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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]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Username on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:04AM (17 children)
I remember when Trump says it sounds like a certain drug could save many lives, and the media immediately call it fake just to be contrarians. This lead to papers being invented just to confirm a political bias. Is scoring points for your team worth more than people's lives now? I also recall the media saying "all" lives matter and we need a lockdown to save as many as possible, and that these evil "altright" protesters are killing my grandma. Now that it's their team it is suddenly ok to kill grandma?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:59AM (4 children)
It sounds like the global conspiracy of scientists that promoted global warming.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:51AM (3 children)
Global conspiracies are easy once you have a single financial system ruling over most aspects of life. You may disagree, time will tell.
TFA: [retractions] have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process...
Given the widespread lack of information over alternative cures found and the widespread faith in the vaccine, I'd contextualize this event in a less pathetically naive way.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:27PM (2 children)
Back to the feudal era for you. Donate your computer to charity and get back to peasant life. You might find Amish communities in the USA relevant to your interests and receptive to your views.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:51PM (1 child)
You don't know Bot. He'd promptly construct a difference engine and keep on truckin'.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:23AM
Weird solidarity between you conservative shit posters, feels almost tribal O.o
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:41AM (4 children)
I remember when Trump says "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
and then “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
and then “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that type of a virus.”
and then “It’s going to disappear, one day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
and then “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
And then 110,000 Americans died.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:27PM
He also said "If we manage to stay below 100,000 deaths, we will have done a good job" somewhere in between.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:53AM (2 children)
Question for you. Imagine we found whoever the world's most foremost experts on the virus happened to be, and we gave them complete authority to rule the US, and also gave them 'reasonably' infinite funding. Would you have expected a significantly different outcome? What do you think they would have done differently? Nobody has any magical power when it comes to a plague. A significant chunk of the US has disregarded all concerns about the virus from day 1. Would you propose the government simply have arrested everybody going to the beaches early on during the spread? Presumably you'd then now also propose the government simply arrest everybody protesting and spreading the virus? No, of course not. That'd be absurd. Even if for some god awful reason you want to go full dystopic authoritarian like that there's not even enough prison cells in the US to hold them.
The news media, as usual, presents a broken picture of reality. Do you know the country that had one of the worst outcomes, by far, in this world? They currently have well over 200% the death rate of the US with no end in sight? It's Belgium - the defacto capital of the EU and the global nanny state. And outside of the micronation of San Marino, they have had by far the worst results in the world. This [worldometers.info] page provides a constantly updated view on what's happening on this topic. France was a country that reacted somewhat strongly and had some extremely brutal lockdowns. And they also have about 33% more deaths than the US. UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden - all worse than the US. And the Netherlands and Ireland are just the slightest bit behind us.
I think in a case like this the main goal of the government should be (1) to avoid a panic and (2) to avoid a reaction that's going to end up destroying your economy. And I think we probably failed on both those accounts, like most of the world. But blaming Trump, or anybody besides ourselves, for deaths is just plain dumb. There's just nothing and nobody to blame besides ourselves. We're already seeking a skyrocketing number of cases due to people deciding to get out in massive numbers. And that's going to result in a proportionally sharp increase in deaths. If you want to blame the government for this you now then need to ask yourself how they could have stopped it. And the answer is that there is no acceptable answer. So end up in a logical contradiction by seeking to blame them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Wednesday June 17 2020, @10:52AM
This is more or less what we did in Greece, apart from the infinite funding bit. The government's policy on COVID-19 is dictated by a committee of epidemiologists, and we've had great success in limiting the spread of the disease. The government acted on their advice from the beginning; they started gradually implementing a lockdown even before the first COVID-19 case in the country, and implemented a full lockdown before the first death. Now that the lockdown is over, there are safety rules in place, dictated by the committee, for just about every activity. There are even rules for how brothels should operate [kathimerini.gr][article in Greek]! Some of these rules may be unenforceable, but the more that are followed, the better. Again, according to the epidemiologists, even if part of the people do not follow these rules, we should still be OK, with OK being defined as the transmission factor R0 remaining less than 1.
Would politicians, who thought they knew better and/or weighed in other factors, such as the effect on the economy or their political careers, have acted as effectively? I doubt it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:58PM
The US is a democracy. We elect politicians to rule us, not unelected purported experts. The population has many valid interests, not just one hyped up in the media, that the purported experts have an educated opinion on.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Kitsune008 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:32AM
Why do you want to kill your grandma?
You need help...soon.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:31AM (2 children)
Not just did they call it fake, they hyped up their own untested contender Remdesvir. Just to spite Trump. Which apparently crashed pretty hard, while hydroxychloroquine remains being prescribed off-label.
Back when we were being ejected from our lives, one of my colleagues mentioned that now is the time to get published in Nature and Science, because no one is putting much effort into factual evaluation anymore. I acknowledged what he said, but I didn't know how right he was at the time. Science has regressed to religion, being abused for political purposes.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:32PM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:23AM
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.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:10PM
I remember when medical professionals were debating hydroxychloroquine use and Trump was pushing its use despite there not being solid scientific evidence to use it, only enough possibility to warrant testing. (As opposed to letting the professionals speak for themselves). In other words, practicing medicine without a license.
I remember that from the beginning there was pushback in the medical community on its use.
I also remember that debate has gone back and forth and that now there is even more evidence to suggest hydroxychloroquine does nothing to improve survival rates. Enough now that FDA has now pulled its use authorization [wsj.com]. Blah blah deep state, but please show me recent (as in less than a month old) study data that shows it is effective.
I don't remember the media using the phrase "all lives matter" relating to COVID-19 measures. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to the citation of such?
I don't remember any medical authority suggesting that violating those guidelines and regulations are OK for BLM protests, instead I remember the exact opposite [cbslocal.com]. Then again, I don't generally conflate political party, protests, and COVID. But if you want to go there, I remember the Trump administration specifically appearing many times in public without social distancing or masking, but in instances where this was pointed out to Democrats they immediately changed what they were doing to achieve better compliance. In short, Joe wears a mask and Trump doesn't.
Are you quite sure your memory is intact?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:25PM (1 child)
The entirety of Trump's term and pre-term are evidence that to the media and Democrats, yes, everything and anything no matter how disingenuous or inherently destructive, is worth it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:31PM
Of course. Donald J. Trump "is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life,' and even now I feel that way - this minute." [wikipedia.org]
And his majesty would never tell a lie [politifact.com] or raise his voice in anger at *anyone* [axios.com], especially not women [wikipedia.org], whom he treats gallantly [thedailybeast.com] and with respect [politico.com].
I'll say it again. Donald J. Trump "is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."