President Trump Advises Americans To Try Hydroxychloroquine, If They’d Like
[guest post by Dana]
During his Coronavirus Task Force briefing yesterday, President Trump didn’t just promote hydroxychloroquine, he encouraged people to take it to treat coronavirus. This after Dr. Hahn (FDA Commissioner) cautioned about its use:
DR. HAHN:
I’m going to speak about hydroxychloroquine and the efforts around that…Last week as the president said, we issued an emergency use authorization to allow the donated hydroxychloroquine to come into the country and enter the general circulation. We are prioritizing this drug to come in for clinical trials, also to general use for physicians because, as you know, physicians, based upon their interaction with the patients, their assessment of the risks and benefits, can write a prescription for hydroxychloroquine if they think it’s appropriate for that patient. Being a physician, we do this all the time, and that assessment needs to be done between a patient and a doctor. And then the third portion is we wanted to make sure that these drugs were in the supply chain so that people who have them or need them for the other indications, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, had them available. So that was the purpose of the emergency use authorization.
PRESIDENT TRUMP (later in the briefing):
One of the reasons that I keep talking about hydroxychloroquine is that the question that nobody ever asks, and the question that I most hate the answer to is what happens if you do have a ventilator? What are your chances? I just hope that hydroxychloroquine wins. Coupled with perhaps the Z pack, as we call it, dependent totally on your doctors, and the doctors there.
Because you know the answer to that question. If you do have the ventilator, you know the answer to that question. I hate giving the answer, so I don’t want to get them there. I don’t want to get them there. There’s a possibility, a possibility, and I say it. What do you have to lose? I’ll say it again. What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it, but it’s their choice, and it’s their doctor’s choice or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine. Try it, if you’d like.
…
But I’ve seen some results now. It’s early, I guess. It’s early, and they should look at the lupus thing. I don’t know what it says, but there’s a rumor out there that, because it takes care of lupus very effectively as I understand it. It’s a drug that’s used for lupus.
So there’s a study out there that says people that have lupus haven’t been catching this virus. No. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. Why don’t you investigate that?
And there’s also other studies with the malaria that the malaria countries have very little people that take this drug for malaria, which is very effective for malaria, that those countries have very little of this virus. I don’t know. You’re going to check it out. But I think people should … If it were me, in fact, I might do it anyway. I may take it. Okay. I may take it, and I’ll have to ask my doctors about that, but I may take it.
And there was more from Dr. Trump:
During the briefing, as Dr. Fauci and other advisers looked on, the president talked about the potential of other medicines, too. He mentioned azithromycin, often referred to as a Z-Pak, which has been given to some patients along with hydroxychloroquine.
“The other thing, if you have a heart condition, I understand, probably you stay away from the Z-Pak. But that’s an antibiotic. It can clean out the lung. The lungs are a point of attack for this horrible virus.”
The President of the United States is putting any number of Americans at potential risk, not only by touting the drug, but by casually advising them to try it, like it was a Tic-Tac. It is apparent that the President has become increasingly reckless about what he says. More so than he was in March, when he said of the drug: “It’s been around for a long time, so we know that if things don’t go as planned it’s not going to kill anybody.” And it doesn’t lessen the potential damage by throwing in the caveat, “it’s their doctor’s choice or the doctors in the hospital.” I’ve said it a million times: Trump holds the most powerful position in the world, and his words carry that much more weight because of it. He plays fast and loose with the facts, contradicts the medical experts standing next to him, and has the temerity to disagree with these same experts after they clean up his verbal messes. This is reckless behavior, and because of his directive, people might fall ill, or even die. And if they do, because they stupidly followed his advice, then Trump would bear some level of moral responsibility. These are dangerous times, and when the chief executive cavalierly tells Americans to take a drug and has no idea how it might affect them, he potentially endangers them. And while I don’t believe that the vast majority of Americans would take medical advice from Trump, there is a loyal base of true believers who hang on his every word. So much so, in fact, that they put him into office.
Meanwhile, the President might want to read this:
[A] study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body. The study comes on the heels of two others – one in France and one in China – that reported some benefits in the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID-19 patients who didn’t have severe symptoms of the virus.
I am a medicinal chemist who has specialized in discovery and development of antiviral drugs for the past 30 years, and I have been actively working on coronaviruses for the past seven. I am among a number of researchers who are concerned that this drug has been given too much of a high priority before there is enough evidence to show it is indeed effective.
There are already other clinical studies that showed it is not effective against COVID-19 as well as several other viruses. And, more importantly, it can have dangerous side effects, as well as giving people false hope. The latter has led to widespread shortages of hydroxychloroquine for patients who need it to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, the indications for which it was originally approved…Thus, despite the recent approval of this drug for use against COVID-19, questions remain as to the efficacy of this treatment. As Molina and colleagues note: “Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.”
You can watch the press conference from yesterday here.
–Dana