Note also that Rayner's conflicts include a mis-spelt organisation "Commonwealth and Scientific Research Organisation". This doesn't exist. He means the infamous CSIRO whose Gary Crameri and Linfa Wang are hopefully now well known to you as CSIRO scientists who perform gain of function viral research in collaboration with Zengli Shi.
also, thank you for the great resources and kind words! It was your pointing out the CoI statement initially that pointed out CRR as a player to be focused on.
Fascinating. And wow Alexandros, what an incredible job of sleuthing!! Indeed, the smoking gun is that someone went to such lengths to hide the involvement of the Gates'.
In the NIH presentation, at the end, when answering questions, Ed Mills mentioned a young (maybe 30ish) billionaire benefactor who was funding the trial.
I reckon it was split between them and Rainwater CF. As I wrote in the piece, in all my interactions with FG and Patrick himself, he's been straightforward and seems like a person who really wants to help. He does have his biases like all of us, but I really don't believe he would knowingly fund a trial that he was not convinced was setting out to do good Science.
I guess Patrick is intimately involved, given he was referenced by Ed Mills as being somehow responsible for not providing extra funding for the Ivermectin arm, even though it was on the precipice of statistical significance.
Maybe Ed just threw that out there in the heat of the moment or maybe Patrick knew exactly what he was doing.
If Patrick did indeed know the IVM arm was near statistical significance and with more subjects would reach it, then if he specifically denied more funding (which Ed seemed to suggest) then in actual fact he’s the problem, despite coming across nice as pie.
Maybe Patrick was oblivious to the details but certainly he was referenced by Mills as a limitation to extra funding
I know specifically from the Rainwater folks that if Ed asked for more money, he would have gotten it. He just made the part about no funding being available up. Pierre has reported this before, so I don't think I'm saying anything new here.
Thanks, didn’t realise that Pierre had already covered it.
If true (ie Ed Mills misled or misrepresented Collison) then hopefully Collison makes that public and/or holds Mills to account.
Would have been nice if Collison made a public statement to that effect.
Bottom line is basically you can’t trust any of these guys, including Collison.
When Mills said it (regarding the trial funding) I thought it was very weird that he would have to specifically request more money from an individual to extend the trial.
Perhaps chalk it up as another lie to Mill, but I still wouldn’t trust Collison
I’d love to tweet this. Recently, I’ve begun to actually enjoy twitter as it enables one to find birds of a feather to flock together very easily without the pesky worry of how your phrasing or topic may annoy Uncle
Alexandros, I note that TOGETHER trial references to funders shift from mentioning Gates Foundation (present February-August 2021; gone Oct 2021) to mentioning UNITAID in October 2021. As of November 2022 - UNITAID has likewise disappeared. In fact, no funders are mentioned on the website any longer. Another interesting absence can be found in an April 2022 mid-term evaluation of UNITAID funded covid-related activities (over the period March 2020 to December 2021). The list of investments made during this period *does not include any allocation to Platform Life Sciences or the TOGETHER trial*. https://unitaid.org/assets/Unitaid-COVID-19-mid-term-Evaluation_CEPA-Final-Report.pdf
If UNITAID allocated funds to Platform Life Sciences/TOGETHER trial, why would they not want that investment included for review?
Also, I note the April 2022 evaluation document states that UNITAID made an investment in marketing/lobbying activities for Molnuipiravir and Paxlovid. "Whilst not funded directly for COVID-19 work by Unitaid in 2021, Medicine Patent Pool’s licensing for Molnupiravir and Paxlovid is expected to significantly impact access to treatments in LMICs, also *contributed to by the advocacy work.... of the WEMOS grants."*
More great work again on this Alex and we discussed this before
(1) how they swapped the principal investigators around
(2) the interests with Cytel who have a number of fingers in a number of pies in regard to data collection and "synthesis" https://www.cytel.com/synthetic-and-external-controls-in-clinical-trials (with a nice pic of Kristian Thorlund)
Note also that Rayner's conflicts include a mis-spelt organisation "Commonwealth and Scientific Research Organisation". This doesn't exist. He means the infamous CSIRO whose Gary Crameri and Linfa Wang are hopefully now well known to you as CSIRO scientists who perform gain of function viral research in collaboration with Zengli Shi.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24172901/
Interestingly Rayner is not listed on the CSIRO website other than a loose reference to Ausbiotech
https://www.ausbiotech.org/news/2020s-biggest-week-in-biotech-arrives
And of course the really dodgy MTEK group - experts in data synthesis.
https://www.dovepress.com/synthetic-and-external-controls-in-clinical-trials-ndash-a-primer-for--peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-CLEP
I will bet $100 all their data is synthetic.
