A mysterious company’s coronavirus papers in top medical journals may be unraveling
On its face, it was a major finding: Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly. A study published on 22 May in The Lancet used hospital records procured by a little-known data analytics company called Surgisphere to conclude that coronavirus patients taking chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine were more likely to show an irregular heart rhythm—a known side effect thought to be rare—and were more likely to die in the hospital.
Within days, some large randomized trials of the drugs—the type that might prove or disprove the retrospective study’s analysis—screeched to a halt. Solidarity, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) megatrial of potential COVID-19 treatments, paused recruitment into its hydroxychloroquine arm, for example.
But just as quickly, the Lancet results have begun to unravel—and Surgisphere, which provided patient data for two other high-profile COVID-19 papers, has come under withering online scrutiny from researchers and amateur sleuths. They have pointed out many red flags in the Lancet paper, including the astonishing number of patients involved and details about their demographics and prescribed dosing that seem implausible. “It began to stretch and stretch and stretch credulity,” says Nicholas White, a malaria researcher at Mahidol University in Bangkok.
Nothing is ever quite as it seems.
Is overt fraud in scientific publications illegal? Were the authors of the paper in on the fraud, or were they just negligent in not asking serious questions about the provided data? Was Surgisphere simply greedy, or were they driven by a desire to make Trump look bad?
So many interesting questions.
I don’t think it has a whole lot to do with Trump. I think it has more to do with Gilead or the promise of a new drug or vaccination instead of drugs that are off patent and relatively cheap. There seems to be more evidence in that direction.
Their paper in NEJM was about how statins or ACE2 inhibitors don’t cause any harm in terms of COVID-19. Two of the most profitable drugs that are currently prescribed.
I think this story will start to expose the corruption between big government and “big medicine” so to speak. Two potentially garbage studies in some of the most prestigious medical journals.
One of the most shocking things in this whole debacle, is the war on HCQ by “establishment” medicine. To the credit of at least the Ontario studies, those HCQ trials were continued after a brief pause.
Possibly so; I have no faith in such a lot these days.
This has EVERYthing to do with Orange Man Bad…but as a bonus side effect.
This was to elevate Gilead’s Remdesivir…for the overflowing pot of potential “platinum”..spearheaded by none other than Fauci and his good buddy Billy Gates..
I recall questioning here and elsewhere, how it was with a drug 70+ yrs in use and at no time had anyone witnessed thise behaviour….the WaPo article never mentioned the dosages used nor the state of the patient at the time if administering said drug…seemingly all on its own.
I called Bullshit then and see nothing to change my mind today..were MY kids to get sick with this Engineered bug..?? HCQ would be first n foremost along with Azithromycin and Zinc Sulphate.
Nice to see vindication..
Craig, well said, and about what I was thinking. Logically HQC, should not be a problem, as it is widely used for 2 autoimmune issues , and the cytokine storm that kills most of the C-19 victims is an autoimmune issue.
Fraud is “theft by deception.” If it can be shown that the deceivers have gotten something of material value from someone who would not have given it if not deceived, then they could be prosecuted. Whether they would be in this case rather depends on the political sympathies of whoever makes the decision to prosecute.
I understand that hydroxychloroquine TAMES the patients runaway Immune System, such that it does not destroy itself…I would insist that I got the drug… After going through a “Septic Infection” ( Overloaded Immune system attack) I know that you don’t have a lot of time before your Organs start shutting down… I had 4 hours before I would have flat lined… 3 years ago in Arizona
The killing of older Patients in Nursing Homes was Murder….I believe they used those numbers to sell the farce.. The Experts that HAVE no absolute answers are not experts…..and they benefit by funding other drug Development… Billions in the Air
JMHO
My Tin Foil Hat Theory:
Hydroxy Chloriquine is a cheap generic drug. Certain interests with financial interests in new, patented drugs wanted any HCQ treatment to fail, and were willing to pay others to make up reasons that HCQ is dangerous or ineffective. Other groups of people were willing to widely publicize these new “discoveries” and “new facts” because of their personal antipathy to certain proponents of HCQ.
But that is just crazy talk. Crazy Talk!
And I must be going insane, because in 2015, I never would have believed such a theory. It is as crazy as if you told me the US Government was spying on a political candidate. Or that the paragons of virtue in the FBI would have a personal vendetta against a retired 3 star general.
Completely Off Topic: Have you heard anything about Ivermectin lately?
How dare you accuse the Internationally acclaimed WHO of corruption!
How. Dare. You.
Fauci touted HCQ on 2005 for SARS as an effective treatment.
Now, he’s beholden to Gilead and is singing a different tune.
Crazy? No, the fraud was spotted, and he hasn’t explained his duplicitous stance.
It’s called corruption, and especially nowadays, an accepted common practice by “leadership” everywhere
What DnaBC says is correct. Fauci has changed his tune. For financial reasons? Of course, the political interests are all on display with the democratic states.
This “study” was a classic piece of Policy Based Evidence Manufacturing.A shabby and pathetic smear of a known treatment,for policy purposes.
The WHO needs more than defunding their greed is all they have.
They serve no one.
The methodology of this so called study ,would make the Climate Science Scum proud.
Until PJT mentioned HCQ, the drug was entirely uncontroversial, a feature of the WHO one hundred essential drugs list, of which literally billions of doses had been safely delivered, cheaply, safely, effectively. In a long career in medicine, some of it in areas to which malaria is endemic, this is the single most suspicious bit of data misinformation I’ve seen.
