https://www.ncronline.org/news/quick-reads/german-bishops-comment-role-their-predecessors-world-war-ii

BONN, Germany — The catholic bishops in Germany plan to examine the actions of the church during the Second World War as part of their commemoration of the 75th anniversary of its end.

The move is unprecedented. The bishops have never before "in detail and systematically commented on the position of their predecessors on the Second World War," the German Bishops' Conference said on April 23.

The president of the conference, Bishop Georg Baetzing, will present the paper "German Bishops in the World War" at a video news conference on Wednesday together with Hildesheim Bishop Heiner Wilmer, chairman of the Justitia et Pax (Justice and Peace) Commission.

The catholic bishops last published a statement on the issue in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. In it, they described the war's end as a "liberation from a criminal regime." They also said there had been "a deep gulf and mutual rejection between the National Socialist system of injustice and the Catholic Church."

Catholics were punished or killed for helping persecuted people, the statement said. But it added that one should not overlook that there had also been "unwise silence and mistaken restraint, fearful reaction and culpable failure" within the Catholic Church.

The 1995 statement went on to say: "There was the church's unequivocal No to the National Socialist racial ideology. But there was no public outcry when it was ruthlessly set in motion."

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/remdisivir-flop-china-analysts?

Another day, another leak—or so it seems for Gilead’s COVID-19 hopeful remdesivir. This time, the World Health Organization accidentally revealed data from a study in China showing that the treatment neither improved patients’ condition nor tamped down on the amount of virus in their blood, Financial Times reported, calling the trial a “flop.”

But was it really a flop? Analysts are saying no.

The study tested remdesivir in 158 patients, comparing their response to 79 patients in a control group. The treatment “was not associated with a difference in time to clinical improvement,” according to draft documents inadvertently published by the WHO that were seen by Financial Times and Stat and have since been removed. Patients in both study arms experienced side effects at roughly the same rate (about 65%), but more patients on remdesivir stopped treatment early because of side effects compared with placebo (12% versus 5.1%).

As Evercore ISI analyst Umer Raffat pointed out in a note to clients, though, the study allowed patients to start the Gilead candidate up to 12 days after symptoms first appeared. "That is a VERY long window," he wrote, noting that with antivirals for acute infection, "the earlier you start, the better the efficacy."

"For me, the real detail is NOT out yet: efficacy in patients that start early," he said.

Gilead, for its part, also took issue with idea that the trial had failed. “We believe the post included inappropriate characterizations of the study,” said Gilead Chief Medical Officer Merdad Parsey, M.D., Ph.D., in a statement. “The study was terminated early due to low enrollment, and, as a result, it was underpowered to enable statistically meaningful conclusions.”

While the results are inconclusive, though, Gilead did see “trends in the data [that] suggest a potential benefit for remdesivir, particularly among patients treated early in disease,” Parsey said.