Well conceived drug trials have saved hundreds of thousands of lives

IN FEBRUARY 2020 doctors from the World Health Organisation (WHO), visiting China to see the ward- and morgue-filling reality of covid-19, found more than 200 clinical trials under way. Desperate to help dying patients, doctors in Wuhan and elsewhere had been scouring their dispensaries for plausible treatments. They were trying out antiviral drugs developed to treat other viruses, anti-inflammatory and other drugs that modulate immune responses, antibody-rich blood plasma from people who had recovered, traditional Chinese medicines of various sorts and more. In each case there was at least some reason to hope that the treatment might do some good. But the trials were all too small to see if those hopes were being borne out.