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      in US Politics

      Oleandrin: Trump allies pitch extract from poisonous plant to fight Covid

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      Allies of Donald Trump have promoted a plant extract called oleandrin to people seeking to ward off Covid-19. The plant the extract is derived from, oleander, is poisonous and there is no proof the compound is either safe or effective to treat or prevent Covid-19, experts say.But unlike other unproven and potentially dangerous Covid-19 “cures” pitched by Donald Trump and his supporters, including the prescription antimalarial hydroxychloroquine, experts fear this compound could easily reach the public as a dietary supplement.“Supplements are like snake oil, in the sense they are not regulated by the FDA,” said Martin Ronis, a professor in Louisiana State University’s department of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, referring to the US Food and Drug Administration.While pharmaceutical companies must show the FDA drugs are safe before they go to market, dietary supplements are considered “food” in the US and thus must be proven unsafe before they are removed from the market. Because of this regulatory structure, Ronis said it would be possible for the company behind the plant compound – Texas-based Phoenix Biotechnology – to bring the extract to market.“You can essentially make all kinds of apocryphal claims about supplements,” said Ronis. One of Phoenix’s board members is Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump backer, pitchman, and CEO of MyPillow. Lindell chairs Trump’s re-election effort in Minnesota.While Lindell has pitched Phoenix’s plant extract as a coronavirus cure on TV and to the president’s coronavirus taskforce, the company also quietly received $5m in funding from an undisclosed investor, patented its extract for use in Covid-19, and promoted an early study in monkey cells as proof of efficacy – an assertion one of the study’s own authors denies.Lindell told the TV host Greg Kelly, an anchor on the conservative Newsmax network: “I started using it myself and giving it to friends and family who tested positive.”The interview was one of several television appearances about oleandrin and is prominently displayed on the company’s website. “Is he allowed to do that?” Kelly laughed as he asked his other guest, Andrew Whitney, the vice-chairman and fellow director of Phoenix Biotechnology.“Well, I’m doing it as well,” Whitney replied, “and so is everyone else at the company, because we believe in the product, Greg. We know it works.” Phoenix Biotechnology did not respond to an emailed request for an interview.The Washington Post has reported that Whitney has visited Trump in the White House and pitched oleandrin to him.Oleandrin has not been approved to treat any medical disorder. The supplements industry has also opposed introducing oleandrin to the market.“The unanimous opinion is that this is a stupid idea and no one should allow an oleander supplement to get close to their mouth,” ​said Loren Israelsen, president of the United Natural Products Alliance, in a statement to a trade publication.Phoenix Biotechnology has released only one study on oleandrin’s use against Covid-19. The study was published in what is called a “pre-print”, which means it is not peer-reviewed. Two of the authors had a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology. The study, called an “in vitro” study, examined oleandrin’s effect on monkey cells in the laboratory.Pharmaceutical companies looking for FDA approval typically take drugs through a long pipeline of testing including in pre-clinical trials, in non-human primates, and then in a series of clinical trials testing for safety and dosing, leading up to a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized trial for efficacy.If Phoenix sought approval for its product, the pre-print it published would represent a concept for potential study at the very beginning of this pipeline. The median cost of bringing a drug to market is $985m, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most new drugs fail.Phoenix has conducted two clinical trials for safety of oleandrin in cancer treatment, but both were small. Phoenix proposed providing oleandrin in what appears to be a liquid, according to its website.Although Whitney said in his interview with Kelly that Phoenix has researched oleandrin for “25 years”, the earliest research related to the company appears to be from 2002. Phoenix was incorporated in 2003, according to a press release.Phoenix received a patent for its extraction process in 2005, and in that time it has sponsored research at several institutions, including University of Texas San Antonio, the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Duke University.The company appears to be moving ahead in its efforts to monetize oleandrin. The “pre-print” was published on 15 July. The company filed for patents in the US on 18 July and earlier in Australia. The American patent was reportedly granted on 29 July, and Phoenix told the US Securities and Exchange Commission it received $5m from a single, unnamed investor on 7 August. More

