Hydroxychloroquine: Just the facts and a Follow the Money investigation


https://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/hydroxychloroquine

Big Tech continues to censor factual information related to use of hydroxychloroquine to treat or prevent Covid-19.

That’s despite two new studies that show the inexpensive drug works. A new study in MedRxiv found that hydroxychloroquine and zinc increased Covid-19 survival by almost three times. And a recent study published in the Journal of The Association of Physicians of India also found hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for Covid-19.

In fact, YouTube (owned by Google), Google, Twitter and Facebook have repeatedly gotten caught censoring true information and amplifying disinformation on hydroxychloroquine, Covid-19 and many other topics.

Often, the censorship trends benefit certain pharmaceutical interests.

For a look at facts-only and a Follow the Money examination of the hydroxychloroquine story, watch my investigation first published in May 2020. The transcript follows the link.

https://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/hydroxychloroquine

If you’ve watched the news lately, you might be under the impression that a medicine President Trump touted as a possible game changer against coronavirus — has been debunked and discredited. Two divergent views of the drug, hydroxychloroquine, have emerged: the negative one widely reported in the press and another side you’ve probably heard less about. Never has a discussion about choices of medicine been so laced with political overtones. Today, how politics, money and medicine intersect with coronavirus.

President Trump: Now, it may not work, in which case, hey, it didn’t work.

Sharyl: Studies from China and France sparked early hope that a malaria drug— hydroxychloroquine— might work against coronavirus.

President Trump: And it may work, in which case it’s going to save a lot of lives.

Sharyl: But with President Trump’s first endorsement there was a major media-driven effort to portray hydroxychloroquine as dangerous quackery. The campaign was assisted by an online report in mid-April. It said for sick coronavirus patients treated by the Veterans Administration, hydroxychloroquine did not help and was linked to increased deaths.

Reporter questions at Coronavirus Task Force Briefings: Why are you promoting this drug?

President Trump: I’m not.

Reporter: You come out here every day, right, sir? Talking about the benefits of hydroxychloroquine?

President Trump: I want them to try it.

Reporter: If you’re concerned — this VA study showed that actually more people died that used the drug than didn’t.

Sharyl: Meantime, popular support built around a second medicine: remdesivir. Delivered as an IV fluid in the veins, remdesivir was first developed for Ebola, but never FDA approved. Early tests in coronavirus patients proved no survival benefits but said patients did recover four days faster.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: That the data shows that remdesivir has a clear cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. This is really quite important.

Tucker Carlson: Donald Trump is for it.

Sharyl: Camps largely divided along political lines. Many right-leaning media figures sided with hydroxychloroquine while the left-leaning press backed remdesivir. Each accusing the other of ignoring real science.

Dr. William O’Neill: I’ve never seen science politicized in 40 years of practice.

Sharyl: Cardiologist Dr. William O’Neill is a medical director at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan where they’re studying both remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine.

Some people in the media are treating hydroxychloroquine as if it’s something that’s being pitched by charlatans, it’s dangerous, and that’s been debunked and discredited. What do you make of that?

Dr. O’Neill: I think that’s very harmful. President Trump touted it early and so then the media set out to disprove and discredit it without any regard for science. I think those of us that are actually involved in the scientific endeavor feel that there is some value to it and it has to be tested.

Sharyl: Dr. O’Neill says he’s prescribed hydroxychloroquine to help numerous coronavirus patients and saw improvement in all of them. He’s less impressed, so far, by remdesivir.

Dr. O’Neill: There’s a lot of hype for the drug. I saw the original new England Journal article study and I saw the Lancet study and to me it’s just like a big Ho Hum. I just don’t see a big benefit to it.

Sharyl: Adding to the drama and confusion, a draft version of a study was accidentally published last month showing remdesivir did not help most coronavirus patients and caused such serious side effects, 18 test subjects were taken off the drug. Gilead, the maker of remdesivir, did not respond to our interview requests but has said it ended the study because it couldn’t find enough volunteers to take part.

On May 1, the FDA seemed to give remdesivir the edge, allowing emergency use for severely ill coronavirus patients at the same time, stepping up cautions against hydroxychloroquine and its sister drug saying they should only be taken in the hospital or as part of a formal study due to reports of “serious heart rhythm problems.”

Dr. O’Neill is now leading a study to find out if hydroxychloroquine can serve a critical role as a medicine to prevent coronavirus. But he says the bad press is making it difficult.

Dr. O’Neill: Now people are scared to use the drug without any scientifically valid concern. We’ve talked with our colleagues at the University of Minnesota who are doing a similar study, and at the University of Washington. We’ve treated 400 patients and haven’t seen a single adverse event. And what’s happening is because of this fake news and fake science, the true scientific efforts are being harmed because people now are so worried that they don’t want to enroll in the trials.

Dr. Steven Hatfill: Why are the press running medicine in the United States? This is not right.

