Billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates said he has lost much of his confidence on the work that the Food and Drug Administration does, and casted doubt on whether the FDA-approved Covid-19 vaccines will live up to the previous standards in terms of safety.
Gates shared his thoughts in an interview with Bloomberg TV. According to Gates, he lost confidence in the FDA for the way in which they prematurely predicted the end of Covid-19 via a medical treatment, only to take back their words due to the lack of empirical evidence.
While Gates admitted that a seal of approval will definitely help in assuring the safety of a potential vaccine, he challenged whether the FDA is sufficiently equipped to vigorously test all the vaccines. On this point, Gates’ thoughts is parallel to the American public’s.
In an equally disheartening news, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation reported that health progress that was made around the globe in the last quarter century has been erased in the last 25 weeks. In other words, a week of the pandemic cancelled out a year of global progress so far.
According to the foundation, much of the reversal came as resources that were originally allocated to promoting various aspects of public health have all been rerouted in the combat against Covid-19. This can be considered a side-effect of the global pandemic.
While the pharmaceutical companies and researchers around the world are developing a vaccine in what is likely to be a record pace, the billionaire philanthropist believes that the regulatory bodies in the governments are not keeping pace with the private sector in this pandemic.
Gates said that the FDA seal was typically a trusted guarantee of trust of safety. However, he pointed out how the agency’s believability has been damaged from the commissioner downwards. For instance, the FDA commissioner had proposed an unsupported efficacy for plasma treatments.
Commissioner Stephen Hahn’s comments were widely criticized and almost immediately rebuked by the experts. For instance, the National Institutes of Health flat out concluded that this treatment should be disregarded, which was exactly what several hospitals did in the US.
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Replaced!