President Donald Trump has continued his dogmatic and potentially dangerous advocacy of the use of hydroxychloroquine despite recent studies questioning its benefits (and possible risks) as a treatment for COVID-19. One doctor who disagrees with these reports, including some out this week, is Dr. Stella Immanuel. Immanuel’s views however have been censored by Facebook and Twitter after her video was removed as false information. That brought an attack from Trump over censorship and the President has encouraged action from Congress which is looking this week at the issue. However, Dr. Immanuel called upon a higher source for intervention. She has warned the companies that Jesus will shutdown the companies unless her video is restored.
I fail to understand the obsession of Trump with hydroxychloroquine beyond sheer stubborn denial. The studies are at best conflicted and seem increasingly skeptical of the drug’s use. However, I also object to the censoring of views by Twitter and Facebook, including Dr. Immanuel’s controversial stance that hydroxychloroquine is a “cure” for COVID-19. As a free speech advocate, I have long opposed calls for greater censorship on the Internet and in social media. There is ample evidence to refute Dr. Immanuel’s view of the drug as a cure. Rather than silence her, critics should voice their own theories and cite their own studies.
Dr. Immanuel appears with other doctors recently for a press conference espousing the benefits of hydroxychloroquine. That led to attacks from liberals and support from conservatives;
Yet, Dr. Immanuel is not helping her cause with hyperbolic rhetoric. That includes a threat that Jesus will unleash a type of electronic or digital damnation on Facebook.
In her tweet Monday night, she promised “You are not bigger that God. I promise you. If my page is not back up face book will be down in Jesus name.”
Immanuel practices medicine as a pediatrician at Rehoboth Medical Center but is also the founder of (and minister with) the Fire Power Ministries church. On this occasion, she would be wise to focus on the former rather than the latter credential.
The issue for me is not the underlying medicine but the right for doctors to disagree and to be heard. Politicians, citizens, and corporations are now demanding that these companies censor opposing views on the Internet and social media. For example, in yesterday’s hearing, members like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) demanded that Facebook to “join the civil rights movement” by agreeing to remove opposing views. The thrust of the demands is to prevent people from speaking or opposing views to be heard.
I agree with the criticism of Dr. Immanuel’s claim of hydroxychloroquine as a cure and I believe President Trump has been rightfully criticized for his highlighting of this drug without sufficient supportive research. However, I was convinced on those points by reading both sides of the debate and ultimately came to my own conclusion. I do not require Rep. Raskin or these companies to decide what I should be able to see or read in reaching such conclusions. Indeed, what if the majority did believe hydroxychloroquine was a cure without support. Would that accepted truth then require the barring of opposing medical views that it is dangerous or ineffective?
I would leave both the Almighty and Zuckerberg out of this debate. It is ultimately about free speech and it is losing.
Nothing new there computers crashing happen everytime microsoft changes their fix it later market it now hoaxes.
Professor Turley fails to mention that an anti-HCQ (hydroxychloroquine) study published in The Lancett and an anti-HCQ study published in The New England Journal of Medicine–considered to be two of the most prestigious medical journals in the world–had to retract those purported studies because they were unreliable. Professor Turley then also fails to mention that the WHO relied on those two unreliable studies to terminate further studies. Got that?
The most cited anti-HCQ study was published in the UK and was conducted by Professor Peter Horby and Pofessor Martin Landray. That UK study concluded that HCQ was “ineffective” and “did “not reduce the risk of death among hospitalised patients with this new disease [COVID-19].” However, none of the pro-HCQ have claimed that HCQ acting alone has had beneficial effects. The HCQ studies demonstrating that HCQ treatment is effective have each involved administration of HCQ in combination with zinc and azithromycin during the early stages of the disease. See, for example, the study by Roland Derwand, Martin Scholtz, and Vladimir Zelenko. That study concluded that “Risk stratification-based treatment of COVID-19 outpatients as early as possible after symptom onset with the used triple therapy, including the combination of zinc with lose dose hydroxychloroquine, was associated with significantly less hospitlizations and 5 times less all-cause deaths.”
