Posted on 04/25/2020 7:17:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
According to CNN, we are "jerks." In some states, we may be criminals.
Our infraction? We are doctors who have prescribed hydroxychloroquine, a generic autoimmune medication, to ourselves and our patients in an attempt to prevent or treat COVID-19.
Each of us had a child diagnosed with the disease. Neither of us contracted it ourselves, despite close contact.
Whether HCQ is effective at preventing and treating COVID-19 is beside the point. Some studies suggest that it helps. Others indicate that it does not. Although its effectiveness can be debated, physicians' right to prescribe it, or any other medication they see fit, must not be violated. This applies even if there hasn't been time to conduct randomized, blind, controlled studies.
Medicine should never be politicized, least of all during a public health crisis.
Across the country, some doctors like us are taking HCQ as a prophylactic to try to stay healthy so that we can keep treating our patients. Some of us would like to prescribe it to our patients working on the front lines, including paramedics, firefighters, and hospital workers, who are not only most at risk of catching the disease but also the most important soldiers fighting it.
For this clinical perspective, we've faced unprecedented derision. "Don’t be jerks. Don’t hoard this medicine, doctors, this is not for you," said CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen — a perspective shared by the president of the American Medical Association.
At least 20 states have enacted HCQ restrictions, even up to forbidding prescriptions to patients who haven't tested positive for COVID-19. An Ohio pharmacist told us that she's been instructed to report doctors who write such prescriptions to the district attorney's office. This restriction ignores the Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization for HCQ, which is based on data showing therapeutic and prophylactic benefits. It also ignores the reality that test results for COVID-19 take several days to come back. Doctors should be allowed to prescribe medications if their patients show symptoms, even if they are still awaiting diagnostic confirmation. To force physicians to wait for test results before treating the disease may cost lives.
It seems like scarcely a day goes by without a news story about the supposed risks of taking HCQ. Every drug has side effects, and HCQ is no exception. Yet for healthy individuals, HCQ is safe. The World Health Organization puts it on its list of "essential medicines" — the most "efficacious, safe and cost‐effective" medicines in the world. Physicians have prescribed it (as well as with cyclosporin and ivermectin) safely for decades. We know what side effects to expect.
With more than a dozen formal studies in the United States already underway, definitive answers regarding HCQ's effectiveness will come soon. Yet its safety profile is known, which is not the case for new intravenous drugs like Gilead's Remdisivir. Researchers at NYU Langone and the University of Washington are conducting a randomized control trial to examine whether HCQ limits the chances of contracting COVID-19, with results expected this summer. We already have data from less rigorous observational studies.
But with roughly 2,000 people in America reported dying every day from this disease, we don't have the luxury of waiting for definitive results. We should be allowed to try to help our patients without ridicule or unjustified laws designed to stop us. Doctors have at least 11 years of training. We take an oath to "first, do no harm." We are better positioned to determine the risk and reward profile of medicines than are bureaucrats or pundits.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Marion Mass, M.D. and Marlene J. Wust-Smith, M.D. are pediatricians in Pennsylvania. Dr. Mass is the co-founder of Practicing Physicians of America. Dr. Wust-Smith is the founder of Physician Outlook.
Trump was told that 2 1/2/ MILLION PEOPLE could DIE in AMERICA if it wasn't shut down, and he has a very soft heart for America and did as he was ADVISED by the EVIL DR. FRAUD!
Bookmark
Here is a perspective from someone who has been on hydroxychloroquine (aka Plaquenil) for couple of years for my Rheumatoid Arthritis. In Rheumatoid Arthritis, the immune system goes bananas and attacks various parts of your body instead of protecting your body from invaders. In my case, it attacked my heart. I now have severe heart failure and have had 3 heart surgeries with 2 new artificial heart valves. The hydroxychloroquine and other drugs are used to tamp down the immune system, so the immune system won’t attack you.
It is my understanding that the Covid-19 puts your immune system in hyperdrive, and that the inflammation and damage are actually caused by your own immune system attacking you, not directly by Covid-19, which is why these drugs are effective against Covid-19.
According to my rheumatologist, the hydroxychloroquine won’t keep me from getting Covid-19, but will tend to keep me from getting a severe case. I do hope he is right. He is in the top of his field here in Los Angeles.
Niece’s body is a wreck from the crap they’ve given her. Plaquenil is the latest, Lupus/Sjogren’s. Her lungs, liver, kidney’s are Trashed and heart is enlarged now. RA she doesn’t have. Knee has had 3 surgeries, next is amputation. Jacksonian Seizures. BP out of control. Idiot lung doc sent her down to ER and no one called a Cardio, no BP meds, they let her go into withdrawal from Valium and Flexeril for her muscle spasms. She lives up near Dollywood, no decent hospitals or docs. C/D grades for specialist. 5-7 yrs to live going by the severity of symptoms.
What will happen to her teen with Duchenes is on hold until she can get a divorce. Hope they put him in Fed prison for Income tax/stimulus fraud. Only reason he’s passed his last 2 dope test, no job to buy the crap.
I have those.
It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if those “researchers” inventing those “studies” saying Hydroxy is a danger were all rounded up and tried for fraud in the furtherance of mass murder or whatever can be shoehorned into applying and can result in their executions.
Same with the fake Opioid crap, shown the babies, and parents of dead DOPE OD’s crying, but NOT INTRACTABLE PAIN PATIENTS, WE ARE A SUB SET OF CHRONIC TREATABLE ONLY WITH PAIN MEDS. Veterans died of heart attacks, strokes, suicide, or turned to street Dope.
Then civilians were hit, there are over 3 million of us on top of the Vets. Blaming Trump when he was not given full disclosure. He’s a businessman not a politician, had a learning curve. Chris Christie got a $800,000 book deal, arranged the upper Trump haters of the RNC to appoint Redfield and addiction shrink Andrew Kolodony. Both greedy, and Redfield has a heroin addict son. Didn’t need Senate aproval.
You and your fellow doctors gave the government the right to tell you how to prescribe, when you allowed the government to dictate how to prescribe opioids, instead of banding together and insisting on being allowed to use your own medical judgment.
Robert Redfield...HEAD OF THE CDC has a HEROIN ADDICTED SON??? Is that right?
The fact that he didn't list the stated and most obvious reason, that they're trying to prevent hoarding and shortages for lupus and other patients, tells us that Dr. Z is being political and self promoting.
Not saying other reasons don't factor in but they're insignificant.
Plaquenil
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.