Claim: “If you look at the one (hydroxychloroquine) survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape. They were very old. Almost dead.”
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Chloroquine
text: the kidneys and toxicity should be monitored carefully in people with poor kidney functions. Chloroquine is very dangerous in overdose. It is rapidly absorbed from the gut. In 1961, published studies showed three children who took overdoses died within 2.5 hours of taking the drug. While the amount of the overdose was not cited, the therapeutic index for chloroquine is known to be small. Symptoms of overdose include headache, drowsiness, visual disturbances, nausea and vomiting, cardiovascular collapse, seizures, and sudden respiratory and cardiac arrest. A metabolite of chloroquine – hydroxychloroquine – has a long half-life (32–56 days) in blood and

title: Hydroxychloroquine
text: mouth and eyes, blood disorders, convulsions, vision difficulties, diminished reflexes, emotional changes, excessive coloring of the skin, hearing loss, hives, itching, liver problems or liver failure, loss of hair, muscle paralysis, weakness or atrophy, nightmares, psoriasis, reading difficulties, tinnitus, skin inflammation and scaling, skin rash, vertigo, weight loss, and occasionally urinary incontinence. Hydroxychloroquine can worsen existing cases of both psoriasis and porphyria. One of the most serious side effects is a toxicity in the eye (generally with chronic use). People taking 400 mg of hydroxychloroquine or less per day generally have a negligible risk of macular toxicity, whereas the risk

title: Hydroxychloroquine
text: symptoms of overdose can occur within a half an hour after ingestion. Overdose symptoms include convulsions, drowsiness, headache, heart problems or heart failure, difficulty breathing and vision problems. Hydroxychloroquine has similar pharmacokinetics to chloroquine, with rapid gastrointestinal absorption and elimination by the kidneys. Cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYP2D6, 2C8, 3A4 and 3A5) metabolize hydroxychloroquine to "N"-desethylhydroxychloroquine. Antimalarials are lipophilic weak bases and easily pass plasma membranes. The free base form accumulates in lysosomes (acidic cytoplasmic vesicles) and is then protonated, resulting in concentrations within lysosomes up to 1000 times higher than in culture media. This increases the pH of the lysosome

title: Chloroquine retinopathy
text: suggest that lean body weight is more accurate when calculating daily dosage. Most patients are routinely given 400 mg of hydroxychloroquine daily (or 250 mg chloroquine). This dose is considered acceptable. The earliest signs of toxicity include bilateral paracentral visual field changes (best detected with a red test object) and a subtle granular depigmentation of the paracentral RPE. With continued drug exposure, there is progressive development of a bilateral atrophic bull's-eye maculopathy and paracentral scotomata, which may in severe cases ultimately spread over the entire fundus, causing widespread retinal atrophy and visual loss. Both agents bind to melanin pigment in

title: Hydroxychloroquine
text: a 48-week period. Hydroxychloroquine is widely used in the treatment of post-Lyme arthritis. It may have both an anti-spirochaete activity and an anti-inflammatory activity, similar to the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The most common adverse effects are a mild nausea and occasional stomach cramps with mild diarrhea. The most serious adverse effects affect the eye. For short-term treatment of acute malaria, adverse effects can include abdominal cramps, diarrhea, heart problems, reduced appetite, headache, nausea and vomiting. For prolonged treatment of lupus or arthritis, adverse effects include the acute symptoms, plus altered eye pigmentation, acne, anaemia, bleaching of hair, blisters in

title: Hydroxychloroquine
text: taken if combined with medication altering liver function as well as aurothioglucose (Solganal), cimetidine (Tagamet) or digoxin (Lanoxin). HCQ can increase plasma concentrations of penicillamine which may contribute to the development of severe side effects. It enhances hypoglycemic effects of insulin and oral hypoglycemic agents. Dose altering is recommended to prevent profound hypoglycemia. Antacids may decrease the absorption of HCQ. Both neostigmine and pyridostigmine antagonize the action of hydroxychloroquine. While there may be a link between hydroxychloroquine and hemolytic anemia in those with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, this risk may be low in those of African descent. Due to rapid absorption,

