Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn is apologizing Tuesday morning for vastly overstating the benefits of convalescent plasma in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. His announcement comes less than 48 hours after appearing with President Donald Trump and “echoing” his false claim that it cures 35 percent of those infected with the coronavirus.
“Hahn had echoed Trump in saying that 35 more people out of 100 would survive the coronavirus if they were treated with the plasma,” the Associated Press reports. “That claim vastly overstated preliminary findings of Mayo Clinic observation.”
Calling the criticism he received “entirely justified,” Hahn Monday night, as the Republican National Convention was going on, posted this tweet:
After a week of internal attacks from high-ranking members of the Trump administration, the FDA agreed to grant an emergency authorization for the use of convalescent plasma, despite just days earlier reversing guidance after studies showed weak or inconclusive results.
White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, for example, “had aggressively confronted FDA officials,” last week, Axios reported, “saying, ‘You are all Deep State and you need to get on Trump Time.’ (That’s the expression Navarro uses to describe the speed that he says Trump demands.)”
Early Saturday morning President Trump used that same line of attack to go after Commissioner Hahn directly and very publicly:
Before the day had ended the White House teased out that President Donald Trump would be making an announcement Sunday evening about “a major therapeutic breakthrough on the China Virus” – and that Hahn would be there to support it.
Tuesday morning Hahn went on “CBS This Morning” to apologize and explain.
Dr. Peter Lurie, a former FDA official under the Obama administration who now leads the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest told the AP that Dr. Hahn’s characterization of benefits of convalescent plasma in COVID-19 patients was “extraordinary” and “mind-boggling.”
Image: Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour via Flickr