'Dr. Harvey Risch, a noted Yale epidemiologist, has accused White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci of waging a "misinformation campaign" against the drug hydroxychloroquine, claiming the medication has shown consistently encouraging results in treating COVID-19 when used properly.
Hydroxychloroquine has been at the center of a protracted political debate since March, when President Trump cited the drug as a promising possible treatment for the novel coronavirus. HCQ has long been used by doctors to treat malaria along with other syndromes such as arthritis and lupus. The World Health Organization lists it as an essential medicine, while nearly five million Americans hold prescriptions for it.
Since Trump's speculative endorsement of the drug, media outlets and medical officials have for several months aggressively promoted various medical trials that have determined the drug has no effectiveness in fighting COVID-19; many commentators have also insisted, in spite of the drug's decades-long safe track record, that it is too dangerous to be used to cure the disease.
Among the drug's critics has been Fauci. In March, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases dismissed claims of HCQ's effectiveness as "anecdotal" and has periodically voiced that skepticism over the course of the pandemic.
On Tuesday during an interview on "Good Morning America," Fauci further downplayed the drug's purported benefit, claiming that "the overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating] coronavirus disease."
Drug is 'the key to defeating COVID-19,' says infectious disease expert
Risch, however, is sharply criticizing Fauci's approach to evaluating the drug's effectiveness, arguing that repeated trials and tests have shown that it is markedly effective at treating COVID-19 so long as it is administered properly.
Risch, a professor of epidemiology and the director of Yale's Molecular Cancer Epidemiology Laboratory, has been pushing for the drug's use in the fight against the coronavirus for months. Last week in a Newsweek op-ed he called HCQ "the key to defeating COVID-19," claiming its use — particularly when administered with one of two antibiotics and the nutritional supplement zinc — has been "shown to be highly effective" in treating high-risk coronavirus patients.
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https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/yale-epidemiologist-accuses-fauci-running-disinformation-campaign