US President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his use of hydroxychloroquine — a drug that is unproven to prevent coronavirus — and called research warning of its risks a “phony study.”
Trump particularly bashed a US study of patients he claimed were too sick and old.
“There was a false study done — they gave to sick people,” Trump said, adding it was given to people who “were ready to die” from old age or heart problems.
Trump claimed that the study was conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was in fact funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia but conducted in VA hospitals.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie did make the distinction in the cabinet meeting; however, he also promoted the drug and said it’s been used by the VA in large quantities for many health issues.
“I want to clear up something … that was not a VA study,” Wilkie told reporters. “Researchers took VA numbers and they did not clinically review them, they were not peer reviewed. They did not even look at what the President just mentioned the various comorbidities.”
What other studies say: The research Trump was alluding to is not the only study of its kind warning of the risks of hydroxychloroquine.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published a new study last week, the largest of its kind, that shows that hydroxychloroquine does not work against Covid-19 and could cause heart problems. That follows another study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing similar results.
What Trump says: Trump claimed that the drug “doesn’t seem to have any impact” on him, saying “it is has gotten tremendous reviews.”
“It’s gotten a bad reputation only because I’m promoting it,” Trump told reporters, adding, “If anyone else was promoting it, they’d say this is the greatest thing ever.”
