|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
President Donald Trump was given an experimental drug on Oct. 2, 2020, after he and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Only a handful of patients received the drug outside of clinical trials.
The new treatment monoclonal antibodies are proteins that are manufactured and delivered into the bloodstream — RGEN-COV2. It was designed to imitate antibodies produced by a natural immune response.
RGEN-COV2 was developed from human fetal tissue cells. Trump being anti-abortion causes many to question him about his usage as well as the ethical use of fetal tissue and stem cells in groundbreaking research. 
A member of the National Institutes of Health’s Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics and senior faculty member at the University of California at San Diego, Lawrence Goldstein said:
President Trump has been an outspoken opponent of fetal tissue research and he used it. I just think it’s incredibly hypocritical across the board.
The two companies, Regeneron and Eli Lilly data, showed that when manufactured antibodies are given to a newly infected person right after being diagnosed, it speeds the resolution of symptoms. They used a cell line derived from an aborted fetus in the 1970s. The companies do not consider the treatment to have relied on fetal tissue because the cells were acquired so long ago.
On Wednesday, Regeneron applied for an emergency approval for the drug from the Food and Drug Administration. The application stated that they only have enough doses for 50,000 patients, but they expect to have enough medicine for as many as 300,000 people within the next few months. About 300,000 new coronavirus cases are being detected a day worldwide, as claimed by the World Health Organization.
Written by Jessica Letcher
Edited by Cathy Milne-Ware
Sources:
Wired: Trump’s ‘Miracle Cure’ for Covid Is a Logistical Nightmare; Walid Gellad
ABC News: Trump’s COVID-19 treatment developed using cells originally drawn from fetal tissue; Sasha Pezenik and Anne Flaherty
CBS News: What you need to know about the COVID-19 cocktail Trump is raving about; Stephen Gandel
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore’s Flickr Page- Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of Terence Faircloth’s Flickr Page- Creative Commons License