title: Plasmodium vivax
text: the 1970s and tested in safety trials. It languished, however, until the push for malaria elimination sparked new interest in primaquine alternatives. Among patients who received a 600-mg dose, 91% were relapse-free after 6 months. Among patients who received primaquine, 24% relapsed within 6 months. "The data are absolutely spectacular," Wells says. Ideally, he says, researchers will be able to combine the safety data from the Army's earlier trials with the new study in a submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval. Like primaquine, tafenoquine causes hemolysis in people who are G6PD deficient. In 2013 researchers produced

title: Mefloquine
text: the drug's very long half-life, the Centers for Disease Control originally recommended a mefloquine dosage of 250 mg every two weeks; however, this caused an unacceptably high malaria rate in the Peace Corps volunteers who participated in the approval study, so the drug regimen was switched to once a week. The first randomized, controlled trial on a mixed population was performed in 2001. Prophylaxis with mefloquine was compared to prophylaxis with atovaquone-proguanil. Roughly 67% of participants in the mefloquine arm reported greater than or equal to one adverse event, vs 71% in the atovaquone-proguanil arm. In the mefloquine arm, 5%

title: Hydroxychloroquine
text: begins to go up when a person takes the medication over 5 years or has a cumulative dose of more than 1000 grams. The daily safe maximum dose for eye toxicity can be computed from one's height and weight using this calculator. Cumulative doses can also be calculated from this calculator. Macular toxicity is related to the total cumulative dose rather than the daily dose. Regular eye screening, even in the absence of visual symptoms, is recommended to begin when either of these risk factors occurs. Toxicity from hydroxychloroquine may be seen in two distinct areas of the eye: the

title: Diethylene glycol
text: failure and an 84% decline in admissions by unexplained renal failure. A propolis syrup manufactured by Huilen Laboratories in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contained between 24 and 66.5% DEG, and caused the death of 29 people. In the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, diseases are not recognized unless they become large or unusual. Between November 1995 and June 1996, almost 109 children admitted to the University Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, presented with acute renal failure. By June 1996, with no idea what was causing the epidemic, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Haiti representative contacted the World Health Organization (WHO,

title: Neil Hamilton Fairley
text: skin and eyeballs of the user go yellow in colour after repeated use but this was an acceptable drawback in wartime. Prolonged use could cause lichen planus and psychosis in rare cases, but atebrin still turned out to be much safer than quinine. Blackwater fever—which had a mortality rate of 25%—disappeared entirely. Fairley was acutely aware that much remained unknown about malaria. In particular, he was interested in the possibility that sulphaguanidine (or a related sulphonamide) might be a causal prophylactic against malaria, as they could be manufactured in Australia, unlike atebrin and plasmoquine. Fairley decided to establish a unit

title: Chloroquine retinopathy
text: Chloroquine retinopathy Chloroquine retinopathy, also known as Bull's eye maculopathy, is a form of toxic retinopathy (damage of the retina) caused by the drugs chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, which are sometimes used in the treatment of autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. This eye toxicity limits long-term use of the drugs. The risk of toxicity is low for individuals without complicating conditions during the first 5 years of treatment using less than 6.5 mg/kg/day of hydroxychloroquine or 3 mg/kg/day of chloroquine, and/or cumulative doses of less than 1000 gram and 460 gram (total dose), respectively. Some physicians

title: Diethylene glycol
text: losing their ability to urinate, a symptom not related to Guillain–Barré. The death rate of this mysterious illness was nearly 50%, when hospital management decided to isolate all the patients with the illness in a large room and doctors could compare notes and theories. Soon, patients from other parts of the country started to arrive at hospitals. Doctors had no idea what was happening: the mysterious illness was attacking elderly citizens with hypertension and diabetes history. About half were receiving Lisinopril (a blood pressure medicine), and many did not remember clearly if they had been taking other drugs. Suspecting something

