Dr. Trump’s Traveling Medicine Show

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Abraham Lincoln

Dr. Trump’s Traveling Medicine Show

I have to say in my “more years alive than I am readily willing to admit,” I’ve never seen a non-doctor, senior government official, make blanket recommendations to the general public of prescription medications (prescribed for entirely different diseases, I might add) or toxic chemicals to be injected or ingested to cure a disease or reduce critical symptoms. But when those recommendations come with the weight of the President of the United States, there are a lot of people who take those suggestions as the gospel. Even serious medical institutions, who believe that some underlying special inside research must have triggered the suggestion.

The President has uttered recommendations of medical treatments for COVID-19 using named chemicals and/or drugs more than once. None of these recommendations has been clinically proven to be effective, even as the President has doubled down on his suggestions. Folks trying these recommendations have faced serious side effects, some risking death, with no evidence of cure or subsidence. Official government agencies have had to issue specific contradictions to presidential prescriptions, which seems to have evoked presidential rage at being contradicted. Federal officials know if they tell the medical truth, they may be fired.

“Until Tuesday [4/22], Dr. Rick Bright served as a top federal expert [at the Department of Health and Human Services] on vaccines, heavily involved in the response to COVID-19. Now, Bright says he was forced out of his job because he refused to tout unproven treatments for the disease… [Bright] said he wanted treatments that were going be vetted thoroughly, and not just treatments that President Trump liked, including that anti-malaria drug that has not been fully tested, but that the president has encouraged Americans to take.” PBS.org, April 22^nd.

Fans of NIH’s Dr Anthony Fauci, who has walked a fine line between Trump’s litany of medical inaccuracies and telling Americans necessary truths, believe that he has survived being fired (barely) for two reasons: his profile and credibility have generated such popular support that his discharge would actually hurt Trump and as a retired citizen, he would be able to speak his mind freely, contradicting the President even more directly.

For fans of old Westerns, we are familiar with the hucksters and quacks traveling the highways and byways of old in rickety wagons or as part of circus trains selling their cure-all elixirs. “Snake oil salesmen.” The bottles that did generate “relief” often turned out to be various concentrations of highly addictive morphine. Except for a very briefly implemented Vaccine Act (1813), there were no food purity or drug laws or regulations back during most of the 1800s. It literally was the “wild, wild West.” But the increasingly toxic reactions in the general public created a public groundswell for the government to do something. In 1883, the Department of Agriculture embraced creating what became known first as the Division and later the Bureau of Chemistry. “Under Harvey Washington Wiley, appointed chief chemist in 1883, the Division began conducting research into the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs on the American market…

“In June 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the Pure Food and Drug Act, also known as the ‘Wiley Act’ after its chief advocate. The Act prohibited, under penalty of seizure of goods, the interstate transport of food that had been ‘adulterated.’ The act applied similar penalties to the interstate marketing of ‘adulterated’ drugs, in which the ‘standard of strength, quality, or purity’ of the active ingredient was not either stated clearly on the label or listed in the United States Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary.

“The responsibility for examining food and drugs for such ‘adulteration’ or ‘misbranding’ was given to Wiley's USDA Bureau of Chemistry. Wiley used these new regulatory powers to pursue an aggressive campaign against the manufacturers of foods with chemical additives, but the Chemistry Bureau's authority was soon checked by judicial decisions, which narrowly defined the bureau's powers and set high standards for proof of fraudulent intent. In 1927, the Bureau of Chemistry's regulatory powers were reorganized under a new USDA body, the Food, Drug, and Insecticide organization. This name was shortened to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) three years later.” Wikipedia.

As time and medical science progressed, with Congressional support, the FDA introduced stringent testing requirements for new prescription drugs plus guidelines on permissible over-the-counter drugs. And no, not even the President of the United States can waive FDA requirements. Americans count on a medically sound approval process for pharmaceuticals, safety determined objectively and not subject to be overruled by politicians. Enter science-skeptic Donald Trump, seizing his daily CV-19 press briefings to spread his beliefs as if there were facts.

