Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive who is serving seven years in prison for securities fraud, has released an 11-page paper, in which he presents pharmaceutical research and argues that he can help find a coronavirus treatment if he’s temporarily allowed to leave prison.
“The industry response to COVID-19 is inadequate. All biopharmaceutical companies should be responding with all resources to combat this health emergency,” writes Shkreli in the document. “The biopharmaceutical industry has a large braintrust of talent that is not working on this problem as companies have deprioritized or even abandoned infectious disease research.”
“As a successful two-time biopharma entrepreneur, having purchased multiple companies, invented multiple new drug candidates, filed numerous INDs and clinical trial applications, I am one of the few executives experienced in ALL aspects of drug development from molecule creation and hypothesis generation, to preclinical assessments and clinical trial design/target engagement demonstration, and manufacturing/synthesis and global logistics and deployment of medicines,” writes Shkreli.
The former pharmaceutical executive, who gained widespread notoriety as the “Pharma Bro” after he increased the price of the AIDS drug Daraprim by 500%, says he only wants to be allowed to leave prison for three months. He also says that he hasn’t received any money while in prison, and wants to perform the research as an act of “civil service.”
Stat News reports that Shkreli co-authored the document with two business partners, and two other people who are self-described “citizen scientists.” Derick Lowe, a renowned drug industry blogger, told the news agency that the work Shkreli presents in the paper isn’t “crazy,” but also doesn’t seem “particularly groundbreaking.”
“We’re not setting up another Manhattan Project, and we’re not looking for another Robert Oppenheimer, either,” says Lowe, reports the news agency. “I’m not sure if he realizes either of those points.”
Dr. Scott Atlas, a researcher at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, recently told Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro there is reason to be optimistic about advances in finding coronavirus treatments, and that the results of early clinical trial studies for drugs will begin trickling in this month.
“We will start seeing results this month, meaning within a couple of weeks, perhaps even within one week,” said Dr. Atlas. “I believe there’s reasonable optimism to be held that we will be able to treat the disease, and given that, over time, that changes what happens next.”
Dr. Anthony Cardillo, the CEO of Mend Urgent Care, a system of health clinics in Southern California, recently told ABC-7 that he has been successfully treating patients at home with a combination of hydroxychloroquine and zinc.
“Every patient I’ve prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within 8-12 hours they were basically symptom free and so, clinically I am seeing a resolution that mirrors what we saw in the French study and some of the other studies worldwide,” Dr. Cardillo told the news agency.
According to The Guardian, White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has refrained from making definitive conclusions about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating coronavirus patients, saying that studies have been showing different results.
“In terms of science, I don’t think we can definitively say it works,” Dr. Fauci told CBS News. “The data are really just at best suggestive. There have been cases that show there may be an effect and there are others to show there’s no effect.”
The news organization Science Alert recently published an article detailing some limitations of a widely circulated hydroxychloroquine French study that looked at the treatment of 80 patients.
Although some of their results appeared to be encouraging, it should also be noted that most of their patients only had mild symptoms. Furthermore, 85 percent of the patients didn’t even have a fever – one of the major telltale symptoms of the virus, thus suggesting that these patients likely would have naturally cleared the virus without any intervention.