Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lambasted President Trump on Friday for promoting an anti-malaria drug as a treatment for COVID-19 that research has shown causes heart problems and death in patients.
“A study of 96,000 coronavirus patients found that those who received a drug Trump has promoted as a treatment had a ‘significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not,'” Clinton said in a tweet to her 27.8 million followers.
“The president needs to stop playing a doctor on TV.”
Clinton’s tweet included reporting from The Washington Post on a new analysis that found that hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine had a much higher risk of death than those who were not treated with the drug.
The global study — analyzing 96,000 patients from hospitals across six continents — was published Friday in the medical journal The Lancet. It found that a number of patients who were given the drug developed heart problems such as arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeats, and were much more at risk to go into cardiac arrest.
The study was not a randomized controlled clinical trial, but medical experts said its findings were still important.
“I think it’s as convincing as this kind of study can be,” said Jesse Goodman, a former Food and Drug Administration chief scientist who is currently a professor of medicine at Georgetown University.
“In the light of these results, I think it’s fair to say it’s not looking good for a benefit of these drugs. And there’s accumulating evidence that they may actually be harmful, and a lot of people may end up being harmed by their widespread use,” Goodman said.
Clinton’s comments come after the president said this week that he was taking hydroxychloroquine with zinc as a preventative measure to keep him from getting the virus.
“I think it gives you an additional level of safety,” Trump said Monday during a meeting with restaurant executives.
Trump has repeatedly touted the use of the drug in the past, calling it a “game changer” and dismissing studies that showed the drug has demonstrated little benefit to patients with the coronavirus.