Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the newly minted successor to Dr Anthony Fauci at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was recently one of America’s chief hype women for an antiviral drug that is now unanimously considered an unsafe and catastrophically failed treatment for Covid-19.
Prior to moving to her Government Health post, Marrazzo was the longtime director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
In partnership with Big Pharma drugmaker Gilead, UAB played a major role in the research and development of Remdesivir. The drug was developed over a decade ago with the hopes to treat Hepatitis C and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but was suddenly repurposed to “treat” Covid-19 when coronavirus hysteria reached the United States.
Given the UAB-Gilead partnership, one would think that Dr. Marrazzo would refrain from commenting on issues through which she maintained a clear conflict of interest. Or at the very least, she had the duty to disclose her conflict of interest when speaking to the media about the UAB-developed “wonder drug.” She did no such thing.
@NerdmannID @AadiaMd @goepfert_paul strong evidence to help us allocate #remdesivir to more patients with #COVID19 @uabmedicine @UABSOM @UAB_ID Also, super proud of #JasonGoldman @UWVirology https://t.co/LOBJWMOrjy
— Jeanne Marrazzo (@DrJeanneM) May 27, 2020
Even worse, Dr. Marrazzo bashed harmless and low cost alternatives like hydroxychloroquine, while hyping the super expensive Gilead-UAB competitor drug.
“The hope was maybe, if you treat early in the disease, you don’t need a silver bullet” such as remdesivir, she told The Washington Post in a July 2020 piece. “Hospitals are on the razor’s edge,” she added, contributing to the fear and paranoia that was enveloping the nation at the time.
In interview after interview, Dr. Marrazzo had nothing but good things to say about remdesivir, despite the incredible lack of data available to support her outandish claims about the drug.
On social media, Marrazzo lavished endless praise upon Remdesivir, declaring it the best agent against coronavirus disease, and boasting that her hospital tries to use it on every covid-hospitalized patient.
Proud to be a member of @IDSAInfo Board of Directors and @HIVMA member in support of this strong statement on #remdesivir allocation for #COVID19 https://t.co/QvGBbqc7Gk
— Jeanne Marrazzo (@DrJeanneM) May 7, 2020
“We don’t have enough remdesivir to treat everybody who’s in the hospital,” she said in a late 2020 news conference about the state of her hospital system. “It’s a really challenging situation.”
Her predecessor at the NIAID, Mr Fauci, infamously paraded Remdesivir as the “standard of care” for Covid-19 treatment, adding that it can “block the virus.”
Unsupported pseudoscientific claims about very expensive drugs (a full course of remdesivir costs the patient thousands of dollars) is nothing new for NIAID officials, who, under Fauci’s leadership, have created an agency that acts as a government marketing department for pharmaceutical companies.
Undoubtedly, Marrazzo’s Remdesivir maximalism had disastrous implications for patients hospitalized at UAB. The so-called silver bullet later took on a morbid nickname, “run, death is near,” because of the severe side effect portfolio associated with the IV drug.
The headlines speak for themselves:
Remdesivir not only failed, but actively harmed hospitalized patients, who were being injected with the antiviral agent following the recommendations of Dr. Marrazzo.
The most exhaustive studies on the Gilead-UAB drug show that there are zero clinical benefits to injecting patients with remdesivir. Many studies show that Remdesivir can severely injure vital organs such as the heart and kidneys.
Dr. Marrazzo has never publicly expressed remorse for her longtime promotion of the drug she once described as a “silver bullet” against Covid-19. She last promoted the unsafe drug in December, 2021, long after most hospital systems stopped treating patients with the Gilead-UAB disaster drug.
Reprinted with permission from The Dossier.
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