Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch continues to express dismay over the way hydroxychloroquine has been maligned for political reasons by a pliant media establishment. In his testimony before the U.S. Senate, Risch explains his concerns:
"In May of this year 2020 I observed that results of studies of a drug suggested to treat Covid, hydroxychloroquine, were being misrepresented by what I thought at the time was sloppy reporting. We have heard from Dr. McCullough how Covid disease progresses in phases, from viral replication, to florid pneumonia to multi-organ attack. Viral replication is an outpatient condition, but the pneumonia that fills the lungs with immune-system debris is hospitalizable and potentially life-threatening. We have also heard how each phase, each pathologic aspect of the disease, has to have its own specific treatments that apply to its own biologic mechanisms. Thus, I was frankly astounded that studies of hospital treatments were being represented as applying to outpatients, in violation of what I learned in medical school about how to treat patients."
Since giving his Senate testimony, Dr. Risch has gone on to explain the value of hydroxychloroquine in combatting COVID19, especially in early treatment.
Dr. Harvey Risch is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Risch received his MD degree from the University of California San Diego and PhD from the University of Chicago. After serving as a postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology at the University of Washington, Dr. Risch was a faculty member in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Toronto before coming to Yale. Dr. Risch's research interests are in the areas of cancer etiology, prevention and early diagnosis, and in epidemiologic methods. He is especially interested in the effects of reproductive factors, diet, genetic predisposition, histopathologic factors, occupational/environmental/medication exposures, infection and immune functioning in cancer etiology. His major research projects have included studies of ovarian cancer, pancreas cancer, lung cancer, bladder cancer, esophageal and stomach cancer, and of cancers related to usage of oral contraceptives and noncontraceptive estrogens. Dr. Risch is Associate Editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Editor of the International Journal of Cancer, and was for six years a Member of the Board of Editors, the American Journal of Epidemiology. Dr. Risch is an author of more than 350 original peer-reviewed research publications in the medical literature and those research papers have been cited by other scientific publications more than 44,000 times. Dr. Risch has an h-index of 94 and is a Member of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences and Engineering.