Hearing of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, March 11, 2021
- Peter McCullough’s credentials: “I am the single most cited scientist in history on the field of heart and kidneys” [0:40]
- “in April 2020 it was already evident that outpatients needed to be helped with off-label medication” [1:45]
- “there were 50 thousand peer-reviewed papers on Covid-19, not a single one told doctors how to treat it” [2:50]
- “there was a near total block on Covid-19 treatment information” [4:00]
- “when I published the August 2020 paper (which appeared in print The American Journal of Medicine, 2020 134:17) it become a lightning rod” [2:50] (because it was the first one to provide a detailed treatment program for positively tested Covid outpatients)
- “there is so much focus on the vaccine; where is the focus on the people sick right now?” [5:10]
- “the best anti-inflammatory drug is Colchicine; in the largest, highest quality randomized trial, over 4000 patients, double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial, there is a 50% reduction in mortality: no word of it” [6:00]
- “most deadly part is thrombosis” [6:30] (implicit conclusion: by treating that, the reduction in mortality increases even further)
- “there is not a single media doctor who has ever treated a Covid-19 patient, not a single one” [10:30]
- “not a single person on the White House Taskforce has ever treated a patient” [10:40]
- “why do we not do something bold, why do we not constitute a panel consisting of doctors who have actually treated Covid-19” [10:50]
- “when in May 2020 it become clear that Covid-19 was going to be amenable to a vaccine, all efforts on treatment were instantly dropped: we can’t find the patients — the most disingenuous statement of all times” [11:01]
- “there was a silencing of all information on treatment (both on popular media and in scientific journals) there has been a complete scrubbing” [11:30]
- “[Texas School of Medicine] calculations show that we we’re at 80% herd immunity right now [Texas] with no vaccine effect, and more people are developing Covid today; they’re gonna become immune; people who survive Covid have complete and durable immunity; you can’t beat natural immunity; you can’t vaccinate on top of it and make it better; there’s no scientific, clinical, or safety rationale for ever vaccinating a Covid recovered patient” [12:00]
- clinical trial results: “the vaccine is going to have a 1% public health impact; that’s what the data says” [13:03]
- “we have over 500,000 deaths in the United States; the preventable fraction could have been as high as 85 % if our pandemic response would have been laser focused on the problem, the sick patient right in front of us” [14:58]
In December 2020, Peter McCullough (Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas TX) published a scientific paper called Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (Covid-19) in a Journal called Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine 21:517. This paper gathers the acquired knowledge of the sixty participating co-authors on how to treat positively tested Covid patients during the two weeks before hospitalization. In the paper, McCullough presents a table of Covid treatment in foreign countries. Among these countries is France, which displays the treatment advocated so strongly and consistently by Didier Raoult of the Marseille IHU. Even though McCullough quotes two papers by Raoult, he misquotes an opponent of Raoult’s treatment in his Table 1: in the referred paper by Alexandre Gérard and colleagues of the French Network of Pharmacovigilance Centers, the latter disqualifies Raoult’s treatment for Covid-19 (hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, lopinavir-ritonavir) for supposedly significant cardiac adverse drug reactions. The language of Gérard’s paper is hardly scientific, though. Take his sentence: “Our survey reports 120
reports (sic) of cardiac ADRs, which is way more (sic) frequent than what had been notified over more than three decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic in France”. I write out Gérard’s conclusive section in full:
“As of today, no specific drug treatment has proved superior to placebo in treating COVID-19. Yet, HCQ, CQ, AZI and LOPI are frequently used in COVID-19 with its array of inner risk factors. They bear a significant risk of cardiac ADRs [46]. Notwithstanding the need to foster investigation on putative treatments, the safety profile of drugs should not be overlooked. Indeed, spontaneous recovery without hospitalization occurs in 97.4% of COVID-19 patients [47]. In the uncertain times we are living, it remains paramount to base one’s prescription on a clear and positive benefit-risk balance of any chosen drug.”
The first statement is an obvious proof of incompetence, if not a plain lie — whichever the authors prefer. The second statement is true, but requires explanation. Why would these treatments be frequently used, if they have no more effect than a placebo? There is not a single attempt in the whole publication to address this question. So why mention the issue in the conclusion of this paper? Next comes the central conclusion of their own research: These frequently used medicines “bear a significant risk of cardiac ADRs [46]”. Why do the authors not mention the numerical value of a statistically relevant quantity, in order to objectify the subjective assessment of significance? And what is worse, why do they refer to publication [46]? Apparently, Gérard and colleagues of the French Network of Pharmacovigilance Centers have so little confidence in the relevance of their own communication, that the major conclusion needs to be founded on quoted research, to wit, by the Chinese researchers Wang, Yu, and Li, two of whom just happen to be on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party. No competing interests! Gérard and colleagues go on to state the obvious, to wit, that “the safety profile of drugs should not be overlooked”. Next comes a curious statement: “Indeed, spontaneous recovery without hospitalization occurs in 97.4% of COVID-19 patients” with, again, a reference to other work. What does this sentence purport to say? That only 2.6% of the cases are hospitalized, whence there is little reason to provide people with treatment at all? Would it not be an idea, dear Gérard and colleagues of the French Network of Pharmacovigilance Centers, to compare the probability of death in case of untreated Covid with that following HCQ-treated Covid (including cardiac ADRs), and to assess the problem of HCQ-induced cardiac ADR’s on the basis of those two numbers? Or is the real goal of the publication by Gérard and colleagues, to confuse the audience by claiming that HCQ alone does not suffice to heal Covid patients? This, even Raoult and McCullough would agree upon. What Gérard and colleagues refuse to consider —it opposes their hidden agenda—, is that HCQ, as a constitutive part of a multi-faceted treatment, contributes to the 85% recovery probability as compared to placebo treatment. Evidently, Gérard and colleagues of the French Network of Pharmacovigilance Centers constitute a clear and immediate danger to the health of the French people.
Luckily, Peter McCullough found his way in France. On June 26th 2021, he gave a webinar for Marseille’s IHU.