COVID-19 Panel Gilead Ties

October 25: This corrupt panel nixes all treatments competing against Gilead’s remdesivir. It even recommends against prophylaxis – any prophylaxis!

September 22: H. Clifford Lane, a Co-Chair of the Panel, is a co-author of the fraudulent NIAID study of Remdesivir (Beigel et al., May 22), which served the Panel as an excuse to recommend the use of Remdesivir. He has not disclosed co-authorship. Undisclosed ties of two other Co-Chairs (Roy M. Gulick and Henry Masur) to Gilead are listed below.

All other Panel members have been selected by these Co-Chairs, all of whom had ties to Gilead and concealed them!

August 3: they knew that remdesivir was ineffective! but promoted it anyway.

June 15 update. I used to believe that impact of financial conflicts of interest was exaggerated. Apparently, that has changed over the last decade or two.

Influence of conflicts of interest on public positions in the COVID-19 era, the case of Gilead Sciences, Yanis Roussel, Didier Raoult, New Microbes and New Infections Journal, 2020-06-04:

In the context of the COVID-19 epidemic, several treatments are available to treat patients infected with the virus. Some are protected by patents, such as remdesivir, others are not, such as hydroxychloroquine. We wanted to observe the possible correlation between the fact, for an academic doctor in infectious diseases, of having benefited from funding by Gilead Sciences, producer of remdesivir, and the public positions taken by this doctor towards hydroxychloroquine. Our results show a correlation (correlation coefficient = 1) between the amount received from the Gilead Sciences company and public opposition to the use of hydroxychloroquine in France.

Correlation coefficient = 1 means a perfect correlation. It is still open to interpretation: whether cash from Gilead causes a doctor to talk negatively about HCQ, or the negative opinion about HCQ causes the doctor to flock to remdesivir and Gilead. That might be different for different doctors.

April 27

At least 7 (seven) members of the Panel on COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines, including 2 out of 3 Co-Chairs, have not disclosed their financial ties to Gilead Sciences (GILD), the patent owner and manufacturer of remdesivir.

Under the direction of WHO, Remdesivir is being tested as an alternative treatment to COVID-19. Currently, COVID-19 is treated by hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with or without azithromycin (AZ).

Nine  members of the Panel tasked with determining acceptable COVID-19 treatments have disclosed financial ties to Gilead, the manufacturer of Remdesivir. However, at least 7 other members failed to disclose their financial ties to Gilead and a number of other panel members appear to have links to Gilead that require no disclosure. Together, Gilead-linked individuals made up a majority of this panel.

This might explain why the panel recommended against a HCQ+AZ combination, refused to recommend HCQ (“insufficient clinical data to recommend either for or against”) and raised fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about it. The Panel gave the same grade (but without FUD) to Remdesivir, though no clinical data existed for its use against COVID-19.

The list of the Panel members who have not disclosed their financial ties to Gilead is below. This is not an accusation against these individuals. The reporting period of Gilead ties was set to a mere 11 months (May 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020) and the last three weeks were excluded. The Guidelines were published on April 21 and already caused damage to the ongoing COVID-19 treatment.

Name Financial Disclosure Failed to Disclose
Company Relationship
Jeffrey L. Lennox (*) None N/A Gilead Advisory Board, 2019

https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/contentfiles/lvguidelines/glchunk/glchunk_274.pdf

“Deleted” https://www.iasusa.org/blog/2018/11/19/primary-care-of-the-hiv-infected-adult-if-i-can-do-it-you-can-do-it-4/

Ann C. Collier None N/A Past research support from Gilead (reported in 2013)

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065306

Roy M. Gulick,

Co-Chair

None N/A Currently delivers lectures, funded with grants from Gilead

https://www.prn.org/index.php/management/article/update_from_ias_amsterdam_part_1

John T. Brooks None N/A Done HIV Conferences with Gilead Sciences (2018)

https://ceitraining.org/courses/course_detail.cfm?mediaID=687

Henry Masur,

Co-Chair

None N/A Gilead funded his research and conference(s), 2018

https://web.archive.org/web/20181204075041/https://www.iasusa.org/2018/02/22/welcome-to-the-ias-usa-washington-dc-full-day-course-on-hiv-disease-management-2/

