The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revoked its emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine, the unproven coronavirus treatment Donald Trump repeatedly boosted and even (said he) took himself. That emergency use authorization came under pressure from Trump, with whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright saying he was removed from his job for pushing back. Trump owns the promotion of this risky treatment at official levels.
Now, the FDA says it has concluded that “it is no longer reasonable to believe that oral formulations of HCQ and CQ may be effective in treating COVID-19, nor is it reasonable to believe that the known and potential benefits of these products outweigh their known and potential risks.”
The benefits of the drugs as COVID-19 treatments were extremely dubious at the outset, but Trump continued pushing them for weeks, even as study after study undercut the initial claims of their effectiveness, with significant safety concerns as well.
“Recent data from a large randomized controlled trial showed no evidence of benefit for mortality or other outcomes such as hospital length of stay or need for mechanical ventilation of HCQ treatment in hospitalized patients with COVID-19,” the FDA letter revoking the EUA notes.
The thing is, with a fast-moving pandemic like this in which doctors are constantly learning new things about the virus and trying to treat them on the fly, there are going to be a lot of things that doctors and scientists try and have hopes for, only to find after more careful study that they don’t work. The problem comes when the president stands up on national television day after day claiming that one particular thing is The Answer, even though it hasn’t been fully studied, and even after studies are starting to suggest it is a bad idea.