdesivir should never have been approved in the first place," Dr. Paul Marik, critical care physician and author of more than 500 peer-reviewed journal articles told The Epoch Times. "Gilead had to cook the data to be approved. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) own data shows it increases the risk of kidney failure twentyfold, so why you would approve it for someone with renal dysfunction is obscene."
The WHO published a bulletin in 2020 recommending against using remdesivir to treat COVID-19. The WHO’s recommendations were based on a review of evidence published in the British Medical Journal, including data from four international trials covering more than 7,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The WHO found no evidence that the treatment helped hospitalized patients recover or improved their outcomes.Dr. Marik said the National Institutes of Health and Gilead "cooked the first study" that formed the initial basis of FDA authorization in October 2020 because remdesivir was "so toxic."