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SFGATE: Trump touts authorization of plasma, but scientists are doubtful

Trump touts authorization of plasma, but scientists are doubtful
Published on August 24, 2020 at 05:49AM by Josh Dawsey, Laurie McGinley, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Seung Min Kim, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he had helped break through a regulatory "logjam" to grant emergency authorization of convalescent plasma to treat covid-19, a "powerful therapy" that he claimed "had an incredible rate of success," despite the fact that his own scientists are calling for more studies to definitively show whether it works.

The announcement, at a news conference where Trump was flanked by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, drew criticism from physicians and scientists who said their statements misled the public by overstating the evidence behind a therapy that shows promise but still needs to be tested rigorously.

"I watched this in horror," said Eric Topol, an influential physician and scientist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. "These are basically just exploratory analyses that don't prove anything. It's just extraordinary to declare this as a breakthrough. . . . All this does is jeopardize ever getting the truth."

The Infectious Diseases Society of America released a statement noting that while there are "some positive signals that convalescent plasma can be helpful in treating individuals with COVID-19," the society believed its benefits needed to be demonstrated in clinical trials that randomly assign patients to receive either plasma or a placebo before it is authorized for wider use.

The Sunday briefing came on the eve of the Republican National Convention, during which Trump hopes to resurrect his flagging popularity, which has nosedived over his handling of the pandemic. He has put pressure on federal agencies to test and approve treatments and a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 170,000 Americans.

The briefing also landed a day after the...

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