I will take the other side of that bet. If it was purely synthetic, it would not be this awful.
also, thank you for the great resources and kind words! It was your pointing out the CoI statement initially that pointed out CRR as a player to be focused on.
Isn't Ark a smart fellow?! 👍🙏
Fascinating. And wow Alexandros, what an incredible job of sleuthing!! Indeed, the smoking gun is that someone went to such lengths to hide the involvement of the Gates'.
The constant, and brilliantly researched revelations in your Substack must be a complete embarrassment for those concerned.
Thank you for sharing your investigation
Great job year of exposing gaslighting
In the NIH presentation, at the end, when answering questions, Ed Mills mentioned a young (maybe 30ish) billionaire benefactor who was funding the trial.
Any idea who that person is?
Patrick Collison of FastGrants
Is he the main funder of Together or is it more indirect? He’s a tech guy, linked to Bill Gates maybe. Reckon he’s dodgy or ok?
I reckon it was split between them and Rainwater CF. As I wrote in the piece, in all my interactions with FG and Patrick himself, he's been straightforward and seems like a person who really wants to help. He does have his biases like all of us, but I really don't believe he would knowingly fund a trial that he was not convinced was setting out to do good Science.
I guess Patrick is intimately involved, given he was referenced by Ed Mills as being somehow responsible for not providing extra funding for the Ivermectin arm, even though it was on the precipice of statistical significance.
Maybe Ed just threw that out there in the heat of the moment or maybe Patrick knew exactly what he was doing.
If Patrick did indeed know the IVM arm was near statistical significance and with more subjects would reach it, then if he specifically denied more funding (which Ed seemed to suggest) then in actual fact he’s the problem, despite coming across nice as pie.
Maybe Patrick was oblivious to the details but certainly he was referenced by Mills as a limitation to extra funding
I know specifically from the Rainwater folks that if Ed asked for more money, he would have gotten it. He just made the part about no funding being available up. Pierre has reported this before, so I don't think I'm saying anything new here.
Thanks, didn’t realise that Pierre had already covered it.
If true (ie Ed Mills misled or misrepresented Collison) then hopefully Collison makes that public and/or holds Mills to account.
Would have been nice if Collison made a public statement to that effect.
Bottom line is basically you can’t trust any of these guys, including Collison.
When Mills said it (regarding the trial funding) I thought it was very weird that he would have to specifically request more money from an individual to extend the trial.
Perhaps chalk it up as another lie to Mill, but I still wouldn’t trust Collison
I’d love to tweet this. Recently, I’ve begun to actually enjoy twitter as it enables one to find birds of a feather to flock together very easily without the pesky worry of how your phrasing or topic may annoy Uncle
Jack and Aunt Becky.
Alexandros, I note that TOGETHER trial references to funders shift from mentioning Gates Foundation (present February-August 2021; gone Oct 2021) to mentioning UNITAID in October 2021. As of November 2022 - UNITAID has likewise disappeared. In fact, no funders are mentioned on the website any longer. Another interesting absence can be found in an April 2022 mid-term evaluation of UNITAID funded covid-related activities (over the period March 2020 to December 2021). The list of investments made during this period *does not include any allocation to Platform Life Sciences or the TOGETHER trial*. https://unitaid.org/assets/Unitaid-COVID-19-mid-term-Evaluation_CEPA-Final-Report.pdf
If UNITAID allocated funds to Platform Life Sciences/TOGETHER trial, why would they not want that investment included for review?
Also, I note the April 2022 evaluation document states that UNITAID made an investment in marketing/lobbying activities for Molnuipiravir and Paxlovid. "Whilst not funded directly for COVID-19 work by Unitaid in 2021, Medicine Patent Pool’s licensing for Molnupiravir and Paxlovid is expected to significantly impact access to treatments in LMICs, also *contributed to by the advocacy work.... of the WEMOS grants."*
👏👏👏
Excellent investigations!