Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas (1918). Original image from National Museum of Health and Medicine. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
I’ve seen a lot of viral illnesses the past six weeks or so: COVID. Bronchitis. Sinusitis. And of course, the flu. This is the time of year when people get sick with all kinds of sniffles, sore throats, coughs, chills, and aches. Understandably when people are sick, they want to get better as quickly as possible. Ergo, many patients who test positive for flu will ask me for Tamiflu.
Tamiflu (generic name Oseltamivir) was approved in 1999, and became an instant blockbuster drug. And for understandable reasons. Millions of people get the flu every year, and, if you’ve ever been unlucky enough to be one of them, you’ll know that it’s an absolutely miserable experience. Moreover, while most people who get the flu make a full recovery within a week or two, a small percentage (mostly older people with poor baseline health, and, more tragically, sometimes very small children) of people succumb to this illness. So it was no surprise that both doctors and patients welcomed the advent of Tamiflu, which promised to shorten the course of the illness and reduce the risk for life-threatening complications.
The only problem is that it turns out to have never been true. It wasn’t until 2014 – fully 15 years after Tamiflu appeared on the market – that a team of researchers were able to get a copy of the full unedited data set for the initial Tamiflu studies from the drug’s inventor, Roche. It turned out that Roche had withheld data from the relevant regulatory bodies which cast doubt on the effectiveness of the drug. You can read more about this story by clicking here.
Since then a number of studies have come showing that Tamiflu has virtually no benefit. (A few studies have shown that it may be helpful for PREVENTING flu after an exposure, but the biggest studies to date show no benefit to taking it once you are in fact experiencing symptoms, and a large review published just over a year ago showed no reduction in hospitalizations or serious complications when patients take Tamiflu).
Though the fact that Tamiflu doesn’t work is fairly well known at this point, it continues to be recommended by various government agencies and professional medical organizations. Apparently just admitting that we don’t have an effective treatment for flu is not an option.
This would all be harmless enough if there were no side effects to Tamiflu. But of course there are, including GI upset and nausea. I’ve personally seen two patients in my career hospitalized for this very side effect (both recovered, fortunately). Not to mention the many billions of dollars that we have collectively spent on Tamilflu in the past quarter-century – money that could have been put to better use.
But to my mind, the biggest side effect of this scandal is that it is just one further reason that people have become so skeptical toward mainstream medicine and, more generally, toward all institutions of authority in the United States. It’s very difficult to effectively run a country in which large segments of the public no longer trust important institutions such as corporations, doctors, the media, and the research universities.
But how can one blindly trust such institutions, when they have a record of so frequently betraying our trust?