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      in Elections

      Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

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      Donald Trump

      President again says he is doing ‘incredible job’ fighting pandemic and casts doubt on Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death
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      ‘You can’t do that’: Trump argues with reporter over Covid-19 death figures – video

      Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.
      The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.
      In the interview, broadcast on HBO on Monday and conducted by Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, Trump again asserted that his administration was doing an “incredible job” responding to the coronavirus.
      Claiming that the pandemic was unique, Trump said: “This has never happened before. Nineteen seventeen, but it was totally different, it was a flu in that case. If you watch the fake news on television, they don’t even talk about it, but there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering. Some, proportionately, far greater than we are.”
      Trump has repeatedly referred to the 1917 flu pandemic, whereas the outbreak happened in 1918 and into 1919.
      And when asked about the death toll from coronavirus so far in the US, of almost 155,000 killed, Trump appeared irritated and said: “It is what it is”
      His opponent in the upcoming presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden, tweeted on Tuesday morning: “Mr President, step up and do your job before even more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.”
      Biden also wrote: “On July 1st, Donald Trump predicted the coronavirus was going to ‘just disappear.’ He was wrong – and more than 25,000 Americans died due to the virus last month.”
      [embedded content]
      [embedded content]
      Swan pressed the president on which countries were doing worse. Trump brandished several pieces of paper with graphs and charts on them that he referred to as he attempted to suggest the US figures compared well internationally.
      “Right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than Europe.”
      “In what?” asks Swan. As it becomes apparent that Trump is talking about the number of deaths as a proportion of cases, Swan says said: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea.”
      Trump then says: “You can’t do that.”
      According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, the US has had over 4.7m confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 155,471 deaths. The US accounts for more than a quarter of all global confirmed infections.
      In another section of the interview, Trump repeats his false assertion that the reason the US has a significantly higher number of cases is because it tests more than anyone else, saying: “You know, there are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.”
      Asked who says that, Trump replies: “Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.”
      Trump also appears, without evidence, to assert that children are receiving positive Covid-19 test results for having a runny nose – which is not generally listed among the symptoms of coronavirus, which include a high temperature and a new continuous cough.
      “You test, some kid has even just a little runny nose, it’s a case. And then you report many cases,” Trump says.
      The president attempts to shift blame for the outbreaks of coronavirus on to state governors, saying: “We have done a great job. We’ve got the governors everything they needed. They didn’t do their job – many of them didn’t, some of them did.”
      The actor and activist Mia Farrow tweeted that: “Every American should watch this, the full, flabbergasting interview.”
      Trump was also asked about his previous baseless assertion that due to mail-in voting, the forthcoming US election would be “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history”.
      In the interview, Trump says: “So we have a new phenomena [sic], it’s called mail-in voting.” Swan then clarifies that mail-in voting has existed since the US civil war.
      Further attempting to cast doubt on the process, Trump says: “So they’re going to send tens of millions of ballots to California, all over the place. Who’s going to get them? Somebody got a ballot for a dog. Somebody got a ballot for something else. You got millions of ballots going. Nobody even knows where they’re going.”
      The interview took place last Tuesday, before the president’s tweet that falsely floated the idea that November’s election could be delayed.
      On Maxwell and Epstein, the president appeared to cast doubt on the official account of the cause of Epstein’s death, which has been a repeated source of conspiracy theories.
      Of Maxwell, Trump says “Her friend or boyfriend Epstein was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She’s now in jail. Yeah, I wish her well.” Trump goes on twice more to say of Epstein: “Was it suicide or was he killed?”

      Parker Molloy
      (@ParkerMolloy)
      Trump again wishes Ghislaine Maxwell well pic.twitter.com/whWhZoO4mC

      August 4, 2020

      In another part of the interview, he dismissed again as “fake news” intelligence reports that Russia had been offering bounties to the Taliban for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan. Asked specifically by Swan whether he had ever discussed the issue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump confirms he has never mentioned it to him.
      When Swan asks Trump about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, the president asserts: “I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk.”
      Lily Adams, a spokeswoman and adviser for the so-called war room of the Democratic party’s national committee slammed the president as incoherent and rambling through misinformation.
      “Trump’s disastrous interview would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high. More than 155,000 Americans have died, over 4.7 million have been infected, and we are in the sharpest economic downturn on record … coronavirus cases are skyrocketing and the economy is spiraling because of his failed response,” Adams said.