“Deleted” https://www.iasusa.org/blog/2018/11/15/recurring-and-emerging-questions-related-to-management-of-hiv-related-opportunistic-infections

Nitin Seam None N/A Web Editorial Committee Chair with American Thoracic Society; Gilead is a Patron (2018)

https://www.thoracic.org/about/resources/ats-annual-report-2018.pdf

Phyllis Tien None N/A Research Grants by Gilead (2018)

https://rsna2018.rsna.org/program/details/?publicid=SSC10-09

(*) Also, Jeffrey L. Lennox disclosed in 2009 that he “has been an investigator for Abbott, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer, Schering, and Tibotec; a paid consultant for Abbott, Gilead Sciences, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and Tibotec; and a paid speaker for Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Roche, and Tibotec.

Please let me know if you find any errors in this table or the accompanying description. If you are one of the people listed in the table , I will correct any error or publish your reply, or both. You can contact me by making a comment below (which will not be automatically published), or by email contact@defyccc.com.

P.S. Do NOT delete the linked pages. First, destruction of evidence is a crime. Second, do you really think that your website and the Web Archive are the only places where their copies exist?

Originally published on April 27, 2020. Updated multiple times since then.

7 thoughts on “COVID-19 Panel Gilead Ties

  1. If all this great falsification of data of such magnitude as reported could take place, with the involvement of two of the world’s most reverred Medical Journals, coupled with its negative impacts, through undue delays, on the search for a new Prophylactic or Anaphylactic treatment regime across the globe, one may have to query the integrity and impact factors of most of other Medical Journals with global reputation. Likewise, this may be a time to give Africa the opportunity to prove its worth medically @Madagascar-Vs-WHO. WHO should look towards Africa to consolidate on the ongoing medical researches towards the discovery of genuine therapeutic agents for the treatment of COVID-19, such as applicable to Madagascar discovery.

  2. My husband is an M.D. who worked on reviewing vaccine safety at the NIH. Several years later he applied to the NIH for funding. The doctor who reviewed, then denied funding, for my husband’s research grant was working on a competing project. It was no surprise that he denied funding my husband’s project and directed it instead to his own lab.
    As soon as Dr Fauci came out with his glowing endorsement of Remdesivir (after dismissing HCQ) we both thought he must have had some financial incentive to boost Remdesivir.

    1. As a scientist who did industrial research for five years, retrained in an allied health field, and then was on the faculty of a good medical school for 13 years, I can say that your husband’s awful experience is quite common in all types of scientific research, which is far too dependent on government grants.
      For example, I worked for two department chairmen who were widely praised as geniuses in their fields, despite the fact that neither did any research whatsoever. One of them, who had already made a fortune touting a drug at seminars all across the country, even received a ‘genius’ grant from the NIH. Somehow, all the scientists, MDs and PhDs, selected for the committees that reviewed grant applications always seemed to get theirs funded.
      As for being rejected by rivals, it’s not at all uncommon for a scientist to complete a good, original research project, submit a manuscript on it to a peer-reviewed journal and to have it rejected by a rival pretending to be an objective reviewer, only to realize later that the rival stole some of the ideas in it.
      The leaders of academic institutions, including medical schools, are a big part of the problem too. They are allowed to tack fat overhead charges on every NIH or NSF research grant, which support them and their large staffs and build new buildings on campus. It becomes obvious that the granting of tenure to academic scientists depends mainly on how much money they bring in. The most prestigious institutions are the greediest.
      Scientists, including MDs, are human too and they, like so many others, have been corrupted by government handouts. We need a change.

    2. That would explain the Dr. Fauci’s recommendations that prolonged the pandemic and fanned public, government, and media fear and hysteria.
      Like an old Western movie with a snake oil salesman pitching to the gullible citizens of the town. The money he earns will be tainted.

    3. Bingo! ..he does not want any cure he is not involved with…
      built a bridge with China for 3.7 million tax dollars.
      Right now Trumps future traitors are Fauci, Cuomo, Newsome…
      I took it from the commercial.

  3. From CDC 2005

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/

    We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage. In addition to the well-known functions of chloroquine such as elevations of endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations.

    Conclusion
    Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral compounds.

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