NOTE TO READERS: When this project lost substantial funding at the end of 2018, I lost the ability to continue publishing criteria-driven news story reviews and PR news release reviews - once the bread-and-butter of the site going back to 2006. The 3,200 archived reviews, while still educational, are getting old and difficult for me to technically maintain on the back end of the website. So I am announcing that I plan to remove these reviews from the site by April 1, 2021. The blog and the toolkit - two of the most popular features on the site - will remain. If you wish to peruse the reviews before they disappear, please do so by the end of March 2021. After that date you may still be able to access them via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine - https://archive.org/web/.
“Partial data from an ongoing clinical trial is by definition incomplete and should never be used to draw conclusions about the safety or efficacy of a potential treatment that is under investigation,” said a spokeswoman for University of Chicago Medicine, in a statement emailed to Fox News.”In this case, information from an internal forum for research colleagues concerning work in progress was released without authorization. Drawing any conclusions at this point is premature and scientifically unsound.”
A Gilead spokeswoman told Fox News that the totality of data need to be analyzed in order to draw any conclusions from the trial. “Anecdotal reports, while encouraging, do not provide the statistical power necessary to determine the safety and efficacy profile of remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19,” she said, in an emailed statement. “We expect the data from our Phase 3 study in patients with severe COVID-19 infection to be available at the end of this month, and additional data from other studies to become available in May.”
“We are grateful for all of the efforts of investigators and patients participating in our studies and look forward to sharing the results from the complete dataset,” the spokeswoman added.
Gilead Sciences Inc’s shares surged 16% in after hours trading on Thursday following a media report detailing encouraging partial data from trials of the U.S. company’s experimental drug remdesivir in severe COVID-19 patients.
A new report from STAT News on Gilead’s experimental drug Remdesivir serves as an encouraging update on the drug’s potential to fight Covid-19, however analysts argue it’s largely anecdotal and should be interpreted with caution.
Covid-19 patients who are getting an experimental drug called remdesivir have been recovering quickly, with most going home in days, STAT News reported Thursday after it obtained a video of a conversation about the trial.”
It took CNN 10 paragraphs to get to the caveats:
However, the trial does not include what’s known as a control group, so it will be difficult to say whether the drug is truly helping patients recover better. With a control arm, some patients do not receive the drug being tested so that doctors can determine whether it’s the drug that is really affecting their condition.
Strong cautions from the company that make the drug aren’t reported until the very end of the story.
Social media lit up with criticism, context, perspective
Scientist and former pharmaceutical executive Rick Wobbe wrote on one of the journalist’s Facebook page:
I hope the optimism is justified. Thus far, preliminary statements regarding uncontrolled studies haven’t withstood further scrutiny very well.
Overnight on Twitter, oncologist Vinay Prasad starting addressing this and has continued today:
I want remdesivir to succeed
Today’s report from Chicago is not proof of benefit
Rct of remdesivir v standard of care endpoint survival OR
Rct remdesivir v placebo endpoint 7pt scale
If you dont produce this data, many will remain critical
That is emergency medicine physician Jeremy Faust, MD whose thread Dr. Murthy praised. Faust also tweeted:
You could spin it as GREAT NEWS (“Only two people died so far out of 113!”). Or you can spin it to be TERRIBLE NEWS (“Holy shit, two people died, and probably ZERO should have!”).
Penn research ethicist Steven Joffe, MD, on Twitter:
Preliminary, partial, should never have been leaked. Violation of trial integrity.
There are also clear questions about journalism ethics, basing a story in the middle of a pandemic on a pirated copy of a video of a researcher sharing her unpublished findings with faculty colleagues.
We will add to this post in the days to come.
Addendum:
Later on April 17, the two STAT journalists, Adam Feuerstein and Matthew Herper, hosted a one-hour Zoom chat which they called, “What we know about Gilead’s remdesivir data.”
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Our 3,222 reviews of health care journalism & PR will be gone soon. The rest of the website will remain. Read details. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/01/our-3222-systematic-reviews-of-journalism-pr-will-be-gone-soon/
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Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
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We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
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