Hydroxychloroquine Controversies: Clinical Trials, Epistemology, and the Democratization of Science.
Med Anthropol Q
; 34(4): 525-541, 2020 12.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1066735
ABSTRACT
The claim that anti-malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, can cure COVID-19 became a focus of fierce political battles that pitted promoters of these pharmaceuticals, Presidents Bolsonaro and Trump among them, against "medical elites." At the center of these battles are different meanings of effectiveness in medicine, the complex role of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in proving such effectiveness, the task of medical experts and the state in regulating pharmaceuticals, patients' activism, and the collective production of medical knowledge. This article follows the trajectory of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as anti-COVID-19 drugs, focusing on the reception of views of their main scientific promoter, the French infectious disease specialist, Didier Raoult. The surprising career of these drugs, our text proposes, is fundamentally a political event, not in the narrow sense of engaging specific political fractions, but in the much broader sense of the politics of public participation in science.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Antiviral Agents
/
Chloroquine
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19 Drug Treatment
/
Hydroxychloroquine
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Med Anthropol Q
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Maq.12622
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