title: Advanced glycation end-product
text: been found to inhibit AGE formation in the laboratory include Vitamin C, benfotiamine, pyridoxamine, alpha-lipoic acid, taurine, pimagedine, aspirin, carnosine, metformin, pioglitazone, and pentoxifylline. Studies in rats and mice have found that natural phenols such as resveratrol and curcumin can prevent the negative effects of the AGEs. Compounds that are thought to break some existing AGE crosslinks include Alagebrium (and related ALT-462, ALT-486, and ALT-946) and N-phenacyl thiazolium bromide. One in vitro study shows that rosmarinic acid out performs the AGE breaking potential of ALT-711. There is, however, no agent known that can break down the most common AGE, glucosepane,

title: Travel medicine
text: potential exposure, and for 4 weeks (chloroquine, doxycycline, or mefloquine) or 7 days (atovaquone/proguanil or primaquine) after leaving the risk area. See detailed CDC site. The traveler should have a medication kit to provide for necessary and useful medication. Based on circumstances, it should also include malaria prophylaxis, condoms, and medication to combat traveler's diarrhea. In addition, a basic first aid kit can be of use. Studies have shown there are four main medical problems that travellers develop—diarrhoea or gut problems, respiratory problems, wounds and pain. The medical kit should at least address these common things. Research has also shown

title: Chloroquine
text: milk of lactating women. However, because this drug can be safely prescribed to infants, the effects are not harmful. Studies with mice show that radioactively tagged chloroquine passed through the placenta rapidly and accumulated in the fetal eyes which remained present five months after the drug was cleared from the rest of the body. It is still advised to prevent women who are pregnant or planning on getting pregnant from traveling to malaria-risk regions. There is not enough evidence to determine whether chloroquine is safe to be given to people aged 65 and older. However, the drug is cleared by

title: Mass drug administration
text: medicated salts otherwise had no effect and it was concluded that "‘Pinotti’s method holds no prospect of malaria eradication…’". The explanation for this finding given by the author is that "‘the salt consumption by children was too small to reduce significantly the parasite reservoir of the younger age groups’". Between 1961 and 1965, the use of chloroquinized salt was made compulsory over an area of 109,000km2 in Guyana, covering a population of 48,500 individuals. The chloroquinized salt was prepared at a state salt plant so as to provide a 0.43% chloroquine concentration. The salt was sold in two pound plastic

title: Tetraethyllead
text: The low concentrations present in gasoline and exhaust were not perceived as immediately dangerous. A U.S. Surgeon General committee issued a report in 1926 that concluded there was no real evidence that the sale of TEL was hazardous to human health but urged further study. In the years that followed, research was heavily funded by the lead industry; in 1943, Randolph Byers found children with lead poisoning had behavior problems, but he was threatened with a lawsuit and the research ended. In the late 1920s, Robert A. Kehoe of the University of Cincinnati was the Ethyl Corporation's chief medical consultant

title: Memorial Medical Center and Hurricane Katrina
text: Foti announced the arrests the next day, at a widely televised news conference. He stated: "This is not euthanasia; this is plain and simple homicide". The arrest warrant affidavit says Pou and the nurses "intentionally (killed)" Emmett Everett Sr., 61; Hollis Alford, 66; Ireatha Watson, 89; and Rose Savoie, 90, by administering or causing to be administered lethal doses of morphine sulphate (morphine) and/or midazolam (Versed). According to Kristy Johnson, LifeCare's director of physical medicine, Pou told these patients that she was administering drugs to make them "feel better." The drugs injected are usually given for pain purposes, but not

title: Philip Nitschke
text: acknowledged that the information about the drug that was provided online could be accessed by people below the age of 50 who were not terminally ill, but argued that the risk was necessary in order to help the elderly and the seriously ill. It was alleged that Joe Waterman, 25, had committed suicide after accessing Nitschke's online euthanasia handbook, by misrepresenting his age as over 50. Waterman subsequently imported Nembutal and ended his life. In another case Lucas Taylor, 26, committed suicide in Germany by taking Nembutal after soliciting advice at an Exit International online forum (which, according to Nitschke,