Well, my reading of the announcement is this. The trial is now...

Well, my reading of the announcement is this. The trial is now at least 6 months late, and in the words of the company itself, there was uncertainty about the trial finding and the timelines without the Army agreeing to kick in extra cash. Given the amount of money the army has contributed, its hardly surprising they agreed to kick in a bit more to make sure the trial was completed. No exactly cause for celebration though.... and the sharemarket agreed with a big yawn and a 0.2c rise or whatever it was.

As for the mortality rate, yes, if you were completely one eyed, you could hope that a reduced rate was all to do with the treatment (although the trial is blinded so the company doesn't know who got what). Equally though, you could view it as a negative, where the patient cohort has turned out to have different characteristics to what was expected, meaning that the trial results are more difficult to interpret. Or, you could just see it for what it is - an observation that the mortality rate is lower that is impossible to attribute to any specific cause because we don't know whether it is restricted to particular patient groups.

In short, an interesting update that doesn't add much to finding out whether the drug helps this patient group. Great that its safe, but we knew that already.