patrick.net

In the past few days, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have removed from their sites a video in which a group of doctors endorse the use of hydroxychloroquine, in combination with the antibiotic Zithromax and zinc, as an effective treatment for early stage COVID-19. The social media platforms claim the doctors’ message violated their policies against publishing what CNN described as “false and dubious claims.”

Why are these social media giants deciding what treatments work or don’t work? How do they know whether claims of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness are true or false?

Before taking down the Breitbart News-posted video, it had garnered 14 million views on Facebook and 40,000 on YouTube. Among others retweeting it was President Trump, who famously has taken hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure and been lambasted by the media for his confidence in the medication.

To many, this appears to be just the latest effort by liberals in various media to refute that the anti-malarial medicine, in combination with other drugs, has helped save lives — simply because they don’t like Trump.

While that might be dismissed as “just politics,” the larger issue that should concern us all is whether social media sites alone should decide what we can and can’t read, view or hear — and where allowing them to do so will ultimately lead. ...

It is harder to dismiss Dr. Harvey Risch, professor of epidemiology at Yale’s School of Public Health. Dr. Risch recently published a piece in Newsweek in which he says he has “authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently hold[s] senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading journals.”

Dr. Risch writes that he is “flummoxed” to find himself “fighting for a treatment that the data fully support but which, for reasons having nothing to do with a correct understanding of the science, has been pushed to the sidelines. As a result, tens of thousands of patients with COVID-19 are dying unnecessarily.” He explains that when hydroxychloroquine is administered early on, in combination with azithromycin or doxycycline and zinc, it has been “highly effective.”

In May, Dr. Risch published a piece in the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE) in which he analyzed five studies, all of which showed “clear-cut and significant benefits” from using the inexpensive drug, as well as other studies confirming the medication’s safety. As Risch notes, doctors are prescribing this treatment in spite of skepticism and harassment — not from the medical community, but from some in the media. He says he knows two doctors who have “saved the lives of hundreds of patients” but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses.

Dr. Risch writes that since his earlier article was published, seven more studies have shown similar benefits.