Were researchers wrong to move the goalposts on remdesivir? In the end, it may not have mattered
Last Wednesday, Gilead announced that its drug, remdesivir, sped the time it took patients to recover from Covid-19. Full data from the study were released by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in a statement at 1 p.m. By 3:35 p.m., Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh, had noticed a problem.
Was there any explanation, he asked in a tweet, for why the study’s main goal had been changed just weeks before? He included a screenshot of a record of the change on the U.S. government’s online registry of clinical trials.
