Wharfie, first of all, thanks for the video.
This is an example of an Internet "expert" on biotech that reminds me of all the antivax "experts" I've seen over the past few years. (EDIT: Oh wow, this guy is a comedian by trade? Even better!)
Around the 1:00 mark, that part about "putting his mom (who's a doctor) on the team and finagling a bunch of things" is just his handwaving explanation for what Ramaswamy did to pump up the drug, but that also demonstrates his ignorance.
Why? Because there are HUNDREDS of drugs that go through the same thing. Drugs that have failed clinical trials in the past often get revived for different use cases. In fact, said drugs already have a leg up on the process, because the results of the past trials can be of value to future trials. (For example, you already know the potential side effects.)
Now I have no idea how Ramaswamy's mom helped to revive this particular Alzheimer's drug in question. (I try to remember to ask my wife if she's familiar with it.) But it's possible that she honestly saw a different use case, and that the use case showed promise in early trials. It's not as easy as "finagling" the results of previous studies, or else we'd see it happen MUCH more often.
As for the whole pump-n-dump part itself, LOTS of drugs appreciate in value before the Phase III trials. I know of one biotech company that got bought out by Pfizer for $12B. This was on the mere hope of their drug being successful in Phase III. Long story short, the founders and their employees made out like bandits, the results of the trial were disappointing, and Pfizer was left holding the bag. (AFAIK, said founders aren't being sued at the moment. Or if they are, they probably have good lawyers and an ironclad "pre-nup" with Pfizer.)
As for that last comment about what's worse for the country, "woke pronouns" or this biotech pump-n-dump practice, I'll choose "woke pronouns" any day of the week.
Why? Because as questionable as the biotech pump-n-dump seems to be, the real losers are the speculators, NOT the general public. And I'm not going to shed a tear for greedy speculators.
(In fact, I want to see MORE of them, given that Silicon Valley is basically a speculator's playground.)
Tenchusatsu |