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      Donald Trump

      US politics

      Coronavirus outbreak

      Infectious diseases

      Ghislaine Maxwell

      Russia

      US elections 2020

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    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Fauci sidelined as Trump's White House steps up briefing campaign

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      Coronavirus outbreak

      The president says the scientist leading the US fight against the virus has ‘made a lot of mistakes’
      Coronavirus – latest updates
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      1:59

      Donald Trump: ‘I have a very good relationship with Anthony Fauci’ – video

      He is the US scientist who became the figurehead of attempts to combat the country’s coronavirus epidemic, described in some quarters as “America’s doctor”.
      Now Anthony Fauci appears sidelined by Donald Trump’s White House after repeatedly contradicting the president’s view about the effectiveness of the government response.
      In recent days the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has come under increasing fire from the president and his proxies. Trump told Fox news interviewers that Fauci had “made a lot of mistakes” and said he “disagreed” with Fauci’s claim that the US was in a bad place in its coronavirus response.
      Q&A Coronavirus pandemic: 10 countries of concern
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      Brazil 67,964 deaths, 1,713,160 cases
      President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed the disease as a “little flu” as it rampaged through his country and mocked measures such as wearing masks. Two health ministers have quit and Brazil’s outbreak is the second-deadliest in the world.
      India 21,129 deaths, 767,296 cases
      India brought in a strict nationwide lockdown in March that slowed the spread of the virus but did not bring it under control. As the country began easing controls, cases surged and it now has the third highest number. Mortality rates are low, but it is unclear if this reflects reporting problems or a relatively resilient population.
      Iran 250,458 cases, 12,305 deaths
      Iran had one of the first major outbreaks outside China. A lockdown slowed its spread but after that was eased in April, cases rebounded. Several senior officials have tested positive, and the government has strengthened controls, including making masks obligatory in public places.
      Israel 33,947 cases, 346 deaths
      Israel had an early travel ban and strict lockdowns, and in April the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared the country an example to the world in controlling Covid-19. But cases that in May were down to just 20 a day, skyrocketed after the country started opening up. Partial controls have been brought back with warnings more could follow.
      Mexico 275,003 cases, 32,796 deaths
      President Andrés Manuel López Obrador joined other populists from across the political spectrum in dismissing the threat from coronavirus; when schools closed in March he shared a video of himself hugging fans and kissing a baby. The outbreak is now one of the worst on the continent.
      Philippines 51,754 cases, 1,314 deaths
      A strict lockdown from March to June kept the disease under control but shrank the economy for the first time in 20 years. Cases have climbed steadily since the country started coming out of lockdown, and President Rodrigo Duterte has said the country cannot afford to fully reopen because it would be overwhelmed by another spike.
      Russia 706,179 cases, 10,825 deaths
      Coronavirus was slow to arrive in Russia, and travel bans and a lockdown initially slowed its spread, but controls were lifted twice for political reasons – a military parade and a referendum on allowing Putin to stay in power longer. Despite having the fourth biggest outbreak in the world controls are now being eased nationwide.
      Serbia 17,342 cases, 352 deaths
      Cases are rising rapidly, hospitals are full and doctors exhausted. But the government has rowed back from plans to bring back lockdown controls, after two days of violent protests. Critics blame the sharp rise in cases on authorities who allowed mass gatherings in May and elections in June. Officials say it is due to a lack of sanitary discipline, especially in nightclubs.
      South Africa 224,664 cases, 3,602 deaths
      South Africa has by far the largest outbreak on the African continent, despite one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Sales of alcohol and cigarettes were even banned. But it began reopening in May, apparently fuelling the recent rise in cases which have more than doubled over the last two weeks.
      US 132,310 deaths, 3,055,491 cases
      The US ban on travellers from overseas came too late, and though most states had lockdowns of some form in spring, they varied in length and strictness. Some places that were among the earliest to lift them are now battling fast-rising outbreaks, and the country has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths. Opposition to lockdowns and mask-wearing remains widespread.
      Source: Johns Hopkins CSSE, 9 July

