Trump's Claims Are Dangerous: COVID-19 & Hydroxychloroquine

Andre Picard
Globe and Mail
Originally published 9 April 20

Here is an excerpt:

The principal argument the President has used in support of hydroxychloroquine is the rhetorical statement: “What do we have to lose?” (He repeated that phrase five times at his Saturday media briefing.) “I’m not a doctor but I have common sense,” Mr. Trump added.

“Common sense” is not evidence. And “what have we got to lose?” is certainly no way to practise medicine – or policy-making for that matter.

Physicians in China started using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients early in the pandemic. There was certainly some logic to this move. The drug has antiviral properties and showed some promise in vitro but that doesn’t mean it will work in vivo.

It remains a desperation drug, something to try when the rest of the very limited armamentarium has been exhausted.

The evidence of benefit in patients is mostly anecdotal, based on highly publicized but scientifically weak studies. Controversial microbiologist Didier Raoult has made wild claims about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine but his study, published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, is little more than anecdotal.

Similarly, Vladimir Zelenko, a small-town doctor in New York State, has gained internet fame promoting a cocktail of three drugs – hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and zinc sulphate. There is no real evidence for claims that he has cured hundreds of cases of COVID-19, but that hasn’t stopped Mr. Trump from promoting the regimen.

There needs to be proper studies done, with control groups – meaning one group gets the drug(s) and the other does not, and the outcomes are compared. Like it or not, that takes time.

Impatience is not an excuse to make unsubstantiated claims.

The info is here.

The Koch-backed right-to-try law has been a bust, but still threatens our health

Michael Hiltzik
The Los Angeles Times
Originally posted September 17, 2019

The federal right-to-try law, signed by President Trump in May 2018 as a sop to right-wing interests, including the Koch brothers network, always was a cruel sham perpetrated on sufferers of intractably fatal diseases.

As we’ve reported, the law was promoted as a compassionate path to experimental treatments for those patients — but in fact was a cynical ploy aimed at emasculating the Food and Drug Administration in a way that would undermine public health and harm all patients.

Now that a year has passed since the law’s enactment, the assessments of how it has functioned are beginning to flow in. As NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan observed to Ed Silverman’s Pharmalot blog, “the right to try remains a bust.”

His judgment is seconded by the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski, who writes: “Right-to-try has been a spectacular failure thus far at getting terminally ill patients access to experimental drugs.”

That should come as no surprise, Gorski adds, because “right-to-try was never about helping terminally ill patients. ... It was always about ideology more than anything else. It was always about weakening the FDA’s ability to regulate drug approval.”

The info is here.