Many therapeutic disasters were played out during the second wave of Covid-19 simply because the Indian medical system and healthcare did not have the time for a standard trial to test a placebo. The most unsuccessful among all the disasters was plasma theory.
Plasma is a component of the blood which is believed to have antibodies to diseases. It was believed that Covid-19 patients would benefit from such therapy at a time when even the use of Intravenous immunoglobulin (IV IgG), a related plasma-based therapy that had been available for years, wasn’t effective in most disorders.
Plasma needs to be extracted from patients which is why it does not come cheap. A lot of patients went broke by spending their life savings on plasma therapy and also, Remdesivir, that has now been knocked off from the guidelines.
What really needs to be asked is – who is accountable for the loss of life savings and death of numerous patients who were given the therapy?
