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My understanding is that the data has to be overwhelmingly good to stop the trial early.

I suspect the Trump administration's ability to actually fabricate trial data would be pretty limited without collateral damage (i.e. whistleblowing). Their ability to push it out of Phase III prematurely however is more debatable.

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I don't think they typically stop the trial as much as they go to the FDA for emergency authorization with data from their midpoints showing overwhelmingly positive effects to get approval to proceed to Phase 4, while still finishing Phase 3. It's meant to compress the timeline, not to skip steps.

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