



James Hildreth, the president of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, said at the meeting. “Do we want to reduce the risk for the mother by 30 percent while exposing the embryo and the fetus to a much higher risk of harm by this drug?” Dr. expert committee expressed those same concerns during a public meeting on Nov. Scientists are especially worried about pregnant women, they said, because the drug could affect a fetus’s dividing cells, theoretically causing birth defects. Among the biggest questions facing regulators is whether the drug, in the course of wreaking havoc on the virus’s genes, also has the potential to cause mutations in human DNA. A new Covid-19 pill from Merck has raised hopes that it could transform the landscape of treatment options for Americans at high risk of severe disease at a time when the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is driving a surge of cases in highly vaccinated European countries.īut two weeks after a Food and Drug Administration expert committee narrowly voted to recommend authorizing the drug, known as molnupiravir, the F.D.A.
