An influenza drug prescribed to 25 million Americans since 2014 roughly doubles the risk of death in hospitalized patients who receive it, researchers have found. About 20 percent of patients given the medicine, oseltamivir — sold both as a generic and under the name Tamiflu — died over the next 90 days, the researchers reported. Oseltamivir proved so deadly the researchers stopped its use in the trial early. “Treatment with oseltamivir is ineffective and highly likely to increase 90-day mortality in critically ill patients with influenza,” they wrote bluntly in a 29-page “preprint” released in late July. The stunning finding suggests Tamiflu has likely killed tens of thousands of older Americans, and very possibly more than 100,000, since the Swiss drugmaker Roche introduced it 27 years ago. Yet legacy media health reporters have entirely ignored the study (unlike today’s report of two deaths from measles in Pennsylvania, which is receiving saturation coverage.) — (Covering medicine like no one else. Because someone has to.) — The new study’s results are even more troubling because it marks the first time researchers have ever conducted a gold-standard randomized trial to see if the drug, Tamiflu, helps or harms critically ill flu patients, who are generally elderly. Roche won approval for the drug based on the fact that it seemed to shorten bouts of flu slightly in younger and healthier patients — not that it helped people at high risk. Roche sold about $20 billion of Tamiflu worldwide from 1999 to 2016, when its American patent on the drug expired. Its sales peaked at $3 billion in 2009, when swine flu hysteria led governments global to stockpile the medicine. Today, with the patent expired, Tamiflu revenues are a rounding error for Roche. But oseltamivir remains widely used, prescribed to almost 2 million Americans in 2024. — In the study, called REMAP-CAP, 442 hospitalized and critically ill patients received either a five- or 10-day course of oseltamivir or placebo, alongside standard treatments such as nasal oxygen. On average, the patients were about 60 and generally unhealthy, with diabetes or other preexisting conditions. Investigators then followed patients for the next 90 days to see if they survived. About 14 percent of the patients who did not receive oseltamivir died, compared to 20 percent of those who did. But the real gap was even larger, because patients who did not receive the drug were older and sicker at baseline than those who did. When the researchers adjusted for those differences, they found that oseltamivir had actually more than doubled the risk of death in patients who received it. They put the odds that the drug was actively harming patients at 98 percent. — (Maybe Roche should change the name to Tamideath! Ehh, probably not good for sales.) https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zJNK!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0c628014-1e17-46a7-8906-d5721bc1b0f0_1683x837.png — Given the relatively short follow-up period and size of the study, this two-fold increase in death is a stunningly robust finding. It suggests Tamiflu is actively dangerous — and that its widespread continued use has killed a significant number of older and medically fragile Americans. The researchers speculated that oseltamivir hampers the immune response in patients because the enyzme that it targets, neuraminidase, is widely found in human cells and not just flu virions: the effect of oseltamivir on host neuraminidases could explain the worse outcomes observed. In this trial, patients given oseltamivir had a higher proportion of deaths due to progressive multi-organ failure, and higher rates of Aspergillus infection, aligning with these hypotheses. — Tamiflu’s history is even more disturbing. Even as legacy media reporters hyped oseltamivir as a magic pill that would be essential to stopping a flu pandemic, and health bureaucrats encouraged its use, independent researchers raised red flags about the drug. If this reminds you of Covid and the mRNAs… it should. (Which may be why the media is refusing to report on the new study.)
