Promotion of U.S. Pharmaceutical Monopoly's Unproven and Potentially Dangerous Treatment
On May 12, the U.S. Big
Pharma corporation Gilead Sciences Inc. announced
that it had signed a licensing agreement
with a number of drug manufacturers to produce the
drug Remdesivir as a treatment for
COVID-19 in what it described as "low-income and
lower-middle-income countries." Gilead
also announced that they were in advanced
discussions with UNICEF "to utilize their
extensive experience providing medicines to low-
and middle-income countries during
emergency and humanitarian crises to deliver
Remdesivir using its well-established distribution
networks." The manufacturing companies who have
signed the deal with Gilead are Cipla,
Jubilant Lifesciences, and Hetero Labs from India;
Mylan, a Dutch-registered company whose
main office is in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania while
its board of directors meets in the United
Kingdom; and Ferozsons Labs from Pakistan. On the
announcement of the agreement, share
prices in Cipla and Jubilant Lifesciences rose.
The list of countries to which the licensees are
to supply Remdesivir include all the members of
the African Union.
Gilead Sciences Inc is one of the largest
pharmaceutical corporations in the USA, with
nearly
12,000 employees, assets in excess of U.S.$60
billion and annual sales of over U.S.$20
billion. Donald Rumsfeld, notorious warmonger from
the George Bush administration, was
chairman of the company from 1997 until he joined
the Bush government and is understood
to still hold shares in the company, while George
Schultz, who was the U.S. Secretary of
State under Ronald Reagan, continues to sit on its
board of directors. The corporation made
significant profits from its licensing deal with
Roche, the Swiss drug manufacturer, for the
production of Tamiflu as a treatment for the H1N1
swine flu, with its income from this
revenue stream jumping from U.S.$16 million in the
3rd quarter of 2008 to U.S.$194
million in the 4th quarter. The use of Tamiflu for
H1N1 swine flu turned out to be a complete
scandal with numerous governments denouncing the
waste of money spent on stocking up on
the drug, many doses of which were never used, and
with increasing alarm at some of its
more dangerous side effects.
Gilead's Remdesivir was originally developed as a
treatment for hepatitis C but was found to
be ineffective. It was later repurposed for use
against Ebola and Marburg virus disease but
was also found to be ineffective in treating these
conditions. Recently, Gilead have turned
their attention to using Remdesivir for treatment
of COVID-19. Between February and March
this year, clinical trials of the drug were
carried out in Hubei province in China. The study,
which involved 237 patients, was conducted as a
double-blinded, randomized control test and
its report was peer-reviewed and published in The
Lancet on April 29. Its principal
finding was that Remdesivir "was not associated
with a difference in time to clinical
improvement." It also noted that "Remdesivir was
stopped early because of adverse events in
18 (12 per cent) patients versus four (5 per cent)
patients who stopped placebo early."
However, on April 29, citing an incomplete
clinical trial in the USA and a report which had
not been peer-reviewed, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of
the U.S. government's National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Disease, declared that
Remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19 was
"quite good news" and that it set a new standard
of care for COVID-19 patients. Then on
May 1, Trump met in the White House with the CEO
of Gilead to announce that the U.S.
government's Food and Drug Administration had
granted emergency use authorization for
Gilead's Remdesivir drug to treat COVID-19. On
this basis, the drug will now enter into
production for use in Africa.
It is ironic that those who are demanding clinical
testing of Madagascar's herbal remedy for
COVID-19 and trashing its claims are remaining
silent in the face of Gilead's efforts to
unleash its unproven and potentially dangerous
COVID-19 drug treatment on people in
Africa.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 18 - May 23, 2020
Article Link:
Promotion of U.S. Pharmaceutical Monopoly's Unproven and Potentially Dangerous Treatment
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
