As the FDA and the media continue to insist that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is not a viable treatment for Covid-19, a coalition of doctors from across the United States gathered for a two-day summit to reach out to the American public with information about the drug’s safety and efficacy in treating the disease.
The group, calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors,” held a press conference on July 27 in front of the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. to combat what they call a “massive disinformation campaign” about HCQ.
Many in the group are practicing physicians with abundant hands-on experience treating Covid patients. They each shared their personal perspective of the success they have had using hydroxychloroquine. All are united in the belief that the FDA is wrongly restricting access to a drug they firmly believe can end the pandemic.
Congressman Ralph Norman, R-SC, opened the press conference and stood alongside the doctors as they addressed the public in a 45-minute live-stream event.
Sponsored by Tea Party Patriots, a conservative Republican group, and broadcast by Breitbart, the video was posted to the three biggest social media platforms and quickly went viral, attracting 18 million viewers on Facebook alone.
“We are doctors working on the front lines who have come together from across the country to give hope to the American people in this time of panic and confusion,” Dr. Simone Gold of La, the group’s founder, said in her address. “Our message is clear. There is a treatment and a cure for Covid-19. Hydroxychloroquine works.”
Gold went on to explain that Covid-19 is a virus that exists in essentially two phases. “There’s the early phase disease, and the late phase disease. In the early phase, there’s treatment that is safe and effective. We implore you to hear this because this message has been silenced. Many thousands of physicians have been silenced for telling the American people the good news, that we can manage the virus carefully and intelligently.”
The doctors discussed the growing economic and psychological stranglehold caused by the country’s prolonged lockdown, which they say is unnecessary and whose harmful effects may surpass the toll of the pandemic.
“Americans are riveted and captured by fear at the moment,” said Dr. Gold. “It is constricting us, and it’s draining the life blood of the American people, American society, and American economy.”
Speakers also raised awareness of the fact that the vast majority of children do not get infected by Covid-19, and that cases of young children becoming infected with Covid and passing it on to adults are extremely rare, and some say non-existent.
“I’ve been in private practice in Santa Monica [California], for 36 years. And the good news is that children as a rule are taking this virus very well,” said Dr. Robert Hamilton. “Few are getting infected. I also want to say based on the evidence, that young children are not the drivers of this pandemic. They are not passing it on to their parents and teachers.”
The speaker called for schools to reopen in the fall, to return the nation’s children to normalcy.
Media Retaliation
Since President Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine as a promising treatment, mainstream media, social media platforms and Democrat officials have been adamant about not allowing anyone to speak in favor of the drug.
The doctors said they anticipated a certain amount of pushback after their Washington summit but the intensity of the backlash astounded them.
In an interview with Fox News and other news stations, Dr. Gold described how she and her colleagues immediately became the target of a smear campaign. Mainstream media reports ridiculed them, casting doubt about their credentials and dismissing them as pro-Trump lackeys who will say and do anything to get him re-elected.
As footage of the broadcast went viral, testifying to a deep hunger in the public to learn the facts, retaliation was shift. Facebook, YouTube (owned by Google) and Twitter all blocked the video of the press conference for “spreading misinformation.”
“We’ve removed this video for sharing false information about cures and treatments for Covid-19,” Facebook told BBC. The statement was echoed almost word for word by YouTube, and then Twitter.
Taking aim at President Trump, Twitter punished his son, Donald Trump Jr., for “re-tweeting” the doctors’ press conference. The corporation ordered him to delete his tweet and blocked him from “tweeting” for the next 12 hours.
In another effort to silence the doctors, the group’s website which offers a rich compendium of scientific sources and documentation was arbitrarily shut down by the web host. The website has since moved to a new location, “Americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com,” where viewers can watch the eye-opening presentations.
Dr. Gold was singled out for extra defamation, with establishment-loyal media voices claiming her credentials were “unverified,” and that it was doubtful that she or her colleagues had any frontline medical experience.
Following the broadcast, Gold was immediately fired from her job as ER physician at Providence Hospital at South Buena Vista Street in Burbank, Ca. Her crime? “Embarrassing” the hospital by publicly contradicting the FDA in the video.
We’re Tired of Seeing Patients Die
In a second news broadcast on July 28 following the media backlash, Gold alluded to her dismissal, saying, “Some of us have come here at great personal and professional sacrifice… We’re finally coming forward because we’re tired of seeing patients die…because we aren’t allowed to give them a prescription medicine that’s been safe for 65 years.”
“Hydroxychloroquine is not a controversial drug,” she added. “The controversy has been made up—it’s a myth.”
Gold expressed the frustration of seeing Americans “enveloped in fear when there’s a cure—hydroxychloroquine and zinc. People are afraid to say there’s a cure, but what else do you call it when you give someone this medication early and it stops the disease process?”
