Yale epidemiologist: ‘Trump drug’ could save 100,000 lives Physicians urge government to stop blocking hydroxychloroquine
The highly politicized anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could save up to 100,000 lives, according to a Yale epidemiologist, yet access to it continues to be restricted.
“If a drug could save 100,000 lives, then government agencies that block its use are responsible for 100,000 needless deaths,” charges Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons.
AAPS has filed for an injunction to force the Food and Drug Administration to stop obstructing use of the drug, she pointed out, “while it hoards and wastes the millions of doses that manufacturers donated to the Strategic National Stockpile.”
Hydroxychloroquine was approved by the FDA in 1955 and has been taken safely by hundreds of millions of people, noted Orient.
“High government officials who are determining federal policy insist in private that doctors have the legal authority to prescribe HCQ or other FDA-approved drugs for ‘off-label’ uses,” she said. “However, the FDA has refused to reverse statements that state and local authorities cite to threaten doctors or pharmacists who provide you with this cheap remedy.”
She pointed to studies showing poor countries that allow free use of hydroxychloroquine have far lower death rates than rich countries that hinder itA summary of the evidence for the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 is here.
The Yale epidemiologist, Harvey Risch, said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham he thinks hydroxychloroquine could save 75,000 to 100,000 lives if the drug was widely used to treat coronavirus.
“There are many doctors that I’ve gotten hostile remarks about saying that all the evidence is bad for it and, in fact, that is not true at all,” he said.
He believes the drug can be used as a “prophylactic,” or preventative, for front-line workers, as other countries such as India have done.
But a “propaganda war” is being waged against the use of the drug for political purposes, not based on “medical facts.”
A study by researchers with the Henry Ford Health System in Southeast Michigan, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, found that early administration of hydroxychloroquine makes hospitalized patients substantially less likely to die.
It found hydroxychloroquine provided a 66% “hazard ratio reduction,” and hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin a 71% reduction, compared with neither treatment.
But discussions about the drug became political after it was hailed by President Trump.
“All the evidence is actually good for it when it is used in outpatient uses,” Risch said.
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“Nevertheless, the only people who actually say that are a whole pile of doctors who are on the front lines treating those patients across the country and they are the ones who are at risk being forced not to do it.”
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