The President has touted antimalarial drugs (hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, also used to treat other diseases such as lupus) based on his own non-scientific anecdotal evidence. He heard that these chemicals “could limit replication of the coronavirus in laboratory dishes, and President Trump said he felt good about their effectiveness. ‘That’s all it is, just a feeling,’ Trump said in mid-March.” Los Angeles Times, April 14^th. He repeated that “feeling” several times. “What do you have to lose? Take it,” Trump said during a press briefing on April 5th. The facts underlying the inappropriate use of these drug are rather significant.

“[D]angerous side effects of the drugs can include an erratic heartbeat that can lead to sudden death among people who have a congenital cardiac condition or take common antidepressants, antipsychotics or certain antibiotics that lengthen the time it takes for the heart to recharge between beats… [For example, Rita] Wilson, who came down with COVID-19 while in Australia with husband Tom Hanks, told ‘CBS This Morning’ that the medication left her ‘completely nauseous’ and suffering from vertigo. She was given the drug about Day 9 of her illness, she said.” LA Times. An Arizona man died in late March after having ingested chloroquine phosphate — believing it would protect him from becoming infected with the coronavirus. The man's wife told NBC News that she had watched televised briefings during which Trump talked about the potential benefits of chloroquine.” NBC News, April 24^th.

“The Food and Drug Administration on Friday [4/24] warned against unsupervised use of the malaria drug chloroquine and its derivative hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus after reports of ‘serious’ poisoning and deaths… The agency issued a drug safety warning, saying it is aware of reports of ‘serious heart rhythm problems’ in coronavirus patients who took the drugs.

“‘Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms,’ as well as a ‘dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,’ the FDA said in the notice. ‘We will continue to investigate risks associated with the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 and communicate publicly when we have more information.’” Yahoo News, April 24^th. The FDA also warned physicians who still want to administer chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to CV-19 patients to do so only for those in a hospital. While some nations have tested the prescription without evidence that they work, the FDA has not issued a definitive statement on their effectiveness yet. But touting these anti-malarials was not the end of Trump’s medical suggestions.

On April 23^rd, at one of his press briefings, the President suggested that an internal use of disinfectants – used to clean surfaces effectively against COVID-19 – would seem a natural way to kill the virus inside the human body. Sensing the potential for massive lawsuits against the manufacturers whose products could then be misused based on this presidential suggestion, one such vendor spoke up immediately: “The manufacturer for Lysol, a disinfectant spray and cleaning product, issued a statement warning against any internal use after President Donald Trump suggested that people could get an ‘injection’ of ‘the disinfectant that knocks (coronavirus) out in a minute.’

“‘As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),’ said a spokesperson for Reckitt Benckiser, the United Kingdom-based owner of Lysol, in a statement to NBC News.

“‘As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information,’ the statement continued, adding that the company believes it has a ‘responsibility in providing consumers with access to accurate, up-to-date information as advised by leading public health experts.’” NBC News.

The medical community was equally appalled. “‘This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it’s dangerous,’ said [Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist, global health policy expert]. ‘It’s a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves.’” NBC News.

Trump himself quickly realized the idiocy of his suggestion, but was it too late? Had people already ingested disinfectant? If any did, we haven’t found their bodies yet. Fox News was so taken aback, they didn’t even cover this story. Trump’s responses on the next day were all over the map. It was a media test. A joke. “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.” He meant only for the disinfectant to be used on hands. If you watched the initial statement, we all know he meant it. Or was that stuff about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine a joke too?

When a President speaks, his words directly and immediately impact his constituents and may drive true believers to follow his suggestions as if they were the ultimate truth. When a President speaks and presents truly dangerous and toxic suggestions that easily could kill those who follow his suggestions, his words still directly and immediately impact his constituents and may drive true believers to follow his suggestions as if they were the ultimate truth.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who continue to believe that the President’s leadership on the CV-19 pandemic is effective, are they actually going to ingest some disinfectant in support of that belief?