She noted that the “tide of evidence for HCQ being safe and a solution for Americans” is becoming “a tsunami… and nobody can stop it.”
The White Paper on Hydroxychloroquine
The LA physician authored a 29-page document, entitled “The White Paper on Hydroxychloroquine,” that presents a trove of scientific and medical information about HCQ, its past role as an FDA-approved drug, and arguments for its use today in the treatment of Covid-19.
The paper looks at the corruption of leading scientific journals and the media in suppressing and censoring scientific information about HCQ that conflicts with the establishment view.
The document also exposes the excessive regulation by the FDA over the off-label use of HCQ, listing examples of punitive new measures imposed by states under FDA pressure to restrict use of the drug.
While the physician’s right to prescribe is granted by each state, the states are guided by the FDA and take their cue from the federal agency. The White Paper lists examples of “overreaching” by many states, in terms of usurping a physician’s right to treat his patient the best way he knows how. Two examples follow below:
New York:
“No pharmacist shall dispense hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine except when prescribed for an FDA-approved indication; or as part of a state approved clinical trial for a patient who has tested positive for Covid-19, with such test result documented as part of the prescription. No other experimental or prophylactic use shall be permitted, and any permitted prescription is limited to one fourteen-day prescription with no refills.”
New Hampshire:
Chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and albuterol inhalers shall be subject to the following controls, restrictions, and rationing: a) Outpatient prescriptions for patients not already established on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine shall be limited to a 30-day supply. b) No prescriptions of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine shall be issued or dispensed as prophylaxis treatment for Covid-19.
The Profit Motive
In exploring a possible motive for eliminating HCQ as a cure for Covid-19, The White Paper on HCQ notes that newly patented drugs can be extremely profitable if demand exists and no other supply can meet that demand.
The demand for Gilead’s Remdisivir, which is used late in the disease, obviously will plummet if the disease is stopped early by HCQ, the writer reasons.
“Remdisivir is sold for $3200-$5700 per treatment and the federal government has already purchased all or most of it,” the document attests. “By contrast, the generic HCQ is $10 per treatment”.
In the meanwhile, 70,000-100,000 American lives have been lost due to lack of access to HCQ,” notes Gold. How many more must be sacrificed on the altar of economic profit?
The information-packed document disappeared from the internet after the group’s website was taken down, but is now back up at Americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com.
‘Something Rotten in the State of Denmark’
Dr. Scott Barber, who heads a large medical practice in Atlanta, told listeners he’d been on the front lines since the beginning of the pandemic, treating hundreds of patients. Barber said his office has been able to stay open throughout the past five months by taking careful hygienic precautions and testing often for corona virus. If a staff member tests positive, he or she begin taking HCQ immediately to stop the disease’s progression.
“We haven’t had a single instance [of an outbreak],” he noted.
“There’s a concerted effort to keep the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine from the American public,” Barber said. He noted that the revelation of fraud in the HCQ studies published in Lancet and New England Medical Journal opened his eyes to something suspect unfolding at top levels of authority.
“I realized that something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” he said. “Every one of us needs to speak up. If the American public demands HCQ, the powers that be will have to release it.”
Dr. Mark Mcdonald, a child psychiatrist in LA, told listeners that the pervasive fear in society due to the pandemic has paralyzed many Americans and heightened symptoms of distress in all the children he treats.
“It’s no longer a medical crisis that’s crippling people but an emotional crisis,” he said, noting that cowering in one’s home and prolonging lockdowns are eroding people’s emotional stability.
“Americans need to end the pandemic by ending the fear,” he said, urging listeners to “take back your freedom as individuals,” to turn to a trusted physician for guidance instead of caving in to the irrational fears fueled by political leaders, the FDA, or special interest groups.
In addition to the press conference, the group from America’s Frontline Doctors devoted part of the two-day summit to a science podcast, in which experts explained and diagrammed the process by which HCQ plus zinc and azithromycin (azythromax) prevent corona virus particles from invading cells and replicating, enabling the body to fight the disease.
Game-changer?
Within a few days after the “White Coat Summit,” as the doctor’s two-day conference about hydroxychloroquine came to be called, officials and political leaders in Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee began to speak out about HCQ.
Rep. Dave LaRock, R-Va, began pressing state leaders to lift restrictions on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat symptoms of Covid-19. In a July 30 letter to state Health Commissioner Norman Oliver, LaRock cited a long list of published studies and medical reports that support the use of HCQ in treating the disease.
In his letter, LaRock suggests a conspiracy to prevent use of the drug.
“Events this week have amplified the silencing of doctors and evidence supporting effective, affordable treatment of COVID-19 that has been taking place since the earliest days of the pandemic,” he wrote.
“The devastating human, societal, and economic costs of the pandemic and government-mandated shutdowns are increasing daily. Many Americans question whether certain government policies are being made to further the best health outcomes or for political purposes.”
