More than 600 service members died after being treated with the controversial COVID-19 drug remdesivir at a time when it had not been approved by the FDA for treating the virus.
This is according to documents from the Department of Defense Joint Trauma System that were released by a military whistleblower, and they note that the military gave the drug “liberally” to service members who were believed to have COVID-19 months ahead of its official FDA approval.
The whistleblower, who uses the pseudonym Daniel LeMay to protect his identity, handed the documents over to journalist J.M. Phelps, and they were published in the Gateway Pundit. When the men discussed the contents of the documents, LeMay explained that the “initial trial depicted data manipulation in favor of remdesivir.”
After analyzing the data, he determined that a number of the clinical trials did not use a genuine placebo group that was suitable for comparing to the results of those who received remdesivir.
“The primary issue is with patient data. If we can’t verify the placebo group … then we can’t determine the actual efficacy of remdesivir,” he noted.
The data shows that 941 military service members passed away from March 2020 to March 2024. 63.9% of them, which amounts to 601 individuals, were given remdesivir – even though the DoD should have been aware of the drug’s potential dangers at the time.
Remdesivir was originally developed to treat Ebola, but studies found that it was lethal in human patients. For example, an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019 noted that the drug caused the highest mortality rate of four potential Ebola therapies given to patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 53.1% of those who received it died.
That didn't stop Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from awarding a $6 million grant to researchers at the University of North Carolina to “accelerate the development of a promising new drug (remdesivir) in the fight against deadly coronaviruses.”
Then, in February 2020, Gilead was given FDA approval to carry out a series of Phase 3 clinical trials to determine the suitability of remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19. A month later, the DoD announced it was entering a “cooperative research and development agreement” that would allow them to gain access to the antiviral drug.
Phelps pointed out that the FDA has the legal power “to authorize the emergency use of an otherwise unapproved medical product if the Department of Defense … determines that there is a military emergency involving an agent that may cause imminently life-threatening and specific risk to U.S. forces.”
Multiple studies show drug is risky and ineffective
The documents show that the studies involving the drug pointed to its many dangers. For example, one study published in the journal The Lancet in May 2020 showed that remdesivir was not very effective and that its use was stopped early in China because 12% of patients experienced adverse events.
Furthermore, a study from 2021 published in the JAMA Network Open journal involving more than 2,300 veterans who were hospitalized with the virus found that treatment with the drug was “not associated with survival” and that the patients who were given the drug had longer hospital stays and more deaths than those who were not given it.
Unfortunately, the documents also revealed that many service members were not told about the risks of the drug, which meant they could not provide informed consent.
New Jersey state chair of FormerFedsGroup, Charlene Delfico, told The Defender: “The whistleblower highlights what we’ve been saying all along. This drug is dangerous, and in most cases, fatal. There’s been no transparency or oversight. This should enrage people and make them push for an immediate investigation by Congress.”