Additionally, Professor Turley fails to mention that physicians all over the world have been using the HCQ, zinc, and Azithromycin treatment and have repported excellent results of viral clearing from the body in 3-5 days after starting treatment. This HQC combination therapy was shown to be far less effective for patients that were already critically ill. Zinc, in particular, is critical to the success of the HCQ
Also, the combination HCQ, zinc, and Azithromycin treatment is cheap, compared with other less successful treatments. Right now, for example, you can buy 30 tablets of HCQ 200 mg. for only about $14 at Costco, $28 at CVS, $32 at Rite Aid, and $37 at Walgreens. Azithromycin is even cheaper, with prices ranging from $8.50 to $14 at most major retailers. And zinc is, of course, readily available over the counter and costs even less than the other two components. So, big pharma, the WHO, the NIH, Dr. Fauci, and other special interests have every incentive to oppose such an inexpensive combination therapy for curing COVID-19.
Dear Professor Turley, You say you have “read both sides” on the HCQ debate. Were both sides provided to you by CNN? Are you aware that a paper came out in 2005 extolling the virtues of HCQ in treating coronaviruses? There is an extensive amount of research supporting HCQ from all over the world. Did you read that research? In any case, this is a medication that has been on the list of essential medications since 1955. Remdesevir is a drug about which very little is known. We do know that it doesn’t save lives (this is agreed upon by both sides) and that at best, it can shorten the amount of time a patient spends convalescing by a few days at most. It also causes kidney failure in a high percentage of patients and many have ended up on dialysis as an effect of remdesevir use. Did you read that part of the research? HCQ is a few pennies a dose. Remdesevir is 1000 dollars a dose. Most of the studies “debunking” HCQ have themselves been since debunked and one of the most disturbing issues is that they were either funded directly by Gilead or had a significant number of “researchers” who are on Gilead’s payroll. We have a medication that is basically completely innocuous, that costs pennies a dose, and that has saved thousands of lives against a medication that costs thousands a dose, that is extremely toxic, and which everyone admits does not save lives. Granted that Dr. Immanuel would do better to just stop tweeting, the media’s treatment of her would be decried as sexist, racist, xenophobic and everything in the book were she a Trump hater. Whether or not you prefer to believe that HCQ doesn’t work, because otherwise you would have to accept the fact that everybody knows that it works, everybody has known all along that it works, but they wanted people to die, they wanted the economy destroyed to get their terrible candidate elected, and then how would you sleep at night? Because it’s not a nice death. It’s not going gently into that goodnight. It’s a horrible death. It’s foreshadowing the horrible death that our freedoms and liberties are facing. You see our freedoms dying and you seem to think it’s an aberration, a blip on the screen. This is the real “new normal.” Patients should have the right to choose, I thought President Trump even signed an act to that effect, the Right to Try. Even from an economic standpoint, I would rather try a cheap, safe medication and if it doesn’t work, we move on to the next thing, rather than getting nothing at all and then ending up with a million dollar hospital bill as many are.
Well said, Allison.
Good post Allison. Now why the full court press to remove HCQ and favor Remdesivir when we need all options on the table, not fewer. As you identified, removing the competition for Remdesivir would certainly benefit the company and investors tremendously. As always, follow the money.
Here is a NEJM study that shows Remdesivir performs slightly better than a placebo. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764
Now I’m no doctor, but given the 65 years record of health benefits of HCQ and the report published in 2005 (2nd link) that CQ was effective in the treatment of SARS-CoV, I’m going with HCQ.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
Twitter, Facebook and, yes, google are the Ragnarok that George Orwell predicted in 1984.
I ignore them — well google is my first move when I need to remember the author of 1984 — but I never use it for ideas. I leave ideas for my weird brain.
Yes – you are a very strong advocate for “free speech” – but it seems to extend to speech such as Imannuel’s despite it being knowingly harmful – as many will follow that advice (as they did when Trump first proposed it).
Maybe rather than your repeated commentary on “attacks on free speech” you could write about speech that SHOULDNT be allowed (if any). Should I be allowed to incite people to kill Trump and or Biden ? Isnt (by your own reasoning) denying me that “right” an attack on my “free speech rights” ?
Brandenberg v Ohio is an interesting case. the question of what speech is illegal when it comes to incitement, is perhaps a line that most folks don’t realize is actually drawn quite far out.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492
I remember when Barry was pres. BHO for short. a racist guy got locked up for showing pictures of BHO in a reticle. eventually he was convicted on something else. but we all understood why he was arrested in the first place.
but we have seen many different artistic depictions of homicide of the current POTUS most memorably Kathy Griffin’s disgusting picture, and none of these people got in trouble
perhaps then we might say, BHO had a more aggressive DOJ for prosecuting “incitement” such as this than Trump. Of course, Democrats could never imagine such a thing.
