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On Monday, May 25, 2020, the WHO dropped its hydroxychloroquine trials as a possible treatment for coronavirus.
The drug is one of a selection of anti-malarials which have been used successfully, under the right protocols.
In Europe, Prof Didier Raoult is the champion of this type of treatment. He has successfully used a protocol involving Plaquenil and azithromycin on his patients in Marseille. Raoult is the director of the regional institute for research on infections, the IHU Méditerranée Infection.
The medical establishment worldwide is attempting to discredit the renegade physician. The latest is the Lancet, Britain’s renowned medical journal. The results of their studies with the drug prompted the WHO to halt their trials.
The BBC reports:
The Lancet study involved 96,000 coronavirus patients, nearly 15,000 of whom were given hydroxychloroquine – or a related form chloroquine – either alone or with an antibiotic.
The study found that the patients were more likely to die in hospital and develop heart rhythm complications than other Covid patients in a comparison group.
The death rates of the treated groups were: hydroxychloroquine 18%; chloroquine 16.4%; control group 9%. Those treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine in combination with antibiotics had an even higher death rate.
The researchers warned that hydroxychloroquine should not be used outside of clinical trials.
President Trump is currently taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure. He receives it via prescription.
The WHO advises people not to self-medicate with these drugs.
Indeed, Prof Raoult uses them only on people who test positive for COVID-19. He also runs a battery of tests on potential patients before administering the tablets. Anti-malarials can worsen pre-existing heart conditions.
His and his team’s paper was published in May:
He was delighted to see that another study using the same two drugs was equally successful. Beneath it are the results of the less successful Lancet study, which used hydroxychloroquine and macrolide, instead of azithromycin:
He is aware that the medical establishment, including France’s two most recent health ministers, Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran, want him out of the picture:
That’s unfortunate, because I listen to RMC during the week and the callers from Marseille and the rest of the region of Provence-Alpes Maritimes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) consider him a hero.
However, RMC’s morning show hosts dismiss Raoult and hydroxychloroquine. Now I know why. One of the station’s main shareholders also is a major shareholder in Gilead, which is working on Remdesivir, a drug used to treat Ebola. So far, Remdesivir trials on COVID-19 have not been that successful but the marketing is good, and it would be a money maker:
Last Tuesday on RMC, the WHO/Lancet news was a topic for discussion on the mid-morning show. They took a poll of Raoult’s popularity. Three-quarters of their listeners voting during the show love the man. The poll was open for another day:
One of the show’s guests said that Didier Raoult was achieving success, not talking about hypotheticals. He found it strange that few of the other studies manage to reproduce his success:
A nurse from Marseille who used to work the the professor, who is a physician, said that the others are not following his protocol to the letter. She said that, if they were, they would get the same results.
Raoult points out in the next tweet that the other studies are not using the drugs on people who actually have the disease. Therefore, results will differ:
Back to RMC. One of the panellists compared Raoult to Trump: a renegade one loves or loathes. She said that, like Trump, Raoult is trending in popularity:
Needless to say, the conversation about Raoult got heated. The first panellist said he was annoyed that his GP wouldn’t prescribe him hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. The show’s hosts, on either side of him, thought the GP was right not to do so:
A third panellist said that Raoult is resisting all the discrediting of his work — ‘He’s extremely courageous’:
Criticised though Raoult might be, America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be doing a study on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin:
Although Raoult gives Dr Anthony Fauci the credit, I think it actually belongs to President Trump.
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MAJOR UPDATE — JUNE 4: The Guardian has investigated the Lancet paper and reports that it had to be withdrawn. The WHO is now resuming its hydroxychoroquine trials.
This never should have happened to a respected medical journal.
Emphases mine below:
The Lancet paper that halted global trials of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 because of fears of increased deaths has been retracted after a Guardian investigation found inconsistencies in the data.
The lead author, Prof Mandeep Mehra, from the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, Massachusetts decided to ask the Lancet for the retraction because he could no longer vouch for the data’s accuracy.
The journal’s editor, Richard Horton, said he was appalled by developments. “This is a shocking example of research misconduct in the middle of a global health emergency,” he told the Guardian.
A Guardian investigation had revealed errors in the data that was provided for the research by US company Surgisphere. These were later explained by the company as some patients being wrongly allocated to Australia instead of Asia. But more anomalies were then picked up. A further Guardian investigation found that there were serious questions to be asked about the company itself.
An independent audit company was asked to examine a database provided by Surgisphere to ensure it had the data from more than 96,000 Covid-19 patients in 671 hospitals worldwide, that it was obtained properly and was accurate.
Surgisphere’s CEO, Sapan Desai, had said he would cooperate with the independent audit, but it is understood he refused to give the investigators access to all the data they asked for.
In a statement on Thursday, Mehra said: “Our independent peer reviewers informed us that Surgisphere would not transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process”…
The World Health Organization and several countries suspended randomised controlled trials that were set up to find an answer. Those trials have now been restarted. Many scientists were angry that they had been stopped on the basis of a trial that was observational and not a “gold standard” RCT.
Mehra had commissioned an independent audit of the data after scientists questioned it …
The Guardian wrote about Surgisphere on June 3. This is shocking.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known US healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.
A Guardian investigation can reveal the US-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology …
The Guardian’s investigation has found:
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- A search of publicly available material suggests several of Surgisphere’s employees have little or no data or scientific background. An employee listed as a science editor appears to be a science fiction author and fantasy artist. Another employee listed as a marketing executive is an adult model and events hostess.
- The company’s LinkedIn page has fewer than 100 followers and last week listed just six employees. This was changed to three employees as of Wednesday.
- While Surgisphere claims to run one of the largest and fastest hospital databases in the world, it has almost no online presence. Its Twitter handle has fewer than 170 followers, with no posts between October 2017 and March 2020.
- Until Monday, the “get in touch” link on Surgisphere’s homepage redirected to a WordPress template for a cryptocurrency website, raising questions about how hospitals could easily contact the company to join its database.
- Desai has been named in three medical malpractice suits, unrelated to the Surgisphere database. In an interview with the Scientist, Desai previously described the allegations as “unfounded” …
You could not make this up.
Still, it’s a happy ending. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine trials will resume, including at the WHO.
Many thanks to my reader formerdem, who alerted me to this welcome change of events in the comment section below.
Churchmouse Campanologist 