Great news about hydroxychlorquine study!

Laiya

Fri, Jun 05 2020, 3:08 pm

ora_43 wrote:

But they did question. They put trials on hold because that's the responsible thing to do if there's even just a suspicion that you might be doing harm to patients. But they didn't cancel the trials, they didn't just accept this one article as The Ultimate Truth and go home.

I misspoke earlier. I do think "the system" (of academic journals, and academia) as a whole has serious problems; even more so outside the hard sciences.

I just don't think there's a trend toward unthinking acceptance of all things anti-Trump. If the world were as some posters here describe it, this one study would have ended all discussion for good. Scientists would have been so happy to see Trump proven wrong that they would all just nod happily and go with it.

But that's not what happened. Because when it comes down to it, the overwhelming majority of scientists care far more about the truth, about their professional integrity, and about saving lives than they do about proving the US President wrong re: one of about a million controversial things he's said.

(not to mention that not all scientists are democrats, anyway)

In that sense, the system works. You can't trust all the people to be ethical all the time, but you can trust that as a rule, studies will get brutally honest feedback from most of the people.

They put trials on hold as a reaction to the published study. But the study should never have been published before reading its design more closely. And after it was published as well, yes before halting the trials, the WHO and world governments should have looked with an independent eye rather than blindly trusting the Lancet.

I personally think this has little to do with Trump and probably lots to do with money. Gilead has lobbyists on capital hill and constantly reaching out to the media to promote Remdesivir. If hcq + zinc turns out to be the solution, that would obviously impact Remdesivir's usage. Hcq is long off patent and would unlikely be cost effective for money to be spent promoting it.

That said, journalists have also failed their basic investigative duties, and the mainstream media's clear interest making Trump look bad has influenced their reporting. We would hope this wouldn't influence doctors and scientists, but that's hard to determine.

There are checks and balances in agencies such as the FDA and the CDC to make sure that those on their boards do not have a financial incentive in promoting their own policies, and medical journals should be independent as well. But then again, the entire world relied on WHO's impartiality when it told us that human to human transmission of covid was impossible and we see how that worked out.

Even before this Lancet study, the FDA had issued warnings about hcq's slight risk (of qt interval prolongation) which many in the medical community thought were bizarre and politically based.

There are claims that some members of the FDA advisory panel have undisclosed financial ties to Gilead. I don't know if these claims are true, or if the types of financial ties they have are considered acceptable, etc. But this, or something similar yet still undisclosed, seems to me the most reasonable explanation for the reactions we've been seeing to an established, safe drug with a long history and early positive reports around the world.

Here's a link re FDA panel members' financial ties to Gilead:
https://defyccc.com/covid-19-p.....ties/

Laiya

Fri, Jun 05 2020, 3:28 pm

amother [ White ] wrote:

This and similar comments are all the evidence you might need that hydroxychloriquine has been politicized by Republicans.

Not a single study has yet been able to reveal a positive effect, rather the results keep showing that it has no benefit.

Here is a brand new one.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne......html

This politicization is dangerous and detrimental when resources are diverted from pursuing more promising cures.

As other posters have pointed out, there's a difference between taking hcq either prophylactically or upon being newly diagnosed, and using it to treat someone already hospitalized. This study is just one more that only addresses use of the drug for people who were already very ill.

amother

White

Fri, Jun 05 2020, 4:03 pm

Laiya wrote:

You said that when I posted the controlled study done on asymptomatic persons who had been exposed to Covid-19.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health.....96689

The people in this study had been in direct contact with a person who had tested positive and were placed on a regimen of hydroxychloriquine prior to the onset of symptoms. The study showed no measurable benefit as compared to the control group that received a placebo.

amother

Rose

Fri, Jun 05 2020, 4:05 pm

Laiya wrote:

The problem with this theory is do you know how much Gilead is charging for a dose of Remdesivir ? Wait for it...
$0.00
They donated millions of vials to the government and said you guys deal with distributing it, we don’t need to be paid anything.
So far my hospital has received a bit more than 800 vials, basically enough for 80 patients give or take. We are expecting more shipments in the upcoming weeks. No money has been exchanged.
So now what? Why would Gilead care if HCQ works or not? (And it definitely didn’t work based on my research within our hospital system... study to be published soon but it was retrospective not gold standard double blind prospective- that one hasn’t finished enrollment yet).

avrahamama

Fri, Jun 05 2020, 4:13 pm

amother [ Rose ] wrote:

Interesting. That's not what Reuters says. They're expecting to make 7;billion. And each course is 4-5 k

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.....3A2MN

Is it possible they're giving some freebies kinda like drug dealers do. (Sorry that was terrible)

zohar

Fri, Jun 05 2020, 7:00 pm

amother [ White ] wrote:

While this study was done properly, it was a very small study. 821 in total. It basically proved zero either way. 58 in the placebo group and 49 in the group that received hydroxichloroqiune, came down with Covid-19. They say that's to small of a difference to conclude that the hydroxichloroqiune helped prevent contracting the disease. There were no deaths from either group and 1 hospitalization from each. So, nothing really can be concluded. One thing I didn't notice was the ages or preexisting conditions that would make one high risk. It seems that it was a very low risk group. (Which kind of makes sense. I think people who are high risk would be less likely to want to participate.)

ETA: also, no one suffered from heart arrhythmia or other serious side effects

Laiya

Sun, Jun 07 2020, 12:46 am

amother [ White ] wrote:

Ok, so not sure why you posted it again.

In any case, regarding this study, I think Zohar made good points. No deaths, no arrhythmias in either group and just 1 hospitalization per group.

The issue in this study seems to be, not that the hcq group had poor outcomes, but that the control group had excellent outcomes.

This is probably because all subjects were medical personnel. About 1 third of the control group, 126 individuals, recognized that they had been given a placebo and began their own self-treatment regimen. This would explain the better outcomes in that group.

Laiya

Sun, Jun 07 2020, 12:50 am

amother [ Rose ] wrote:

That's just marketing.

As Avrahamama wrote. A pharmaceutical company does not spend that much money developing a drug for the purpose of earning no profit. If that were the case, the company's stock price would not be affected by every bit of news regarding the drug.