AMA President’s Response to Trump Asking ‘What Do You Have to Lose?’ From Unproven Drug: ‘You Could Lose Your Life’

“What do you have to lose? What do I know? I’m not a doctor,” said President Donald Trump at Sunday’s Coronavirus Task Force briefing as he once again touted the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus.

Multiple people who actually are doctors have now responded, and they have an answer for the president’s rhetorical question: What do you have to lose? You could lose your life.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the task force, has commented multiple times in recent days that hydroxychloroquine was not yet proven as an effective treatment against Covid-19, and continued study would be needed:

“The data are really just at best suggestive. There have been cases that show there may be an effect and there are others to show there’s no effect. So I think in terms of science, I don’t think we can definitively say it works.”

Hydroxychloroquine has been approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to treat other ailments, like lupus and malaria.

The FDA did grant an emergency use authorization to allow doctors to prescribe the drug (along with azithromycin, a commonly prescribed antibacterial agent) to coronavirus patients who are hospitalized and not responding well to other treatments, but that is not the same as being “FDA approved,” especially since the drug has not yet been proven effective and has serious, potentially life-threatening side effects.

The President of the American Medical Association (AMA), Dr. Patrice Harris, weighed in on this issue, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Harris agreed with Fauci, saying that “science and data have to rule the day as we battle this pandemic,” and the drug was yet unproven to work on coronavirus patients.

“There could be negative side effects,” Harris continued. “There could be deaths. This is a new virus, and so we should not be promoting any medication or drug for any disease that has not been proven and approved by the FDA.”

Blitzer asked Harris if she would prescribe hydroxychloroquine if a patient of hers had Covid-19,

“I would not prescribe it,” Harris responded.

She added that the AMA had issued a statement regarding the “inappropriate prescribing” and “inappropriate hoarding” of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and other drugs that had been suggested as possible coronavirus treatments, again noting that these drugs’ efficacy had not been proven against Covid-19, but they were proven treatments for diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Patients with these chronic conditions depend on their medication, but it was becoming increasingly harder to find.

Blitzer asked Harris directly about Trump’s comments: “So when the president says, ‘What do you have to lose, you got coronavirus. You’re in the hospital. What do you have to lose?’ What do you say?”

“You could lose your life,” said Harris.  ‘It’s unproven. And so certainly there are some limited studies, as Dr. Fauci said. But at this point, we just don’t have the data to suggest that we should be using this medication for Covid-19.”

Blitzer then brought on Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency room physician and medical researcher. Ranney went into further detail about hydroxychloroquine’s side effects, and what was, in her view, an unacceptable risk for patients to rush to try it:

This medication has major side effects including paranoia, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, suppression of your blood counts so that you become more susceptible to infections. It can cause severe cardiac arrhythmias that can even cause death. They are not common side effects, but they are common enough that this should not be taken willy-nilly. It is not like water, it is not harmless, and it may have major side effects…

We don’t have full knowledge yet, but I don’t want Americans to think if they come down with a slightest sniffle that taking hydroxychloroquine is the solution for them. It makes me nervous on behalf of the patients that really need it, but also on behalf of the patients who could be severely harmed if they take this and it doesn’t help, but actually hurts them. 

Watch the video above, via CNN.