Balm in Gilead

Gilead HQ in Foster City on a Saturday morning in 2015.

Pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences hasn't excited stock analysts for years. Due to the paucity of new medications in the pipeline, GILD traded 30% lower than in 2015.

Last week Gilead was back in the headlines because the World Health Organization spoke highly of its proprietary drug:

Shares of American biotech firm Gilead Sciences rose nearly 5% Monday after an official from the World Health Organization said that Gilead's drug remdesivir is showing signs that it may be able to help treat the deadly coronavirus.

"There is only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy and that's remdesivir," Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said at a press conference in Beijing.

Testing on remdesivir and potential vaccines will take months, a seemingly interminable wait in a world in which we expect miracles to occur at light-speed.

For perspective Gilead Sciences took its name from an ancient reference to a healing substance that originated from a region in Jordan. Jeremiah 8:22:

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?

The passage inspired the spiritual:

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.
Some times I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.