Three authors have retracted an influential study on the risks of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the COVID-19 virus.
The article, published in the journal Lancet, had found that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, increased mortality and heart problems in patients suffering from the coronavirus. It had been cited in criticizing President Trump’s promotion of the drug as a remedy for the disease.
But questions arose about how one of the authors, Dr. Sapan Desai, and the company he owns, Surgisphere, were able to compile a massive dataset with very few employees and in a short amount of time.
The authors said they are retracting the article, as they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources” because Surgisphere would not provide the dataset for an independent review. The three authors retracting the story are Dr. Mandeep Mehra, medical director of the Brigham Heart and Vascular Center, Dr. Amit Patel, director of clinical regenerative medicine and tissue engineering at the University of Utah, and Dr. Frank Ruschitzka, chairman of the cardiology department at University Hospital Zurich.
Surgisphere was founded in 2008 by vascular surgeon Sapan Desai, who is also the co-author of the Lancet study. Desai claims Surgisphere has 11 employees. The company’s marketing executive appears to be a pornographic model and event hostess, while its science editor appears to be a science fiction author.
Peter Ellis, the chief data scientist of Nous Group, an international management consultancy that does data integration projects for government departments, told the Guardian that Surgisphere “was almost certainly a scam … There’s no evidence online of [Surgisphere] having any analytical software earlier than a year ago. It takes months to get people to even look into joining these databases, it involves network review boards, security people, and management. It just doesn’t happen with a sign-up form and a conversation.”
Hydroxychloroquine became a household name when Trump touted it as a possible treatment for COVID-19. He recently said that he’d completed a preventative hydroxychloroquine regime. The Lancet study prompted the World Health Organization to cease its trials of the drug and France to ban its use. Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the lead members of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, declared hydroxychloroquine to be ineffective in treating COVID-19.
