The Media Continues Anti-Science, Fear-Based Coverage of Hydroxychloroquine
Subscribe here for free to the Fourth Watch newsletter, where this piece originally appeared.
In 2018, Dr. Harvey Risch was awarded $50,000 for Excellence in Pancreatic Cancer Research. The professor of epidemiology teaches at the Yale School of Medicine, which is consistently recognized as one of the top schools in America for epidemiology and public health.
This information is important because of what Dr. Risch wrote last week in a mostly-ignored column in Newsweek. “The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It” is the headline… and from my headline you can guess where this is going. “I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc,” writes Dr. Risch.
Dr. Risch is not the “doctor” much of the media has spent today talking about related to hydroxychloroquine — and there’s a very good reason for that. Last night President Donald Trump RTed a video featuring someone named Dr. Stella Immanuel talking about how hydroxychloroquine can “cure” Covid-19 and also saying masks don’t work. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., also tweeted the video and was suspended briefly because of it. RTing this was the wrong thing to do — masks have been proven to work, and hydroxychloroquine doesn’t “cure” Covid-19. Dr. Immanuel has, uh, some completely absurd beliefs, when you dig in further.
But life is not about black and white — and this coronavirus pandemic is certainly not about black and white either. And the media’s antagonistic relationship with President Trump has made hydroxychloroquine such a hot button issue that their coverage has overshot the reality of the situation — and all but ignored the evidence presented by credible experts like Dr. Risch.
CNN spent the day describing hydroxychloroquine as “unproven” — which is true, to some extent — but that’s not all.
This is how Anderson Cooper began his program Tuesday night: “Like a snake oil salesman, he’s still promoting disproven medical treatments. It is unconscionable.”
There’s a huge difference between calling something “unproven” and “disproven” – and “snake oil salesman”? Cooper called Trump’s RT and comments “dangerously irresponsible” — but disingenuous segments like this are dangerously irresponsible too.
Here’s where the science actually is on hydroxychloroquine. As Dr. Risch writes in his column last week, at least seven studies so far have shown the benefits of hydroxychloroquine when used early in treatment for Covid-19. That’s different from using it for patients who are hospitalized with serious or critical cases — it has been shown in many studies to have little effect at that time.
A recent study from the highly reputable Henry Ford Health System shows the effectiveness of the drug. Others, like one published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, found it had little effect. Other studies, including one high profile one also published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that found hydroxychloroquine could actually be harming patients had to be retracted because of faulty data and questionable sourcing.
This is a complicated topic that demands nuanced media coverage — a demand that is not being met. The entire coronavirus pandemic requires humility — a humility we’re not seeing enough of from the media or from the White House podium.
But why is the media so dead set against hydroxychloroquine, no matter what studies say? It seems obvious. As Dr. Risch writes: “For many, it is viewed as a marker of political identity, on both sides of the political spectrum. Nobody needs me to remind them that this is not how medicine should proceed. We must judge this medication strictly on the science.”
“I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence,” he writes. Extra-scientific factors… like a media that operates with a preconceived notion and not an open mind.
Subscribe here for free to the Fourth Watch newsletter, where this piece originally appeared.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
