Under intense pressure from Donald Trump, the Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization for a plasma coronavirus treatment. Axios reports:
“The authorization for plasma, which is safe but not yet proven to work on COVID-19, had been on hold after federal health officials intervened with the FDA last week and argued that the current data on the effectiveness of the treatment was too weak, the New York Times reported.“
Among those who thought the evidence was weak was Dr. Anthony Fauci. Former FDA head Dr. Scott Gottleib said on Sunday the evidence is probably weakly beneficial but experts wanted to see more data. Trump made the announcement on the eve of the GOP convention.
The White House said Trump would announce a major therapeutic breakthrough but it appears that it only happened after he accused the FDA of slow-walking a virus treatment.
NBC News writes: “Tens of thousands of coronavirus patients have been treated using plasma in recent months as part of an expanded access program. While the therapy has shown some promising results, the data is far from conclusive.”
Please read this Twitter thread from Andy Slavitt to understand what’s really going on when politics trumps science.
