VA “Study” on Hydroxychloroquine Challenged, Gilead’s Drug Remdesivir Ineffectiv

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"VA “Study” on Hydroxychloroquine Challenged, Gilead’s Drug Remdesivir Ineffective
by Steve Byas April 24, 2020   

A recent “study” by the Veteran’s Health Administration concluded that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are not only worse than ineffective against COVID-19, but actually lead to a higher fatality rate. The supposedly nonpartisan study contradicted several others that have demonstrated the drug’s effectiveness and safety, and was challenged on several grounds.

First, the patients were not given zinc, which disrupts coronavirus in infected cells. Those treated were primarily elderly males with other chronic and fatal diseases, while the control group were composed of patients generally without such problems. Those in the “study” had a plethora of medical issues, in addition to COVID-19, including heart disease, asthma, liver disease, diabetes, cancer, and even AIDS.

Alarmingly, the study’s author, Scott Sutton, has been paid to do three studies for Gilead Sciences, Inc., maker of Remdesivir, also a drug in trials to treat COVID-19! The stock price of Gilead has risen markedly since February, when it was announced that the drug has been identified as a potentially a medication to treat the virus.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie disputed the importance of the VA “study.” He noted that it was only “an observational study,” rather than a “clinical study.”

Wilkie added, “It was done on a small number of veterans, sadly those of whom were in the last stages of life. We know the drug has been working on middle-aged and younger veterans, and the governor of New York was just in the Oval Office yesterday asking for more of the drug to be delivered to the city of New York.”

Laura Ingraham of Fox News weighed in on her program last night, as well: “As I reported last week, the media similarly showed little skepticism when they hyped early clinical trials of Gilead’s unproven and expensive drug Remdevisir.”

Unfortunately for Gilead Sciences, Remdesivir does not appear to be very effective at curing the coronavirus. As Reuters reported yesterday,

Gilead Sciences Inc’s experimental coronavirus drug failed its first randomised clinical trial, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing draft documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization.

Trading in the shares of the company was halted after they fell 6%.

Sadly, the efficacy of the drug hydroxychloroquine (marketed under the brand name Plaquenil) in mitigating the effects of COVID-19 has become a political football, with opponents largely ignoring the positive outcomes in its use against the coronavirus in an effort to attack President Trump. What some are willing to say or do to gain a political advantage seems to have no bounds — in the case of hydroxychloroquine, it appears that some on the Left are willing to oppose a potentially life-saving drug simply because Trump has recommended it.

On March 19, I reported in an online article for The New American that the drug “has been killing coronavirus (COVID-19) in laboratory experiments, according to findings published March 9 in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.”

Naively, I thought everyone, regardless of political affiliation, would be overjoyed at the prospect of an existing medication that could knock out COVID-19 in ill patients.

In fact, the night before my article appeared, Gregory Rigano, an advisor to the Stanford University School of Medicine, who has been leading a program to test the effects of the drug for treatment of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, appeared on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show, touting its benefits. He told Carlson that hydroxychloroquine, combined with azithromycin, is a 100-percent cure for the virus.

In a sentence that I failed to grasp the full importance of at the time, I wrote, “He [Rigano] pleaded with President Donald Trump to authorize the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus immediately.”

The very next day after Rigano’s appearance, I noted, “President Trump is known to be a regular viewer of Carlson’s show, and shortly after my article appeared, Trump mentioned the drug during his daily coronavirus press briefing.” (I doubt that Trump read my article, but I expect that he had seen Carlson’s program the previous night).

Rather than expressing optimism about the drug’s possibilities in controlling the pandemic in the United States, however, the media immediately opposed it, with one reporter flatly accusing Trump of giving the American public “false hope.”

Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is well known as a rabid political opponent of Trump from the highly partisan impeachment hearings of late last year, has also declared himself a vociferous opponent of the drug. Not surprisingly, to someone such as Schiff, if Trump is for something, it is a reflex action to be against it. “Early results are in for the drug Trump has been hyping as a cure, and unfortunately, it’s not that good,” Schiff tweeted earlier this week. “We need to be guided by science, not hucksters or hype. Irresponsibly promoting unproven treatments is not a strategy for dealing with a pandemic. Only the absence of strategy.”

The reaction of Schiff and other leftists in and out of the Democratic Party caucus and their media allies is a perfect example of the experiments of Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was a Russian scientist who noted that dogs salivate at the sight of meat. After ringing a bell at the same time he gave them meat, he started just ringing the bell. He observed that the dogs salivated at just the ringing of the bell, because they now associated the ringing of the bell with actual meat.

In much the same way, those on the Left immediately oppose anything Trump is for, and support anything he is against. While some may chalk this up as just politics, when the lives of individuals are at stake — as well as our liberties and our economy — we need a better reason to oppose a drug than that Trump has offered it up as a possible drug to use to combat COVID-19.