      Photograph: Mark R Cristino/EPA

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      Described as driven and a workaholic, Fauci had found himself in the uncomfortable position of gently correcting Trump’s false or misleading statements for months. As far back as April the president retweeted a call for him to be fired, although that threat appeared to have receded.
      In any case, Trump cannot fire Fauci, who enjoys support on both sides of Congress and has a public approval rating for his coronavirus response of 67% – almost three times that of Trump’s. Instead the strategy appears aimed at damaging his standing while keeping him out of the public eye by cancelling media appearances.
      In the latest salvo of a coordinated briefing campaign, a White House official told CNN on Saturday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr Fauci has been wrong on things”.
      Fauci, who has diplomatically navigated Trump’s often chaotic and sometimes bizarre response to the pandemic, has long been the target of pro-Trump rightwing media in the US, where he has been denounced as “Dr Doom” or accused of being leftwing.
      [embedded content]
      And having originally been a prominent fixture of Trump’s coronavirus press conferences, he is now markedly less visible.
      His influence on the White House too appears to be waning. According to the Washington Post, quoting an unnamed White House official, Fauci last briefed Trump in the first week of June.
      Fauci has had a long career in public health, and first came to prominence during the Aids crisis. In recent weeks he has baldly contradicted Trump’s assessments that the US is winning the fight against coronavirus, and criticised the partisan political atmosphere that he suggests has impeded the response.
      In an interview for a podcast hosted by the FiveThirtyEight website last week he delivered a damning assessment of the United States’s response to the pandemic in comparison to other countries.
      Conceding that some cities and states such as New York had responded better than others, Fauci said: “As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.” He added that it was “understandable” why the European Union and others had banned US citizens from entering.
      On the role of America’s toxic political climate, he said: “You have to be having blind-folders on and covering your ears to think that we don’t live in a very divisive society now, from a political standpoint … So I think you’d have to make the assumption that if there wasn’t such divisiveness, that we would have a more coordinated approach.”
      Although Fauci has been at odds with Trump publicly before – not least over the president’s advocacy for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment – his most recent interventions have strayed from the strictly scientific field to the political.
      In doing so he has departed from what he has previously said is his guiding credo that “you stay completely apolitical and non-ideological, and you stick to what it is that you do. I’m a scientist and I’m a physician. And that’s it.”
      The pushback against Fauci continued on Sunday when Admiral Brett Giroir, the Trump-appointed coronavirus testing tsar, told NBC that Fauci “is not 100% right” and that he doesn’t necessarily “have the whole national interest in mind”, adding that “he looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view”.
      Described in a 2012 profile as “demanding and caustic with a dollop of charm”, Fauci has long given the impression that, as a general rule, he does not suffer fools gladly. Some of his colleagues told Science magazine in March that his approach to the coronavirus would be to walk a fine line in “being honest to the public and policymakers but not so openly critical that he loses influence by being ignored or forced to resign”.
      Increasingly it appears that approach has collided with the reality of a president unwilling to brook any criticism or dissent.

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      Coronavirus outbreak

      Infectious diseases

      US politics

      Donald Trump

      features

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    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      WHO's Covid-19 inquiry is a shrewd move in a sea of disinformation

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      In the world of epidemiology it’s sometimes said that pandemics are lived forwards and understood backwards.We encounter them head-on, chaotically, trying to fathom the disease in real time even while trying to mitigate its impact. Lessons generally come later as the evidence accumulates.What’s also true is public health, especially on a global scale, is rarely separable from politics. One of the complicating factors of the recently ended outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the country’s long history of conflict and the toxic relationship between central government in Kinshasa and the affected population in the country’s east, which led to deep and sometimes violent distrust.One of the most depressing subtexts of the coronavirus pandemic is how these kinds of conflicts are now being writ large as a range of actors, including western ones, have used the crisis to spread disinformation.The past months have been marked by dodgy dossiers leaked to the media and conspiracy theories, pushed by US officials engaged in a struggle for global influence with Beijing, suggesting that the virus was deliberately cooked up in a Chinese lab. More