Politics Killed Patients
For years I have banged away on this space often trying to convince readers that government is on balance, the enemy of competent and compassionate medical care. If 2020 has not convinced you of the truth of that statement, you are willfully delusional.
Can I be accused of a contradiction, since any call to remove the moronic, parasitic federal government from the daily provision of health care may itself be regarded as political? Sure, fine.
But if Authentic Medicine means anything, it should mean that we are not squinty, narrow-brained assholes who would endanger patients over politics.
Two stories:
1. “FDA Bureaucrat Brags He Blocked Physician Prescribing of Hydroxychloroquine in Early COVID-19.” The AAPS published this article with this lovely excerpt:
“Rick Bright, Ph.D., is an FDA bureaucrat, vaccine researcher, and was appointed by President Obama on November 15, 2016 to head BARDA (Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority, a sub-agency of the FDA). In an unprecedented move, Bright expanded his power and claimed credit for being the person imposing his will on all of us.
In an appalling admission, Bright said: “Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.” Meanwhile, he promoted both remdesivir, a never-approved experimental antiviral in development by Gilead Sciences, and a vaccine for COVID-19.”
2. “AMA rescinds statement against the use of HCQ for COVID-19 treatment.”
And here is another lovely excerpt: “The resolution said, ‘…our American Medical Association rescind its statement calling for physicians to stop prescribing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine until sufficient evidence becomes available to conclusively illustrate that the harm associated with use outweighs benefit early in the disease course…Implying such treatment is inappropriate contradicts AMA Policy H-120.988, ‘Patient Access to Treatments Prescribed by Their Physicians,’ that addresses off-label prescriptions as appropriate in the judgement of the prescribing physician’. AMA adds that it will soon release a new statement to notify patients of this change and to clarify the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment.” (Note: The links I found for this story were all from smaller, and/or obviously right-leaning sources. I am not trying to spread partisan falsities, so if anyone has any contradictory sources, please share them for our mutual benefit.)
Remember back in the spring when the idiot in Arizona ate aquarium cleaner because it sounded similar to hydroxychloroquine? And remember when the Nevada governor used this as a reason to prohibit physicians from using HCQ to treat Covid-19 out-patients? (The same scumbag who then stockpiled this dangerous and prohibited substance for potential use on prisoners). Regular media figures piled on condemning the use of the unproven HCQ, even as they ferociously insisted on the equally unproven collective treatments of masks and lockdowns.
A year ago, no one outside of the medical community and some rheumatology patients had ever heard of HCQ. But then a very popular / unpopular president said nice things about the drug, and immediate battle lines formed. This off-label, experimental, even desperate use of this cheap, established drug should never have been prevented, suppressed, delayed, or even criticized on political grounds. The very embodiment of doubleplusgood, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, sanctioned the outright banning of pro-HCQ statements in the early weeks when some practicing physicians would have tried anything to keep their Covid-19 patients out of the hospital.
I can’t prove yet that hydroxychloroquine helps, and you can’t yet prove that it doesn’t. I do know that every single patient I’ve put on HCQ in both out- and in-patient settings has recovered. Maybe it was the zinc, decadron, and azithromycin, and maybe it was my sunny disposition overlying a rebellious anger. My numbers aren’t statistically significant, and my presentation is purely anecdotal.
But my opinion is that disgusting creature in organized medicine, the bureaucracy in all levels of government, the herd media, and evil bastards like social media CEO’s all contributed to the needless deaths of patients by preventing practicing physicians from trying what they could. Politics killed patients this year, and we should all be damned angry about it.
This weeks Medical Letter discusses the meds for Covid. HydroxyC has some reported benefits as well as failures.
Bravo Dr Conrad
The politics over this virus are abominable. No wonder no one trusts the medical profession! Even me.
Amen, Dr Conrad!
Yep, what he said.
Bingo.
I’ll say up front that I don’t think HCQ does much if anything. But I do agree with Dr Conrad that the issue was handled abominably by politicians and the media, with sides being staked out along partisan lines. The demands for evidence were impossible to meet that early in a pandemic, and the media made it sound like a highly dangerous drug. At the same time much more expensive treatments with little or no evidence were freely given.