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posted by Fnord666 on Monday June 15 2020, @11:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-be-in-such-a-hurry dept.

The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals (archive)

One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients.

The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws.

The hasty retractions, on the same day this month, have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of respected medical journals just when they are needed most.

[...] "The problem with trust is that it's too easy to lose and too hard to get back," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published one of the retracted papers in early May. "These are big blunders."

If outside scientists detected problems that weren't identified by the peer reviewers, then the journals failed, he said. Like hundreds of other researchers, Dr. Kassirer called on the editors to publish full explanations of what happened.

See also: US FDA pulls its emergency approval of chloroquine use for COVID-19

[NB: This follows up on "Doubt Looms Over Hydroxychloroquine Study That Halted Global Trials" which was part of 2020-06-15 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories --martyb]


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:32PM (#1008683)

    Funny. Way I see it politicians are abusing science, not the other way around. This may be hard for you to grasp, but Remdesivir is a known broad spectrum antiviral medication, and COVID is a virus. There was a lot more evidence for trying remdesivir than -quines. Both trials failed and were stopped. In the United States physicians are still free to prescribe any schedule II-V drug at any time for anything in case you didn't know that. This is what "off label" is. The physician simply puts up his or her license and malpractice insurance when stepping outside known standards of care, and risks his or her insurance reimbursement when departing those standards. And since FDA has cautioned that hydroxychloroquine should not be used outside the hospital or clinical trial settings for COVID, that risk is now more considerable. Not to mention causing patients unnecessary expense when prescribing drugs that don't work and are outside formulary for the diagnosed condition so the patient bears full brunt of that cost. Just because a physician might prescribe either Remdesivir or hydroxychloroquine off label means... nothing. Other than that physician is deviating from current (as of today) recognized standards of practice.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:23AM (#1009050)

    Remdesivir is not a "known" drug, certainly not in terms of efficy. It's an extremely new drug that's failed to provide meaningful results every single time it's been tested outside of Gilead Sciences [wikipedia.org] private tests. Gilead Science, the creator Remdesivir, has now a lengthy history of anti-social profit seeking behavior. They prophetically patented Remdesivir as a treatment for coronaviruses in April 2019 and stood to make an immense amount of money if they could convince governments to deploy it, whether or not it worked. If you think this is overly cynical see things such as this [arstechnica.com]. I'm not sure what it is about the pharmaceutical industry but it seems to attract the absolute dregs of humanity.

    So in part, I agree with you. But, as usual, it's politicians abusing science at the behest of their friends and acquaintances who are looking to get filthy rich off COVID. Hydroxychloroquine, by contrast, is a drug that is "known". It's been in use (and out of patent) for many decades - first being commercially used in the us in the fifties. It's also prescribed millions of times per year in the US alone. It's also on the WHO's list of ~400 essential medicines. The point I make there is two fold. The first is that the supposed dangers of it have been greatly exaggerated by our media which has turned seemingly exclusively to yellow journalism. The second is that there's no way to make real money off of it and so we don't need to worry so much about motives. If somebody is pushing for it, they genuinely believe in it. Could be that they're wrong, but it's not that they themselves think they're wrong and are just aiming to make a buck for themselves or their friends/acquaintances. That latter risk is the major underlying problem with much of government today.