Sharyl: Dr. Steven Hatfill is a biomedical scientist who worked on Ebola and studies pandemic responses and medicine. He says there’s an unwarranted campaign against hydroxychloroquine.

Sharyl: You think lives were lost because it wasn’t used?

Dr. Hatfill: Yes, lives were lost.

He took hydroxychloroquine years ago for malaria and recently, again, to test to prevent coronavirus.

Sharyl: A preventive would mean, if it were to work, that the fear that this comes back before there’s a working vaccine, the fear that we have another shutdown …

Dr. Hatfill: a return to work … early detection, return to work. Would I give it as a prophylaxis to everybody? No. But for fit, healthy, critical workers going back to work or high risk populations; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ex-smokers, diabetics, obesity …

Sharyl: Might work for them?

Dr. Hatfill: It might work for them.

Sharyl: A third scientist we spoke to, who says hydroxychloroquine has been unfairly disparaged, is Dr. Jane Orient, head of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

How do you account for the difference in medical and scientific opinion about this drug? Because some people seem so certain that it can be a positive benefit to coronavirus patients, maybe even crucial in the early days, whereas some people are convinced it should absolutely not be used.

Dr. Orient: That’s a very good question. But the ones who have the most experience are very enthusiastic about the possibilities. And we do have naysayers that we suspect may have a little conflict of interest because they are so enthusiastic about remdesivir, which is a new drug that hasn’t been approved for anything. And that so far is showing a really very equivocal or even negative results.

Sharyl: All three scientists criticized that VA report casting doubt on hydroxychloroquine as little more than a list of cases with crucial details missing. It turns out one author of the report received research funding from Gilead, the maker of remdesivir, including a 247-thousand dollar grant in 2018.

Orient: I think we have to look at the money. There’s no big profits made in hydroxychloroquine. It’s very cheap, easy to manufacture, been around for 70 years. It’s generic. Remdesivir is a new drug that could be very expensive and very lucrative if it’s ever approved. So I think we really do have to consider there’s some financial interest involved here.

Dr. Hatfill: Some of these decisions did not seem to be rational.

And when things, in my opinion that are so clear, the right path to take aren’t taken, very often: Money is somehow involved.

Sharyl: When it comes to money, we checked financial ties among experts on the government panel devising coronavirus treatment guidelines— which had the effect of dialing back hydroxychloroquine use and giving an edge to remdesivir.

We found that of 11 members reporting links to a drug company, nine of them named relationships to remdesivir’s maker Gilead. Seven more, including two of the committee’s leaders, have ties to Gilead beyond the 11 months they had to disclose. Two were on Gilead’s advisory board. Others were paid consultants or received research support and honoraria. Nobody reported ties to hydroxychloroquine which is now made by numerous generic manufacturers and is so cheap, analysts say even a spike in sales would not be a financial driver for the companies.

In the end, politics and money aside, at least some scientists aren’t ready to count hydroxychloroquine out of the coronavirus equation. Even if others already have.

Sharyl: Is it possible that it’s not one or the other— that hydroxychloroquine could be used in a certain setting, maybe for preventive if you find out that works, and the other drug could be used in other settings?

Dr. O’Neill: No, Absolutely. I think, I think that it’s just still very early in this disease process that we’re going to learn lot. There’s 600 studies that are being done in the United States right now on Covid to see all sorts of different kinds of infections and combinations. We’re going to be a lot smarter at the end of the summer. So I think what I would just say to everybody, just hold your powder.

We wanted to hear perspectives from from Dr. Fauci and Gilead, the maker of remdesivir, but they declined our interview requests. We also contacted numerous scientists who have criticized or are skeptical of hydroxycholoroquine, but they also did not want to be interviewed for this report.


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19 thoughts on “Hydroxychloroquine: Just the facts and a Follow the Money investigation”

  1. Important to note that the MedRxiv report was limited to intubated patients only. Even HCQ proponents are tentative on the HCQ benefits.in this late stage, and yet it compared very favorably. Yale’s Harvey Rische’s metastudy of 5 early outpatient studies showed 80% reduction in hospitalization which implies a huge reduction in mortality. So basically to mock and undermine Donald Trump we gave about 1/2 million lives.
    The intensely narcissist political bubbles have gone adrift from actual humanity and human suffering. as if the dead and dying were actually just streaming video game characters.
    Evidence the recent Klein tweet on how democrats have to do something about soaring crime rates before Republicans use it to regain power and thereby “harm the liberal project”. The “harm” these crimes cause actual victims never came up..

  2. Sharyl your accurate unbiased reporting is extremely refreshing in this age of biased, untrustworthy and politically motivated “news” reports. You have a level of integrity that the main stream media is lacking and has been for a long time. Love your podcasts and weekly TV shows.

