The News on Hydroxychloroquine Keeps Getting More Complicated
The latest on the potential Covid-19 treatment under research
On March 20, researchers in France published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents that hydroxychloroquine, a drug typically used to treat malaria and autoimmune disorders, was unbelievably effective at treating Covid-19 (emphasis on unbelievably), virtually curing people of the novel coronavirus in less than a week. The news took off, fueled by President Donald Trump’s uninformed enthusiasm for what he dubbed a miracle cure.
Scientists quickly called for restraint, saying not enough was known about the drug — its efficacy and its risks — and perhaps the French data was a little too good to be true. Sure enough, there are numerous flaws in the study’s methods, most glaring that they excluded people in the analysis who received the drug but continued to decline, falsely inflating the efficacy of the medication.
More criticisms have since emerged: It turns out the senior author of the study, Didier Raoult, is also the editor-in-chief of the journal where it was published, a clear conflict of interest. Perhaps most scathing, the scientific society that publishes the journal, the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, issued a statement that the article “does not…
