Emails offer look into whistleblower charges of cronyism behind potential COVID-19 drug

• Whistleblower complaint : “similar experimental drugs in this class had been shown to cause reproductive toxicity in animals, and offspring from treated animals had been born without teeth and without parts of their skulls.”
• Raymond Schinazi, a chemist at Emory expert in EIDD-2801 notes that his former pharmaceutical company, Pharmasset, abandoned it in 2003 after discovering its mutagenic properties.
• Claims the small chemical tweaks made to increase the ingredient’s bioavailability and transform it into EIDD-2801 are unlikely to change its mutagenicity. “Thank goodness someone is raising the red flag,” about EIDD-2801, Schinazi says. “You don’t develop a drug that’s mutagenic. Period.”