While President Trump claims that he will get the medications he received to all Americans at no cost, the CEO of one of the drugs said that Trump’s statement are invalid and more clinical trials are needed, Politico reports.
“The president’s case is a case of one, and that’s what we call a case report, and it is evidence of what’s happening, but it’s kind of the weakest evidence that you can get,” Regeneron chief executive Leonard Schliefer said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Trump has claimed that the drug cocktail he received, including medications that are still in early-stage clinical trials, would be available to all coronavirus patients “very soon” and he would ensure that the treatments are given at no cost.
“The real evidence has to come about how good a drug is and what it will do on average has to come from these large clinical trials, these randomized clinical trials, which are the gold standard. And those are ongoing,” Schleifer said. “We’ve got some preliminary evidence that we’ve talked with the FDA, and we’re going for an emergency use authorization, because we think it’s appropriate at this time.”
Trump has a history of making unsubstantiated claims about various medications during the pandemic. He and his followers touted hydroxychloroquine as an early miracle cure, but ongoing testing showed that it led to higher fatality rates in patients.
He also said a distillation of the toxic oleander flower would treat coronavirus, at the urging of the founder of MyPillow. Infamously, Trump said injecting disinfectants and internal UV light treatment would cure COVID.
Those are all lies, and Trump was not treated with any of those therapies when he was hospitalized with coronavirus virus because doctors have common sense.