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Chloroquine etc.
27th of March 2020
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How one's reputation can be shattered for just one action?
That's what could happen to Didier Raoult. He is presented as one
of the top 10 virologists of the world. He is supposed to be behind
numerous discoveries (although people easily forget that these
discoveries are not necessarily Raoult's, but may belong to one of
his doctoral students, post-docs etc.).
A few days ago, he authored a publication [1] that he presented as
a conclusive study of chloroquine in COVID-19, whereas it should
have been presented only as a case report. Then the methodology was
so wrong, that nothing could be retained from it. He even went as
far as retiring from his paper all the cases that worsened during
their treatment and needed to be transferred to the ICU. If you
remove from a drug trial all the patients who did not respond and
you keep all those who showed an improvement of their disease, you
can easily give the impression that an ineffective drug is working
efficiently.
He says that the chinese trials showed an efficacy of chloroquine.
Well the only publication I was able to find at this date [2] is a
little difficult to read (it's written in mandarin), but the
summary is in english and the authors show that there is no
difference between chloroquine treated patients vs the control
group.
He is typical of a French disease: the expert's STAR system. Once
you get this status of STAR in your field, everyone will listen to
you, and no one will dare contradict you. This is something I've
never seen in any other country.
The irony is that maybe chloroquine will be the treatment of
choice for COVID-19, but if it happens, it will be due to the
international collaborative studies of a number of anonymous
physicians. And then, the STAR will come telling: "I knew it!".
[1]:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949
[2]:
http://www.zjujournals.com/med/EN/10.3785/j.issn.1008-9292.2020.03.03