LaRock took issue with Oliver’s March 25 directive officials to limit the use of hydroxychloroquine in the face of a professed “shortage of the drug” used to treat malaria, and given “inconclusive information on its treatment benefits for Covid-19.”
“By allowing this directive to remain in effect, you are ignoring widely-available and highly-credible scientific evidence pertaining to the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. While there are many unknowns being sorted out as the world confronts a pandemic, by contrast, the benefits of this inexpensive drug are very well known,” LaRock wrote.
The congressman criticized the imposing of restrictions on the use of hydroxychloroquine as politically motivated, having nothing to do with medicine.
“As knowledge concerning the safety and efficacy of HCQ in treating Covid-19 and saving lives has become more widespread, I have encountered a number of Virginians who are outraged that HCQ is being restricted in Virginia, not for medical reasons but political ones.”
Every day this directive is left standing, the likelihood increases that more Virginians will die unnecessarily from Covid-19 for lack of proper early treatment,” LaRock wrote to the health commissioner.
As of July 31, 4,995 Covid-19 cases have been recorded in LeRock’s district, with 335 patients requiring hospitalization and 110 deaths.
Ohio Reverses Decision on HCQ
As the number of coronavirus hospitalizations in Ohio rose last week to 1,122, with hundreds of patients in intensive care, Ohio’s Department of Health reversed a decision to impose a ban on hydroxychloroquine for treatment of Covid patients.
While the ban was set to go into effect last Thursday, officials now say the prohibitions “will not take effect at this time,” reported Fox News.
“As a result of the feedback received by the medical and patient community and at the request of Governor Mike DeWine, the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy has withdrawn proposed rule 4729:5-5-21 of the Administrative Code,” the board said in a statement.
“Basically, it’s a patient safety issue,” Cameron McNamee, the board’s director of policy and communications, told The Columbus Dispatch before the board reversed its decision. “We’re looking at the best science to determine what’s best for the patients of Ohio.”
To date, the state health department has reported 3,156 deaths and 10,553 hospitalizations.
Tennessee Front-runner Slams HCQ Censorship By Social Media
A front-runner in Tennessee’s Republican U.S. Senate primary has attacked the censorship by social media websites of favorable information about hydroxychloroquine.
“This Covid crisis, this pandemic, it’s real, it’s serious,” said Manny Sethi, a surgeon and one of the top contenders in the Senate primary who has been endorsed by Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX. “Hydroxychloroquine is a legitimate treatment option for doctors to use with patients,” Sethi noted, adding that he has “seen it save a colleague of mine’s life,” referring to a fellow orthopedic surgeon who was almost placed on a ventilator.
The front-runner said he has “looked at the science” regarding the drug’s merits. “It’s not a silver bullet, but this is a drug that was prescribed five million times last year and is on the WHO list of 40 most essential medicines.”
“Doctors and patients have the right to try without having their care micromanaged by Anthony Fauci, or their views censored by people in Big Tech,” the front-runner said. He criticized Facebook and Twitter for censoring content promoting HCQ, saying the social media giants should “get out of our business.”
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From the CDC’s Information Sheet about Hydroxychloroquine
Q: Who can take hydroxychloroquine? A: Hydroxychloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers.
Q: Who should not take hydroxychloroquine? A: People with psoriasis should not take hydroxychloroquine.
Q: How should I take hydroxychloroquine? A: Both adults and children should take one dose of hydroxychloroquine per week starting at least one week before traveling… They should take one dose per week while there, and for four consecutive weeks after leaving. The weekly dosage for adults in 400 mg.
Q: What are the potential side effects of hydroxychloroquine? A: Hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well tolerated medicine. The most common adverse reactions reported are stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and headache. These side effects can often be lessened by taking hydroxychloroquine with food. Hydroxychloroquine may also cause itching in some people.
Q: How long is it safe to use hydroxychloroquine? A: CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. When hydroxychloroquine is used at higher doses for many years, a rare eye condition called retinopathy has occurred. People who take hydroxychloroquine for more than five years should get regular eye exams.
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The above information sheet about HCQ’s safety is still posted on the CDC website today, while the FDA [its sister agency] incongruously and bizarrely warns against use of the drug “following reports of serious heart rhythm problems and other health concerns.”
Which profile is more reliable—the “safe” one dating back to 1960? Or the “dangerous” one recently crafted by Food and Drug Administration?
“It’s the politicization of this medicine by the mainstream media that created this undue fear over a drug that has been used safely for over 60 years, and is regularly prescribed to pregnant women going to a malaria zone,” White House official Peter Navarro told reporters a number of weeks ago.
“The idea that this is a dangerous drug is just silly, but if you ask the American people based on the media’s coverage of it, fear and hysteria is where people are right now,” he said.
