A response to the Yale professor who says hydroxychloroquine will save lives
Newsweek recently published an opinion piece by Professor Harvey Risch. Here is a response to that article:
Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19: Evidence can’t seem to kill it
Despite the accumulating negative evidence showing that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work against COVID-19, activists continue to promote it as a way out of the pandemic. This week, the AAPS and a Yale epidemiologist joined the fray with embarrassingly bad arguments.
David Gorski on July 27, 2020
I find it odd at this juncture in late July that I’ve been writing about a certain drug that was touted as a “miracle cure” for COVID-19 as far back as March. I am referring, of course, to hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that also has immunomodulatory effects that make it also useful to treat various autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus. It’s a drug that, despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy and the continued publication of negative studies testing its efficacy against the disease, just won’t die. Truly, hydroxychloroquine is the Jason Voorhees of drugs, at least with respect to COVID-19. After each new study showing it to be ineffective, it always seems to rise, just as Jason always comes back for another round of killing after seemingly having died at the end of the previous movie.
The hypothesis that antimalarial drugs might be effective treatments for COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China during the early phase of the pandemic in January. There, Chinese researchers reported that none of their 80 patients with lupus erythematosus who were taking hydroxychloroquine went on to become infected with SARS-CoV-2. As a result of that and old evidence of antiviral activity for the drugs, they became interested in using these antimalarial drugs to treat COVID-19. (Never mind that immunosuppressed patients are exactly the patients most likely to assiduously follow the recommendations of public health authorities during a pandemic.) A number of clinical trials were registered, and, based on anecdotal reports and small clinical trials (nearly all of which are as yet unpublished), in February the Chinese government published an expert consensus recommending CQ or HCQ for patients with COVID-19. Soon after, a number of nations followed suit. From there, a French “brave maverick scientist” named Didier Raoult latched onto the drug as the “answer” to the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing risibly bad studies claiming to show its efficacy. Tech bros such as Elon Musk discovered the claims about hydroxychloroquine and Raoult’s bad science, leading to Donald Trump Tweeting favorably about his study and, ultimately, to the FDA issuing an emergency use authorization for the drug to treat COVID-19.
Since then, there has been a drip-drip-drip of negative studies of hydroxychloroquine, some studies observational, but, increasingly, many being randomized clinical trials, such as the publication of a randomized controlled clinical trial of the drug as post-exposure prophylaxis that was entirely negative. This was followed by two more, first, a Spanish post-exposure prophylaxis trial that was also negative. Then there was the Recovery Trial from the UK, which failed to find a benefit from hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients treated with the drug, leading to the revocation of the FDA’s original ill-advised EUA.
More: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-evidence-cant-seem-to-kill-it/
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