
FDA ‘Grossly Misrepresented’ Blood Plasma Data, Scientists Say - rayhendricks
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/health/fda-blood-plasma.html
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legerdemain
COVID is one of the most significant geopolitical crises of the last 100
years. It is naïve to imagine that the US Government is not engaging in top
secret COVID research at the highest levels. Instead of burying our heads in
the sand and claiming that a life-saving treatment is suspect because a
spokesperson can't literally point to a statistic in a publicly available
report, we should rejoice that our President is doing cutting-edge research
into medical innovation to save the lives of American people.

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mft_
1\. It’s not about “top secret research”. This is about misrepresentation of
research undertaken by the Mayo Clinic.

2\. It’s not just that a spokesman can’t point to the statistic - it’s that
scientists can’t work out retrospectively where the statistic came from, and
their best guess where it did come from suggests that the president and the
FDA commissioner were wrong, and exaggerated the benefits of the treatment.

3\. It’s great if the US Govt is supporting COVID research. But it’s terrible
if they then politicise the research, and lie/exaggerate the benefits that the
research might have shown for political reasons.

4\. Put simply, when the FDA gets things wrong, it’s likely that patients are
harmed or killed. In this case it’s probably not so bad, but political
interference in the process of approving drugs and treatments for patients is
a frightening situation, and not one that any reputable politician should be
anywhere near.