  3. It has always puzzled me, WHY didn’t President Trump issue an EO keeping HCQ available in the marketplace for emergency use (similar to the vax use) thus preventing big Pharma’s collusion with the plandemic’s architects who deliberately killed thousands of COVID patients.? Isn’t he complicit?

    1. Fauci dissuaded him from any enthusiasm for HCQ and furthermore, when used late in the course of the disease,it’s less effective. When combined with early use ofaerosolized steroiid,….it could have saved thousands of lives,
      Don Rhodes

  4. I listened to Doctors in NY and in LA that talked about using a mix of HCQ with zinc to stop COVID early on. They said it was cheap and effective. People would recover quickly and there was no side affects and no further COVID issues. These Doctors were part of a growing bunch that was blocked from social media indicating how to treat this. Big Tech wanted to keep a cheap easy solution away from all people.

    Ultimately this was designed to get Big Pharma to create costly drugs to give out, and make them rich. These drugs are “experimental” and have not had the time for the FDA to test them. It is clear there has been many deaths and injuries by the drugs, but Big Pharma was given a legal pass against being sued. Usually if there is any amount of deaths due to a vaccine the vaccine is removed from use but in this case it has not been.

  5. YouTube is a part of Google, which is held by Alphabet Corp. One member of Alphabet’s Board of Directors is Shirley M. Tilghman, former President of Princeton and a distinguished molecular biologist.

    It would be interesting to get on record her opinions about ivermectin and HCQ. Does she defend the censorship?

  6. ADDENDUM: Tilghman left the Board in Feb 2018. So she is not participating in current matters. But her opinion would still be interesting.

  7. Sharyl, twice when I’ve clicked on links from your pages, once from current page to link to Full Mearue News, the other to view C D C misinformation relevant to meeting on 6/18. I’ve received a 403 error. Safari browser, Macbook pro, latest OS. This morning, around 11-11:30 PDT. Here’s the text following the 403 Error graphic:

    “Request blocked. We can’t connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
    If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.”

  8. Actually, it’s worse than what I commented on just now. I get the same error message when I attempt to open FullMeasure.News on either Safari or Brave.

  9. I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing honest in any part of the government. So I listen and read alternative news. I believe nothing any of these politicians say, there are a handful, and I mean only an honest handful, that try to get to the truth. The rest talk out of both sides of their mouths. They all know hydroxicloroquine and ivermectin work. Just follow the money. Lies, lies and more lies!

  10. Instagram blocked a post from the Lupus Foundation of America that provided information about the efficacy and use of hydroxychloroquine in treating LUPUS. So in the tech overlords zeal to squash any mention of HCQ, they prevented legitimate treatment information for a different Not Covid-19) disease from being told during Lupus awareness month.

  11. Joel S Hirschhorn

    The full story of pandemic corruption and the attacks on HCQ are in the new book Pandemic Blunder:

    Bold New Book PANDEMIC BLUNDER – FAUCI AND PUBLIC HEALTH BLOCKED EARLY HOME COVID TREATMENT by Joel S. Hirschhorn
    A huge amount of data and information not covered by mainstream media are in Pandemic Blunder that tells the story of how over 500,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 unnecessarily because the government has blocked early home/outpatient treatment and prevention. With over 600,000 COVID American deaths, learning about safe and effective treatment is more important than ever.
    About the Book:Pandemic Blunder contains considerable medical information and data to support a number of proven safe, cheap generic medicines and protocols that knock out the coronavirus when given early. Read about the pioneering, courageous doctors who have been using innovative approaches to prevent their COVID patients from needing hospital care and facing death. The book includes many expert opinions and Real World Evidence from doctors that show 70 to 80 percent of COVID deaths could have been prevented—and still can be. Don’t be victimized by disinformation and propaganda. Learn how corrupt forces are aiming to make billions of dollars from expensive medicines and vaccines, and how hundreds of thousands of deaths could have—and should have—been prevented! Detailed information is given to help people protect their lives by using simple prevention protocols, an alternative to vaccines.
    https://www.amazon.com/Pandemic-Blunder-Public-Blocked-Treatment/dp/197723822X/ref=nav_signin?dchild=1&keywords=Pandemic+Blunder&qid=1612289098&sr=8-1&&

  12. Treatment of this can be very complicated and HCQ may or may not help but it is very unlikely to be adequate for most people who really have the illness caused by the bioweapon. Doctors and hospitals are criminally complicit for not properly treating this illness. This is GENOCIDE! No one should expect recovery without treatment in someone who becomes ill with this and treatment should begin immediately when symptoms present. Find a doctor who can help you before you need one. Call a lawyer to deal with the hospital if they will not cooperate. This is a criminal conspiracy to reduce the population. Everyone complicit in it must be brought to justice.
    https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/FLCCC-Protocols-%E2%80%93-A-Guide-to-the-Management-of-COVID-19.pdf

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