During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill explained his kind words for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” To paraphrase Churchill, for those on the Left, if the devil opposes Donald Trump, then they will praise Satan on the floor of Congress."

https://thenewamerican.com/va-study-on-hydroxychloroquine-challenged-gilead-s-drug-remdesivir-ineffective/

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BUSTED: Media Uses VA ‘Study’ To Launch Easily Debunked Attack On Hydroxychloroquine
The Establishment Attacks An Inexpensive Treatment
Patrick Howley by Patrick Howley
April 22, 2020

The mainstream media is hyping a “study” with data culled from Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals to justify their attack on Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that President Donald Trump is fighting to provide to suffering people. (READ: Bon Jovi Keyboard Player Tells Us He Took Hydroxychloroquine And Improved). ABC White House correspondent Jon Karl agitated against Hydroxychloroquine in Trump’s Tuesday White House Task Force briefing, citing the VA study. FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said “This study is a small retrospective study at the VA” and stressed that results of clinical trials, in progress, are needed. (READ the Actual Study Here). The study merely polled the mostly black elderly male Coronavirus patients who have been treated at the VA through April 11. The study was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH), which infamously funded Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists to perform bat coronavirus research prior to the current outbreak.

The study cannot be used to credibly attack Hydroxychloroquine because the drug was given to sicker veterans more likely to die anyway as opposed to healthier people. The study was posted on the Internet but not reviewed by other scientists. The study claims 22 percent of people given Hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin died, whereas only 11 percent died with regular care, but the study even notes that this result was expected due to the severe pre-existing conditions of the patients given the Trump-touted drug. The study made no mention of VA doctors prescribing Zinc along with Hydroxychloroquine, even though doctors and medical experts believe that Hydroxychloroquine can only work in partnership with Zinc. One of the authors of the study has a patent application pertaining to Coronavirus and another author took a research grant from Gilead, which is developing a competitor drug to Hydroxychloroquine (the study claimed these competing interests were unrelated to the study itself). Hydroxychloroquine costs less than $1 per tablet, whereas Gilead was accused by a Senate Finance Committee investigation of inflating prices to the detriment of patients. Let’s break down why the mainstream media’s attack is flopping:

Hydroxychloroquine “was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe disease”

The patients given hydroxychloroquine (ages 59 to 75) had diseases including congestive heart failure, chronic pulmonary disease, diabetes, liver disease, cancer and HIV/AIDS.

The study noted, “However, hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe disease…Thus, as expected, increased mortality was observed in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine both with and without azithromycin.”

“Our study cohort comprised only men whose median age was over 65 years. Therefore, the results may not necessarily reflect outcomes in women or in younger hospitalized populations, nor can they be extrapolated to pediatric patients. Our findings may also be influenced by the demographic composition of patients in our cohort, the majority of whom were black…”

One of the Study’s Authors Took A Research Grant From Gilead, Which Is Developing A Hydroxychloroquine Competitor To Treat Coronavirus

The study’s co-authors come from the University of Virginia or the University of South Carolina. One of the authors, Jayakrishna Ambati, is listed as the inventor on a University of Virginia patent application “relating to COVID-19.” One of the study’s co-authors, S. Scott Sutton, has taken research grant money from Gilead Sciences, which is currently developing a Coronavirus drug that is likely to be much more expensive than Hydroxychloroquine, which costs less than one dollar per tablet. Sutton’s curriculum vitae shows that on three occasions dating back to 2012 he has studied the impact of therapies on veterans with HIV/AIDS and then submitted that research to Gilead, including two times as principal investigator for Gilead and another company on projects funded for a total of $100,000.

Gilead spent $5.72 million on lobbying in the year 2019. Gilead was investigated by the Senate Finance Committee over the course of 18 months and accused in 2015 by Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of inflating the price of its Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. A press release issued by the senators noted that “the investigation found that the company pursued a marketing strategy and final wholesale price of Sovaldi – $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a single course of treatment – that it believed would maximize revenue. Building on that price, Harvoni was later introduced at $94,500. Fostering broad, affordable access was not a key consideration in the process of setting the wholesale prices. In the 18 months following Sovaldi’s approval, Medicare spent nearly $8.2 billion before rebates on Sovaldi and Harvoni. Over that same span, Medicare’s monthly spending on Hepatitis C treatments increased more than six-fold. In 2014 alone, Medicare and Medicaid combined to spend more than $5 billion on Sovaldi and Harvoni before rebates.”

Democrat Senator Wyden stated: “Gilead pursued a calculated scheme for pricing and marketing its Hepatitis C drug based on one primary goal, maximizing revenue, regardless of the human consequences…Gilead knew these prices would put treatment out of the reach of millions and cause extraordinary problems for Medicare and Medicaid, but still the company went ahead. If Gilead’s approach to pricing is the future of how blockbuster drugs are launched, it will cost billions and billions of dollars to treat just a fraction of patients.”

Other Factors Cannot Be Ruled Out

The Associated Press was forced to report:

“About 28% who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival. “

Some Doctors Are Pairing Hydroxychloroquine With Zinc, But The Study Does Not Mention Zinc

“What we’re finding clinically with our patients is that it really only works in conjunction with Zinc,” stated Los Angeles emergency room specialist Dr. Anthony Cardillo. “So the hydroxychloroquine opens a zinc channel, zinc goes into the cell, it then blocks the replication of the cellular machinery….Every patient I’ve prescribed it to has been very very ill and within 8 to 12 hours they were basically symptom free.”

https://nationalfile.com/busted-media-uses-va-study-to-launch-easily-debunked-attack-on-hydroxychloroquine/