By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
In last Friday’s presentation, Dr. Joel Hirschhorn mentioned that the issue about HCQ has deteriorated into a propaganda war. Why has this gone down so low? I cannot remember of any drug that has reached this controversial level with experts accusing others of lying.
The primordial intent of our view is simple – allow the doctors to use the drug they believe is good for their patients. Is that an impossible thing to grant considering that patients have rights to decide their fate and doctors have the duty to give what they believe is the best medicine on hand? Doctors took an oath on it. Why deprive them of their rights? Are we still a free people?
This has been the point of our digression, HCQ just happened to be a choice of some doctors; naysayers are free to reject it. Thus we see the suppression of this drug not just a matter of treatment but a denial of rights. We presented the studies and experiences of doctors to show the arbitrariness and tyranny of the suppression.
In this “war” government regulators are digging in to defend Fauci and several governments around the globe, while independent doctors cling to the well-grounded belief in the efficacy of the HCQ treatment. Meantime, as in all wars, people are dying and the world economy is sliding down into recession. Indeed history tells us more non-combatants die in war than those who bear arms.
Hirschhorn cited a new CDC publication showing “prescriptions for HCQ at retail stores (not mail order). In March through June this year there likely were 680,000 prescriptions for treating the virus. After the government clamp down, prescriptions in May and June averaged 80,000 a month. This limited use may help explain many reduced death rates.”
By July infections had spiked and here we suddenly found ourselves under stricter enforcement of restrictions. The earlier treatment was suddenly stopped. Coincidence? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the fact is that the drop in the use of HCQ saw an increase in infections and deaths.
“Despite negative actions by some governments and the World Health Organization,” Hirschhorn claimed that the “Sermo survey of physicians in 30 countries found for this September that HCQ is being used for 22% of patients outside hospitals, 21% inside them and even 14% in ICUs.”
So why is the Philippines suppressing this drug? The answer, as I have emphasized in several columns, is that the Philippines follow the diktat of Fauci. But are Fauci and the instruments he uses 100% reliable? Hirschhorn debunks Fauci’s favourite methodology, the process that the Philippine health officials and some doctors also insist as the only valid and reliable way to test a drug.
The problem of Fauci’s positions, according to Hirschhorn is that “Dr. Fauci is only satisfied with randomized control trials (RCTs). This position has been sharply debunked, as has the assertion of negative health effects and that HCQ risks outweigh its benefits.” To support his claim, Hirschhorn cited Thomas R. Frieden, former head of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Friedman concluded in 2017, according to Hirschhorn, that “despite their strengths, RCTs have substantial limitations” and “he supported using many other kinds of data that now constitute the evidence for using HCQ.”
The problem is that Fauci and company will not accept any conclusion except that which is tested by RCT. Remember that video when he said, unless he sees a study through RCT, he would not believe and if he saw one he would immediately change his mind? Like the doubting St. Thomas?
Hischhorn cited Norman Doidge’s observation: “RCT is best understood as standing not for Randomized Control Trials, but rather ‘Rigidly Constrained Thinking.’ in the current COVID-19 situation … we cannot simply, as so many are insisting [namely Fauci], rely only on the long-awaited RCTs to decide how to treat COVID-19.”
Moreover, “hundreds of drugs have been approved without RCTs, including hydrocortisone, Lasix, tetanus vaccine, insulin, tetracycline, warfarin, heparin, prednisone, half of chemotherapy drugs used in cancer and uses of HCQ for many diseases, such as malaria and lupus.”
So why a separate, stubborn standard for HCQ? Why not apply the same rigid requirements to others? Why is HCQ an exception? There is something creepy here.
Continued tomorrow.
