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The executive leader of My Pillow, a Trump donor, says oleandrin is a miracle cure for the Covid-19, but no study has shown that it is effective or that the shrub from which it is derived is toxic.
By Heather Murphy
A plant extract presented this week as a “cure” for Covid-19 through the head of a pillow company is proven and potentially dangerous, scientists say.
Mike Lindell, my Pillow’s executive leader and chief donor to President Trump, told Axios that the president was excited about the drug, called oleandrin, when he found out at a White House assembly last month.
“This works, it’s the miracle of all time,” Lindell said Tuesday, who has a monetary stake in the company that makes the complex and is part of its board of directors, in an interview with Anderson Cooper. CNN. When CBS asked Mr. Trump about the oleander for Covid-19, Mr. Trump said, “We’ll see. “
The unsubstantiated claims alarmed the scientists. No studies have shown that oleandrin is safe or effective as a remedy for coronavirus. It’s unclear what dosage the supposed remedy would have, but drinking even a tiny bit of the toxic bush the compound comes from can kill you, experts say.
“Don’t play with this plant,” said Cassandra Leah Quave, ethnobotanist at Emory University.
Oleandrin is derived from Nerium oleander, a blossoming Mediterranean shrub that is popular with landscapers and guilty of many cases of accidental poisoning. Oleandrin is the chemical that makes the plant deadly, Dr. Quave wrote in an article in The Conversation.
Ingesting any part of the plant, or even eating a snail that has already bitten off some of its leaves, can cause an abnormal heartbeat and kill humans and animals, she and other doctors and scientists said.
It is not uncommon for plants, even poisonous ones, to generate interest in the remedy of diseases. Robert Harrod, a professor at Southern Methodist University, has studied the prospects for oleandrin to combat one type of leukemia, for example, although Dr. Harrod stated that using oleandrin to treat coronavirus was still just an “intriguing idea. “, you need it to function.
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