We’ll leave it to you to judge on the morality of testing new drugs on animals. It’s a tricky question at the best of times and these are not easy ones. Our job is to report the truth without fear or favor as much as humanly possible. Hence our decision to report promising results with a new antiviral drug as advised by National Institutes of Health.
Promising Results with a New Antiviral for Covid-19 Treatment
The clinical trial was under supervision of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The scientists used rhesus macaque monkeys because these creatures are close to humans anatomically and physiologically. Hence, promising results with a new antiviral on them should also apply to humans too.
The NIAID team is not developing a vaccine. It is researching better treatments for patients already infected with Covid-19. Rhesus macaque monkeys previously helped scientists develop drugs to manage HIV and AIDS. They also proved invaluable when developing vaccines for smallpox, polio, and rabies in the past.
The New Drug is of ‘Great Significance for Patient Management’
The researchers administered a new drug called Remdesivir to rhesus macaque monkeys infected with the Coronavirus. They found their condition was ‘significantly better’ than the control group that displayed symptoms similar to humans with the virus.
The investigators believe these results support treating humans with the new drug as soon as feasible to achieve maximum benefit. Our promising results with a new antiviral have great significance for managing Covid-19 patients better, they say. However this is not a vaccine. A clinical improvement is not the same as an infection cured.
The study replicated scaled-down dosing procedures used on human patients. It ‘significantly reduced’ clinical disease and damage to the lungs of the rhesus macaques. This therefore appears to be of potentially great benefit for better managing the impact of Covid-19 across the nations.
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