NIH failed to test coronavirus drugs, studied drunk monkeys, soap operas, and tailgating instead | Just The News

NIH failed to test coronavirus drugs, studied drunk monkeys, soap operas, and tailgating instead | Just The News:

• Expert warned agency as much as 87.5 percent of biomedical research was wasteful.

"In a steamy summer day inside the lecture auditorium of the storied National Institutes of Health headquarters, Dr. Michael Bracken delivered a stark message to an audience that dedicated its life, and owed its living, to medical research.

As much as 87.5% of biomedical research is wasted or inefficient, the respected Yale University epidemiologist declared in a sobering assessment for a federal research agency that spends about $40 billion a year on medical studies.

...Nearly four years later, Bracken’s sweeping indictment about the financial management, organization and conduct of federal medical research looms large over a series of “what if” questions about the deadly and ever-spreading COVID-19 pandemic:

• What if the research community hadn’t bet all its marbles on the next pandemic coming from a flu instead of a version of the coronavirus?
• What if NIH or other agencies had funded research into the efficacy of drugs like chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and HIV cocktails that had shown promise against coronavirus dating back to 2003?...

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