Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached the US, increasing concern has been expressed about the politicization of the CDC and FDA due to pressure from the Trump administration to downplay the severity of the pandemic and push out treatments and a vaccine as fast as possible, potentially at the expense of safety. This has led me to a disturbing question: Can I trust the CDC and FDA any more?
Yesterday, the FDA issued emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroqine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19. Politics, not science, is why.
St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Cincinnati recently accepted $5 million from dÅTERRA, an MLM company selling essential oils based on dubious claims. This is most definitely not a good look.
Federal âright-to-tryâ legislation was passed and signed into law by President Trump over a year ago. Advocates promised that lots of terminally ill people who were dying then would be saved by having the right to âtryâ experimental therapies outside of the context of clinical trials. That has not happened. This should come as no surprise, because right-to-try was never about getting experimental drugs to dying patients. It was always about weakening the FDA and making money.
There is a tension inherent in the drug approval process between the desire to approve new drugs rapidly in order to treat suffering people and the need to be cautious, to make sure that new drugs are safe and effective before they are approved for sale. This weighing of the risks of too-rapid approval of […]
