Senate debates

Thursday, 21 October 2021

Statements

COVID-19: Treatment

1:38 pm

Photo of Malcolm RobertsMalcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | | Hansard source

OBERTS () (): Australians expect that our parliaments will protect us and that the treatments governments select will keep us safe. The facts are that COVID injections have harmed over 61,700 Australians, caused 141 cases of deadly blood clots and killed at least nine Australians, with another 556 deaths under review. That's five-five-six, and it's just those reported.

Now the government has rushed to order $300 million worth of a yet-to-be-approved drug, molnupiravir, that research papers have shown can affect our DNA and our reproductive system and mutate the virus into yet another deadly strain. This drug is a wide-spectrum antiviral that inhibits viral replication by a mechanism known as lethal mutagenesis. Despite the government's massive purchase, the biochemical and structural basis of how this process works has remained largely unexplored.

According to the US media, of the 775 patients in the study by Merck, the manufacturer, 7.3 per cent who were given molnupiravir either were hospitalised or died within nine days after treatment, compared to 14.1 per cent of placebo patients who developed COVID and exhibited severe or fatal complications. You heard that right: Merck trials appear to have allowed people to die to test their drug. Merck's research study was actually just a press release containing only an interim analysis of the data. A press release is enough to get this drug approved by our Therapeutic Goods Administration. The $300 million purchase of an experimental drug is ticked and flicked, yet the novel Australian developed vaccine for COVID, called Vaxxine, has been denied approval by the TGA, despite being approved overseas. The TGA is clearly favouring foreign pharmaceutical companies with dodgy products over an Australian company with a proven, safe conventional vaccine. Our communities, our nation, would like to know why.