A proponent of utilizing the drug hydroxychloroquine to deal with Covid-19 regardless of scant proof of its efficacy has been named to a high pandemic prevention function on the Division of Well being and Human Providers, the Washington Put up stories.
Steven J Hatfill is a virologist who served in Donald Trump’s first administration, throughout which he promoted hydroxychloroquine to deal with the virus within the early months of the pandemic, when vaccines and coverings weren’t but accessible. He not too long ago began as a particular adviser within the workplace of the director of the administration for strategic preparedness and response, which prepares the nation to reply to pandemics, in addition to chemical and organic assaults.
The Trump administration embraced utilizing the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, together with different medicine similar to ivermectin and chloroquine, as therapies in opposition to Covid-19, regardless of considerations over each their efficacy and doubtlessly severe side-effects. In June 2020, simply months after the pandemic began, the Meals and Drug Administration warned in opposition to utilizing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to deal with Covid-19 over “stories of great coronary heart rhythm issues and different questions of safety”, even after Trump accredited ordering hundreds of thousands of doses of the drug for US sufferers from Brazil.
Final yr, a research launched on the onset of the pandemic that promoted hydroxychloroquine to deal with Covid-19 was withdrawn by the writer of the medical journal.
In an interview with the Put up, Hatfill defended his assist of hydroxychloroquine, which stays in use to deal with ailments together with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. “There isn’t any ambiguity there. It’s a protected drug,” Hatfill stated, noting that “they gave the drug to the president” in 2020.
In his new job, Hatfill stated he would “assist get us prepared for the subsequent pandemic” and work along with his company’s scientists on reaching “full consciousness of the scientific literature, not only for influenza, fowl flu or Covid however different international ailments that would characterize a menace to the US”.
“It’s unlucky that the Division of Well being and Human Providers has employed a senior adviser whose views about some Covid-19 medicine are usually not grounded within the proof,” stated Robert Steinbrook, the director of the well being analysis group for progressive non-profit Public Citizen.
“It has been established many occasions that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are usually not efficient medicine for Covid-19. Officers who assist the US put together for pandemics and organic and chemical assaults ought to consider new medicines and vaccines primarily based on science, not their private views.”
Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Middle for Well being Safety on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Faculty of Public Well being and a former appointee beneath Joe Biden, advised the Washington Put up: “My hope is that Dr Hatfill will pursue the issues which are of best worth in getting ready for an additional pandemic, similar to new medicines and vaccines.”
He famous that hydroxychloroquine “doesn’t remedy Covid and has dangers”.
In 2021, a Democratic-led Home subcommittee investigating the pandemic response made public emails from Hatfill indicating that he was among the many White Home officers who appeared for proof that backed up Trump’s false claims of vote rigging following his election defeat the yr prior.
At the same time as Covid-19 infections spiked within the ultimate weeks of 2020, Hatfill wrote that his focus had “shifted over to the election fraud investigation”.
Earlier than Hatfill started working for the Trump administration, he was a biodefense researcher for the military in 2001 and was named a “particular person of curiosity” within the investigation into anthrax-filled envelopes despatched by mail throughout the nation, which killed 5 individuals and made 17 others sick.
The allegations, which Hatfill denied, value him his job, and in 2008, the justice division formally cleared him, the identical yr that he acquired $4.6m from the federal government to settle a lawsuit alleging the federal government violated his privateness rights.
