indica News Bureau-
The findings of a study observing COVID-19 patients have found no evidence that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted as a possible treatment for COVID-19, is facing criticisms in US.
Hirsh Singh, who is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate has criticized an alleged medical report issued by a statistician with a career background in business marketing and very little medical experience that claims hydroxychloroquine is not helping COVID-19 patients, despite many licensed physicians claims to the contrary.
The study, which reviewed veterans’ medical charts, was posted Tuesday on medrxiv.org, a pre-print server, meaning it was not peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia. In the study of 368 patients, 97 patients who took hydroxychloroquine had a 27.8% death rate. The 158 patients who did not take the drug had an 11.4% death rate.
Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Hirsh strongly condemned a group of activists who abused their academic titles and published a paper purporting to be a study. He said that the first author of the so-called study is Joseph Magagnoli, a statistician. Other key contributors are ophthalmologists.
“I come from a STEM background and one look at the paper was enough to notice the fraudulent nature of this paper. This was no clinical trial under a controlled environment, but retrofitting of a preconceived conclusion on data about 368 patients obtained from multiple sources from all over the country. This is terrible, the book ‘Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics’ comes to mind” said Hirsh Singh.
The so-called study seems to have been cooked up by the authors for no other reason other than to appease their political masters and oppose President Donald Trump. “They should have been honest and listed the authors as Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker and Barack Obama,” said Hirsh Singh.
Singh pointed out that in the absence of any cure, the reports from the ground about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine must be taken seriously and patients given a chance to live. The use of hydroxychloroquine has faced opposition from the pharmaceutical industry which has claimed that the only cure for COVID-19 is one developed by them. “This is a shame,” pointed out Singh before adding, “The real message here is that the only cure that is acceptable is one for which Big Pharma gets paid Big Money.” Singh’s opponent in the primary is Rik Mehta who is a part of Big Pharma and has been curiously silent on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine.
In early April, when India had an embargo on the export of hydroxychloroquine as it needed the drug for use locally, Hirsh Singh then wrote a letter to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to release the drug for use in the United States. India has since permitted the export of the drug to the United States. “The reason I wrote the letter to the Indian Prime Minister is because I had been hearing from doctors that hydroxychloroquine was having a positive effect on patients affected by COVID-19. The world is fortunate to have President Trump and Prime Minister Modi as leaders at the same time,” said Singh.
“Democrats have been caught in yet another one of their stunts. What else is new? One thing is for sure — this COVID-19 ordeal affects us all, and in some cases, the consequences can be deadly,” he said,
