“Proceed With Caution At Your Own Peril” – Merck’s COVID ‘Super Drug’ Poses Serious Health Risks, Scientists Warn

• “Proceed With Caution At Your Own Peril” – Merck’s COVID ‘Super Drug’ Poses Serious Health Risks, Scientists Warn
  by Tyler Durden, https://www.zerohedge.com/
  As it turns out, all the scientists and doctors who insisted that Merck’s “revolutionary” COVID drug molnupiravir is extremely safe weren’t faithfully adhering to “the science” after all. Because according to a report published Thursday by Barron’s, some scientists are worried that the drug – which purportedly cut hospitalizations in half during a study that was cut short – could cause cancer or birth defects.
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  So much for having a “strong safety profile,” as Dr. Scott Gottlieb claimed in an interview on the day Merck first publicized the research. It’s perfectly understandable why Merck might choose to play down this safety risk: assuming it’s approved, the drug is widely expected to be one of “the most lucrative drugs ever” – which is one reason why Merck’s shares soared into double-digit territory after the announcement.
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  As we reported earlier this week, Merck and its “partner” Ridgeback Biotherapeutics will profit immensely by charging customers up to 40x what it costs to make the drug, which Ridgeback originally licensed from Emory University for an “undisclosed sum”. The drug was developed with funding from the federal government.
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  According to Barron’s, some scientists who have studied the drug believe that its method of suppressing the virus could potentially run amok within the body.
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  Some scientists who have studied the drug warn, however, that the method it uses to kill the virus that causes Covid-19 carries potential dangers that could limit the drug’s usefulness.
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  Molnupiravir works by incorporating itself into the genetic material of the virus, and then causing a huge number of mutations as the virus replicates, effectively killing it. In some lab tests, the drug has also shown the ability to integrate into the genetic material of mammalian cells, causing mutations as those cells replicate.
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  If that were to happen in the cells of a patient being treated with molnupiravir, it could theoretically lead to cancer or birth defects.
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  In particular, Raymond Schinazi, a professor of pediatrics and the director of biochemical pharmacology at Emory who studied the drug while it was being developed, and published a number of papers on NHC, the compound that’s the active ingredient in the drug. He published a paper that showed the drug can produce a reaction like the one described above, and insisted it shouldn’t be given to young people – especially pregnant women – without more data.
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  Schinazi told Barron’s that he did not believe that molnupiravir should be given to pregnant women, or to young people of reproductive age, until more data is available. Merck’s trials of molnupiravir have excluded pregnant women; the scientists running the trial asked male participants to “abstain from heterosexual intercourse” while taking the drug, according to the federal government website that tracks clinical trials.
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  Barron’s even shared a paper published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in May by Schinazi and scientists at the University of North Carolina which reported that NHC can cause mutations in animal cell cultures in a lab test designed to detect such mutations – something Merck claims it has tested for. The paper’s authors concluded that the risks for molnupiravir “may not be zero”.
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  read more.

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