Doesn’t matter that it’s unravelled. It had it’s intended effect; HCQ treatments were suspended or never started. Far more people died than should have. It was never about protecting people, it was all about destroying the economy to ruin Trump’s reelection chances and blaming him for the deaths. Trump gave everyone key advice to surviving CoronaVirus: Hydroxychloroquine. The MSM actively sabotaged that advice for vindictive purposes.
Quite so.
It’s because Trump touted it. Nothing to do with actual efficacy. This is due to the MSM’s and the Left’s unhealthy hatred for all things Trump.
Just an after thought. President Trump should issue a proclamation that breathing air is good for you. Just think of all those who will die of self asphyxiation just for spite.
HCQ has been used for many decades but I wonder if they ever did a major study on it. It worked to prevent malaria so they left it at that. It was never used on people on death’s door that could die if there are side affects to HCQ. It was always used for malaria or anti-inflammatory. If there was any side affects on someone taking it for arthritis. They stop and try another drugs. The person will not die from arthritis like they would from COVID when they are randomly trying another drug.
T J over use will damage kidneys and liver. Controlled use not so much. It worked on the virus all over the world, not just anecdotal stuff, doctors describing the success they were having. The left continues to be very dangerous to free people. Ford and Twadels need to get their heads out and grow a pair. This virus is not going to kill us all.
I rarely trust scientific papers coming out of India. Sorry to say, plagarism and fraud there are as bad as China.
These days you have good reason to distrust scientific papers period.
Anyone can basically self-publish their own “scientific paper” on any of several thousand online “scientific journals” (for a fee, of course – finding unethical scientists to “peer review” your self-published “scientific paper” costs money don’t ya know.) For the low, low price of $29.95 you too can become a “published scientist.”
Don’t know if Lancet ever deserved its reputation. I remember a paper they published from the Bush / Iraq era. Not sure why Lancet would have even published it because it was not medical related. Which means it was published because Lancet has become a far left hack company. Anyway, the paper they published claimed the US was responsible at the time for 500,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. At the time of publishing simple math made that over 1000 per day, when anyone watching CNN was informed immediately if a dozen people got killed by a car bomb.
It lost its reputation when it became political, like a popular science magazine New Scientist. This was during the ’80s when the socialists took over academia and the enviromental movement.
Manslaughter charges should be laid against the physicians who prescribed this drug to patients who were well beyond the need for a prophylactic.
They only prescribed it to kill those patients in the hopes of making Trump look bad, they are nasty people.
Lancet.
I remember them in the second Iraq war. Claiming our US soldiers had killed (thousands) of people in Iraq. (non-combat)
Now as back then. They faked it/lied.
It would be extremely useful to pry information out of Surgisphere. If they’re going to fake it, why choose the results that they did? It might simply come down to fact that they thought the results sounded legit.
Some people are willing to pay large amounts of cash for “correct” results. Talk to some pollsters. They’ll privately tell you it’s how they put food on their tables.
Even more to the point would be to find out how and where Surgisphere actually obtained its data. It’s a small, new firm; how did it get contracts to handle electronic data for all those hospitals so quickly? No one is actually saying so, but the suggestion is certainly there that the firm created the data for the study rather than actually gathering it from various hospitals.
I find it incomprehensible that hatred of Donald Trump leads people to prevent a viable treatment for a disease being used. The deperation of the Dementocrats, and the establishment in general, appears to know no bounds.
We now have the widely anticipatedsummer riots, anything to get Trump and the Presidency.
Robert of Ottawa said: “I find it incomprehensible that hatred of Donald Trump leads people to prevent a viable treatment for a disease being used.”
That’s because you are a decent human being, Robert. Respect for the Truth and concern for the well-being of strangers are two of those Western values we hear being denigrated by Leftists and Ivory Tower pinheads all the time.
This is the enemy we face: evil men who will LIE about a life saving medicine and let people die by the tens of thousands, people who could be saved, and they’ll do it just to win an election.
You saw the Communists doing it in China, and now we see the domestic enemy doing it here. That’s what we face.
Seems pretty simple to me. If the Zelenko protocol was used on all patients infected and zinc and hydroxy as a phrophylactic on all others who were at risk there would be no pandemic.
The left needed a plandemic to do all we are seeing they do. Hcq would have eliminated the excuse for lockdowns.
This might help explain the methodology
“Hump Day Hilarity – How Science vs. Climate Science works”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/03/hump-day-hilarity-how-science-vs-climate-science-works/
And close to home
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/03/alarmist-queen-hayhoe-takedown-by-friends-of-science/
“Last year Hayhoe delivered a doomsday forecast to the Province of Alberta, Canada, and here our story begins. Alberta is home to the Friends of Science Society (FOSS), one of Canada’s top skeptical organizations. FOSS has now produced a 77 page takedown report, shredding Hayhoe’s so-called study in detail. It is an elegant critical work, with implications far beyond Canada.”
I’ve known the Lancet study was BS since reading the abstract. The study design is 100% bogus. Now we find the data was bogus too, that’s just beautiful.
I want to remind everyone that the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and also CMAJ the Canadian Medical Association Journal, have been publishing anti-gun propaganda thinly disguised as “public health” studies since the 1980s. They were bought and paid for shills for Lefty causes before Regan was president. If they’re lying about guns, and they certainly are, then you must assume they are lying whenever it is convenient for them.
I have an unfair advantage, I learned how to read medical studies in school. If you lack the special training needed to read and understand the medical bafflegab and lying charts, your best bet is to check and see who paid for the study being discussed. If it was a Lefty foundation your safest assumption is that it is propaganda, and probably a complete lie.