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To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.

Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.

Lindell told Axios that in the meeting, Trump "basically said: …'The FDA should be approving it.'"

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Growing up in CA, the one thing we learned as kids is that castor beans and oleander ave very, very poisonous.

This can't end well.

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There is no public data showing oleandrin has ever been tested in animals or humans for its efficacy against COVID-19, but the extract has shown some evidence of inhibiting the virus in a non-peer reviewed laboratory study.

In an interview on Saturday, Whitney told Axios that oleandrin has been tested on humans for its efficacy against COVID-19 but said the study has not been published yet. He also said the lab study is in the process of being peer reviewed.

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TOPLINE
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell – who has been pushing, with the president’s apparent support, an unproven coronavirus treatment that could possibly be toxic – said Tuesday he was asked by the administration to gather leads on potential treatments for the White House coronavirus task force.


Lindell told CNN host Anderson Cooper that “this great administration” asked him to “bring back to the [White House coronavirus] task force” anything that is promising to fight coronavirus, be they “good sanitizers or cures.”

Lindell and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson have been privately promoting a drug called Oleandrin to Trump, who said in July that “the FDA should be approving it,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan reported.

Trump seemed to support the extract – which Forbes contributor Bruce Y. Lee called “an extract from a highly toxic plant with no real proof that it works against SARS-CoV2 infections in humans.” – telling reporters on Monday that he will “look at it.”

Lindell – who has no medical degrees – was slammed in the interview for pushing the drug to Trump while serving on the board of directors for Phoenix Biotechnology, a company manufacturing the extract, with Cooper alleging he “stands to make money from this.”

Cooper also questioned the scientific veracity of Lindell’s claim that the drug has been “tested by over 1,000 people,” asserting, “there are no public peer-reviewed studies about this” and demanding Lindell produce the test, to which Lindell replied “I don’t have the test.”

“You have no medical background, there is no evidence of this substance, it hasn’t been tested in animals or humans,” Cooper castigated Lindell, labeling him a “snake oil salesman.”

CHIEF CRITIC

“The involvement of the Secretary of HUD and MyPillow.com in pushing a dubious product at the highest levels should give Americans no comfort at night about their health and safety during a raging pandemic,” a senior Trump administration official told Axios.

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
We can get medically helpful stuff from deadly poisonous

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
We can get medically helpful stuff from deadly poisonous plants.

Digitalis (Digoxin) came from Foxglove. Atropine came from Deadly Nightshade.

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The science: Oleandrin is an extract from the oleander plant. Researchers have suggested that it could be useful to treat cancer because of the way it affects cells, and that it could enhance the effects of other cancer therapies.

Professor Sharon Lewin, the director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne, is an international authority on antiviral drugs and has a laboratory working on COVID-19.

Asked about oleandrin's potential efficacy as a COVID-19 treatment, Lewin told Axios, "Oleandrin looks to have antiviral activity at high doses in a test tube model. You'd certainly want to see more work done on this before even contemplating a human trial."

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Originally posted by Mikhailoh:
I hope he's better with medicine than his pillows. They suck.