ACLU ‘ers are always on the watch for when normal people may get out of line praying and such, but they also have plenty of time to protect hateful speech so long as it is aimed at Republicans.
There is nothing harmful about HCQ and zinc being prescribed at safe dose levels for treatment of SARS-Cov2.
“The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed Thursday to revisit U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s plan to examine the politically charged matter, reviving the unusual case testing the limits of the judiciary’s power to check the executive branch.
The court’s brief order set oral arguments for Aug. 11. The decision to rehear the case before a full complement of judges wipes out the June ruling from a three-judge panel that ordered Sullivan to immediately dismiss the case and said Sullivan was wrong to appoint a retired federal judge to argue against the government’s move to undo Flynn’s guilty plea.”
“The crucial issues are (a) early treatment of (b) high-risk (c) outpatients with (d) HCQ plus zinc, [azithromycin], doxycycline etc. for (e) hospitalization or mortality outcomes,” Risch said. “Dr. Fauci, in citing all of the studies without qualification, smeared all over points (a)-(e).”
Risch said opponents of HCQ have been arguing that the drug “doesn’t work on patients near death in ventilators and therefore we can’t use it on healthier patients in outpatient settings.”
“Why would you even entertain invoking a study on severely sick patients to bear on the efficacy of outpatients?” he asked.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/yale-epidemiologist-accuses-fauci-running-disinformation-campaign
Why does Dr. Emmanuel claim that hydroxy…. is a cure? Because she’s treated 350 patients with COVID 19 that were seriously ill. All of them survived. That’s 100% of them. If I had COVID 19 I would want to be treated by her with hydoxy…. instead of waiting for some vaccine.
Setting aside the fact that this “doctor” claims that gynecological problems are due to “demon sperm” implanted while a woman sleeps, and that alien DNA and witches cause human illness, the danger in allowing this quack to advocate for hydroxychloroquine is not just that it is unsafe and ineffective, and not just because the fake “news conference” was organized by Breitbart, and not just because the only reason this is being publicized is because the fat election cheater cannot be wrong, it is because rheumatoid arthritis patients and lupus victims can’t get their prescriptions filled. Fatso took our tax money and bought up millions of doses of this drug, which has resulted in shortages. People with RA may suffer irreversible joint damage, and lupus patients suffer terrible pain when their condition flares. So, not only are COVID-19 victims not getting effective treatment, and maybe are dying due to a heart arrhythmia, but those who need the drug because the benefits outweigh the risks are suffering real harm. Such is the effect of a malignant narcissist.
Setting aside the fact that this “doctor”
Uttered by a woman who has at different times pretended to be a lawyer and pretended to be a nurse-practitioner on these boards.
I saw her yak on TV. What is a “nitwit”?
A “nitwit” is someone with the intellectual capacity of a nit, which is the egg of a louse (lice plural).
REGARDING ABOVE:
Gray Anonymous is committed to promoting Hydroxycloroquine.
Gray Anonymous is committed to promoting Hydroxycloroquine.
I am as well. Do you have a problem with anyone protecting their right to choose medical treatments they believe may best provide for their health and over all well-being?
Doctor Immanuel claimed to have successfully treated over 300 patients of all ages in Texas with this drug. It should be pretty easy to find out if that is true.
Now, many of the people speaking out against this drug get funding not only from the government but also from the pharmaceutical industry. The cost of hydroxychloroquine is around fifty cents per dose. Do the math.
MoFo, big conspiracy theory. Does Dr Immanuel sound legit to ‘you’?
All i am saying is it would be easy to corroborate her claim. Do you disagree?
It is a fact that many doctors affiliated with universities get funding from the pharmaceutical industry to conduct research. Do you disagree?
If you do disagree, make your case —- prove me wrong.
Professor Turley,
Please don’t cite two month old scientific studies as evidence of HCQ’s ineffictiveness.
That’s a lifetime in this news cycle.
The protocol that has evidence of effectiveness is HCQ with zinc and Azithromycin. Either early or as a prophylactic.
Just because there hasn’t been success with late administering it or solo doesn’t mean there isn’t a positive result for the HCQ protocol.
Also, watch Fauci’s answers carefully, because he will (correctly) state that there hasn’t been evidence of HCQ having positive results. Once again, it being used solo is not the accepted protocol and Fauci knows that but is evasively correct with his comments about it.