It's such a pity how politicised hydroxychloroquine has become.
It's stupid to believe in miracle cures. But it's also stupid to discard out of hand things for which evidence is unclear just because your opponent is irrationally keen on it.
It's stupid to believe in miracle cures. But it's also stupid to discard out of hand things for which evidence is unclear just because your opponent is irrationally keen on it.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-c...
[1]https://twitter.com/SpoxHHS/status/1298001649798197248?s=20
Also see.. FDA Walks Back Claim of Dramatic Benefit From Covid Therapy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-24/fda-trump...
Trump mentions it and suddenly it’s the worst idea in the world.
I have zero problems with calling out Trump on his hyperbole. It's not helpful at all. But it would be nice if the MSM didn't bash things these previously praised just because Trump said something.
You have a ton of studies that says "no" and a few that say "maybe". But you want us to what? Keep studying until it finally says "yes"?
"Check this out, it shows promise"
"Ok." "Oh, it's not as effective as initially thought"
"Ok, but this study says it might be"
"Ok, but we just did a full study that says it's not"
"Ok, but this study"
And on and on. At what point do you say, "Ok, I guess we should move on".
It was never discarded out of hand.
If someone says "Take this magical cure, maybe it could work... but I don't have any evidence of it yet", it's not so terrible to start from a position of skepticism. Could hcq work? Maybe, although with every randomized trial it seems less likely. But the people who initially pushed it did so from a position of wishful thinking, not actual science. This might have been a hoax of ignorance not evil, but in the end, I say it's still a hoax.
At that time, the only responsible answer, and the answer that any biomedical scientist with integrity would give is: "Early results show X, though further follow up studies would be needed to replicate these results to confirm their validity"
But that's not what we got. What we got was a binary split between miracle cure and worse than homeopathy, depending on which side of the political divide you were on.
Now that some monthes have passed, at least five peer-reviewed RCTs were conducted. In each of them hydroxychloroquine is ineffective.
I argue that when someone declares, without evidence, that "X works", that is a hoax and should be criticized. Even if later evidence shows it works! Because it's easy to make a random guess, and it's hard to fight the collateral damage that wrong guess can cause.
There are a million things that might be the covid miracle cure (colloidal silver? high protein diet? grapeseed extract? etc, etc, etc). If I pick one of these on a hunch and start pushing it as a cure, I would rightly deserve to be called out.
No, there were Chinese, French and other reports and observational studies during the pandemic that supported use of HCQ:
>"Wuhan was the epicenter, and the Chinese physicians at the People’s Hospital of Wuhan University told their Western counterparts that they got the idea of using HCQ because none of the 178 patients they had admitted for COVID-19 had lupus—a surprise, since lupus is an immune disease, and some thought it might have made these patients especially vulnerable. They wondered why this might be, and whether HCQ, which these patients had been taking for this preexisting condition, might in some way be protecting them against COVID-19."<
taken from "Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale":
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxyc...
Trump isn't pushing sound science.
He's hoping to buffalo people (like you) into thinking he's on to something. AND THE MEDIA IS SO AGAINST HIM. EVEN THO IT REALLY HELPS THE FAKE NEWS JUST WANTS TO HURT HIM. BECAUSE THEY LOVE HILLARY
And why are doctors giving untested treatments to patients?
"Azithromycin Induces Anti-Viral Responses in Bronchial Epithelial Cells" has over 220 citations. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20150207/)
But there are plenty of reasons why antibiotics are given to people with Covid-19 to deal with secondary infections.
> And why are doctors giving untested treatments to patients?
This seems a pretty bad-faith comment. In the early days of COVID-19 there was no "tested" treatment, so doctors use reasoning to try to find something. This is a completely normal thing to do.
Doctors are not researchers and they shouldn't be.
It's not a bad-faith comment.
Dr. Zelenco was working with the FDA to get a trial of his protocol. The FDA director provided some help to get his trial started. The director got criticism for helping. Something about a small trial not being worth his time. I don’t know where this criticism/pressure came from. But this has politics written all over it.
Dr Zelenco made one mistake stating that he had FDA approval to run the trial. The truth is that he had his hospital approval. The district attorney was looking to prosecute him for this mistake. I believe it was a simple mistake. He is not versed in running trials. He was told his trial was approved. He failed to distinguish who made the approval. The DA getting involved is more politics. His trial never got run, probably because of DA pressure. I believe he is a good doctor and has not been discredited. Railroaded by politics more likely. You should be asking why no one wants to test HCQ+Zinc. Why is HCQ condemned without running this most obvious of necessary trials. Why is there no urgency to run a trial on HCQ+Zinc. Why is the media silent on the lack of Zinc in the trials. It might not work, but a trial is more than warranted.
He did one other thing I’m aware of which was to tell his community the current scientific projections of mortality of Covid19. Those projections have proven wrong, and his community blames the messenger.
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/03/zelenko-smith-aba...
What ethics violations? Please provide a cite that says "Zelenko has been thoroughly disgraced for ethics violations" or even charged with any ethics violations. You're slandering him.
This is a weird question. By "we" do you mean the media or politicians or scientists?
Politician should not ever be making claims that aren't backed up by strong studies. It's fine to say "I'm hopeful this will prove useful" etc, but to advocate for treatment using unproven medicines is irresponsible.
The media has a pretty difficult job here. Medical studies (particularly early ones) on treatments are rarely decisive (because doctors are trying anything to save someone's life, and that creates co-founding factors. Generally trying for balance ("this is a good study with promising results. Others show different results, and the differences are X and Y. Specialist Dr ABC says "XXXX") is about the best someone can do.
Scientists should keep studying it until we understand what is causing the different responses.
To keep studying it would be to appease either the politicians or media.
In science, failure is actually an option.
Well results seem conflicted on this. This very study (the one linked here!, ie[1]) shows a significant result.
It's an observational study, but that is a normal part of the scientific process during medical research.
There are plenty of other studies showing no result. But this is hardly the only one showing positive results.
So I don't think the science is settled on this (and it would be astonishing if it was in the 4 months since this process started!). I think Trump's behaviour on this has been atrocious and has caused harm, but that doesn't mean anything regarding if it works or not.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792...