“Tens of thousands of people have already been given convalescent plasma in the US but these treatments were not randomized. They just give individuals convalescent plasma in the hope it will work. Vast quantities have been given and they still have no idea whether it helps or harms or has no impact.
“There are lots and lots of small drugs trials involving a few dozen or a few hundred patients going on in the US but nothing of any substance. They are failing to do large, randomised trials and that ends up providing bad medicine. It makes the practice of medicine poorer and the outcomes for patients poorer.
“If you look at the US, huge quantities of this treatment have been used on an arbitrary willy-nilly basis. The UK excels beyond measure compared with what’s going on there”
… Professor Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
“There
have been reports of 20,000 patients getting convalescent plasma in a cohort
but none of those patients were randomised. If they had put these patients into
randomised trials, we would now have a clear answer about the effectiveness of
convalescent plasma.”
… Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health
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