RE: treatment of Viral Diseases. Pt 1
COVID-19 AND THE WAR AGAINST HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE
Article by Lee published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 25 Number 3 Fall 2020
https://jpands.org/vol25no3/merritt.pdfThis begins to explain the uproar about HCQ. Never have I seen such political brawling over a legal pharmaceutical.
When the current pandemic was starting to kill Americans in significant numbers, President Trump identified HCQ and azithromycin as having excellent cure potential.
Around the world, doctors were speaking and writing about the great cure rate of COVID when these drugs were given early.
Sick patients from all over the world recounted having nearly immediate turn-around of the symptoms once they were started on the regimen. State Rep. Karen Whitsett, a Michigan Democrat, credits President Trump for saving her life by advocating for the use of HCQ.
To my knowledge, neither governors nor boards of pharmacy have ever outlawed any legal drug—not even opioids like Oxycontin that cause about 30,000 deaths a year.
But when it comes to HCQ and CQ, governors, medical boards, and boards of pharmacy in most states have either outlawed or limited the use of HCQ or threatened doctors with licensing board scrutiny.
Medical leaders from the CDC and National Institutes of Health (NIH) said HCQ might not work and proclaimed that we needed more study—ignoring the multiple scientific and position papers being published daily that demonstrate the benefit of HCQ.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) of the NIH, has discouraged use of HCQ for COVID-19, but praised Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) treatment with HCQ in 2013.
In 2006 the CDC’s own research showed CQ to work against coronavirus in SARS-CoV-1, yet their current guidelines recommend against “high-dose use,” and does not discuss the low-dose regimens in use around the world.
Note also that on Apr 28, 2020, Dr. Fauci touted the positive findings for remdesivir, even though no randomized controlled studies have been completed. Why is he so strongly promoting the $3,600 remdesiver and almost totally ignoring the $20 HCQ regimen, other than to say the latter is of “unproven benefit”?
Media acted in lockstep with corrupt politicians. They said HCQ was experimental. Not so—it has been around for decades, and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Then, they claimed it was illegal for doctors to use HCQ off label. Wrong again. Nearly every doctor, every day, uses a drug “off label,” because, once FDA approved, drugs are not re-studied to add every potential benefit.
And now scientific literature “hit pieces” against antimalarial drugs are being published and quoted. A recent Los Angeles Times headline, “Malaria drugs fail to help in coronavirus studies,” sensationalized a misleading study.’
This study, done in Brazil, prescribed toxic, even lethal doses to very sick patients late in the disease when it was almost certain to be of no benefit. The methodology was severely criticized by Brazilian scientists, and alleged ethical violations are under investigation by Brazilian authorities.
Since CQ and HCQ work by stopping viral replication, they can prevent viral damage to the heart, lungs, and other organs. However, they cannot improve organ damage that has occurred. While the Brazilian paper correctly reported that CQ did not change outcomes, this was a classic study designed to fail.
Since the 1950s, HCQ has been used for a variety of problems including a 1960 trial for angina pectoris based on the observation that HCQ reduced sludging due to agglutinated red blood cells in patients with vascular diseases.
While subsequent results in angina patients were reportedly negative, HCQ seems to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular diseases in rheumatic patients. In addition to its antiinflammatory properties, HCQ reduces cholesterol levels and the risk of Type 2 diabetes, and also has anti-platelet effects.
In 2017, the OXI study was designed to determine whether treatment with HCQ, as compared with placebo, would reduce recurrent events among myocardial infarction patients.
Millions have been treated with HCQ for malaria, and it is commonly given in long-term high-dose treatment of patients with rheumatologic disorders.
Until now, the drug has been distributed with only a minor mention of the potential for cardiac arrhythmia. While other side effects are categorized as “very common,”“common,”or“rare,”cardiac issues are infrequent enough to be noted under “unknown frequency.”
The Sanofi patient safety handout for Plaquenil states, “Heart problems or failure, cardiomyopathy, an enlarged or weak heart can occur if you take Plaquenil for long periods of time...”
People with SARS-CoV-2 generally require only 5–14 days of treatment. So, why did the FDA only now issue a very public warning against the use of HCQ—citing cardiac rhythm issues?
The COVID-19 pandemic is calling attention to the potential for treating viral diseases with currently available drugs, and exposing long-available but ignored research. The implications of all this are very disturbing.
Where have the virologists been, and the CDC “experts” who claim to care about influenza deaths? Has the burgeoning nearly trillion- dollar vaccine industry been built at the expense of patients’ lives?
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