The head of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) walked back his claim that an experimental therapy had provided a dramatic benefit to Covid-19 patients, a rare reversal for an agency that has prided itself on rock-solid science and public trust.
On Sunday (Aug 23) night at a press conference with President Donald Trump, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said that blood plasma from Covid-19 survivors given to new patients could save huge numbers of lives.
"What that means isand if the data continue to pan out100 people who are sick with Covid-19, 35 would have been saved because of the administration of plasma," Dr Hahn said. His remarks followed similar comments by Mr Trump, who said that the therapy is "proven to reduce mortality by 35 per cent", and by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
On Monday night, Dr Hahn reversed himself.
"I've been criticised for remarks I made Sunday night concerning the benefits of convalescent plasma. The criticism is entirely justified," Dr Hahn said in a tweet.
He had spent much of Monday taking heat from health experts, including two previous FDA commissioners, for his remarks.
"That was not the way that I would have worded it," said one of the doctors who led the blood plasma study, Dr Arturo Casadevall, chairman of the department of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "I hope they will issue a clarification," he said earlier on Monday.
What the data do show is that a higher dose of blood plasma is better than a lower one. And while there are promising signals that it will lead to a real benefit when compared to a placebo, that is not known yet.
"Until we've a randomised controlled trial, we don't know definitively," Dr Casadevall said.
The administration's misrepresentation of the data may raise fears about how Dr Hahn and the rest of the administration will treat data on a vaccine for the virus.
Mr Trump has said he expects one to be ready in time for his potential re-election, and on Saturday accused unnamed members of the "deep state" at the FDA of slowing work to hurt him politically.
The "deep state" is a term used by Mr Trump to describe employees of government agencies that he believes are manipulating policy to work against his interests.
There is no evidence this is happening at the FDA.
The 35 per cent statistic also has several fatal flaws. Since everyone in the programme received blood plasma, it's not known what would have happened compared with patients who did not get the therapy. And scores of variables, like how sick the patients were and when they were treatedthat could have skewed the results.
Dr Robert Califf, the FDA commissioner under previous president Barack Obama, said that he thought Dr Hahn had misspoken. "It would be good for Steve to publish a correction," Dr Califf said on Twitter earlier on Monday.
Mr Azar and Dr Hahn both have extensive experience with drugs and therapies. Mr Azar is a previous pharmaceutical executive, and Dr Hahn has spent several decades treating patients and researching cancer. Before joining the FDA, he was the chief medical executive of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, a leading oncology treatment and research hospital.
In a tweet posted earlier on Monday, Dr Hahn said that the agency will "reevaluate our emergency use authorisation based upon new incoming data that we receive".
Blood plasma from recovered patients is being used around the world, with the hope that its infection-fighting antibodies can help combat the virus. It doesn't appear to pose a major safety risk, and on Sunday the Trump administration announced an emergency FDA measure to make it more widely available. Several studies have shown promising signs of efficacy.
"Based on the data we've today, it's very likely that plasma is reducing mortality," Dr Casadevall said. "The one thing we're missing is a randomised controlled trial", the gold-standard test that will tell researchers and regulators if blood plasma is a breakthrough, an incremental help or something in between, he said.
To understand the confusion over the 35 per cent figure, it's important to look at two concepts: relative risk and absolute risk.
Imagine a clinical trial to test an experimental drug, with 2,000 patients split into two groups. The first 1,000 patients do not get the drug, and in that group 10 people die. The other group of 1,000 patients gets the drug, and five people in that group die.
Using relative risk, that is a 50 per cent improvementa tremendous number.
But using absolute risk, the imaginary drug only decreases the likelihood of death by 0.5 per cent. That means five more of those 1,000 people treated with the drug would live, not the 500 implied if you mistakenly use the 50 per cent relative risk number.
The claim of a 35 per cent mortality benefit made by Mr Trump, Mr Azar and Dr Hahn uses the first measurerelative risk. But because clinical trials of plasma therapy have not been completed, how several lives it actually savesthe absolute risk improvementstill is not known.
Dr Hahn, in his tweet on Monday, said he had muddled the difference.
"What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction," he said.
The FDA analysis was pulled from a subset of data in the trialtypically a no-no for credible studies. And despite a day of criticism online from doctors and researchers, Dr Hahn's correction was not enough for some.
"You need to correct the 35 lives saved per 100 sick with Covid-19 so people understand that was absolutely wrong, Steve," Dr Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, said on Twitter. "That there is no evidence to support that. That there is no evidence at this juncture to support any survival benefit."
Doctors and patients rely on the FDA to put out authoritative information concerning the safety and efficacy of drugs, vaccines, medical devices and other products, guiding their use not just in the United States but around the world. The agency has historically carefully guarded its reputation and scientific independence.
Dr Hahn's comments about 35 out of 100 people being saved were still posted to the FDA's official twitter account as of Monday afternoon.
Dr Hahn's predecessor Scott Gottlieb, who served as FDA commissioner under Mr Trump from 2017 to 2019, said he thought the FDA was right to allow convalescent blood plasma for emergency use. But he suggested that the press conference had not given the correct picture of what health regulators actually know from the data.
"When we overstate findings it erodes confidence in science and undermines public trust in regulatory decisions. The right message was this 'may' provide a benefit, it could be meaningful for some patients, but we need more evidence to prove it," Dr Gottlieb said in a tweet.
"The way the public part was handled will erode precious public confidence," he said. "You earn public confidence in small drops and you loose it in buckets."