“Bill Gates used to think of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the world’s premier public-health authority. Not anymore.”
“And he doesn’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Protection either. Both, in his view, are casualties of a presidency that has downplayed or dismissed science and medicine in the pursuit of political gain. One recent example came when FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, speaking at one of President Donald Trump’s news conferences, exaggerated the benefit of blood plasma as a treatment for Covid-19, then backtracked the following day.
“We saw with the completely bungled plasma statements that when you start pressuring people to say optimistic things, they go completely off the rails. The FDA lost a lot of credibility there,” Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
“Historically, just like the CDC was viewed as the best in the world, the FDA had that same reputation as a top-notch regulator,” Gates said. “But there’s been some cracks with some of the things they’ve said at the commissioner level.”
At stake is nothing less than public confidence in the vaccine that could end the coronavirus pandemic, and which the FDA would have to approve. Polls conducted in the past two months show a majority of Americans worry the development of the vaccine is being rushed and a third wouldn’t get inoculated.”
To read the full article, please visit here.
Tracy Everhart
Tracy Everhart is the Editor for Drug Law Journal. A highly-trained and certified medical professional, Tracy is also an accomplished medical writer. After spending years on the front lines of the medical profession, Tracy now devotes her expertise and skills to researching and reporting on new drugs and devices that enter the market, as well as their side-effects and the real-life stories involved. Prior to joining Drug Law Journal, Tracy wrote for benchmark online healthcare resources focused on families and, in particular, women’s health issues. Tracy holds post-graduate degrees from both the American College of Healthcare Sciences and the Yale School of Nursing. She is also a graduate of both Hampshire College, where she studied microbiology and the University of South Carolina school of nursing.