Last updated at 12:03 AM on 22nd January 2012, Daily Mail
The famous swine flu drug that triggered a race among countries for stockpiling it and which earned billions of dollars for its manufacturer may be based on sloppy clinical evidence and may not be effective, a new investigation has revealed.
The drug Oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu by Swiss drug manufacturer Roche, earned huge profits during the 2010 pandemic flu. India, too, had stockpiled 30 million doses of Tamiflu.
The investigation, done by the British Medical Journal, says the drug’s effectiveness is not backed by publicly available evidence, while accusing the manufacturer of breaking successive pledges to make full study reports available.
