Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodLife
Quote from DR Faoult:
Our study concerns 80 patients, without a control group because we offer our protocol to all patients with no contraindication. This is what the Hippocratic Oath that we have taken dictates to us.
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I fear we have fallen into a world where twitter posts have taken on the authority of a well thought presentation. The reason Dr. Raoult took to twitter to defend himself is that he certainly has been hearing the same criticism of the lack of a control group from his peers. Every single proper study that is done is started with the hope that the treatment group will do better than the placebo group. And yet, hoping the treatment will help, a proper medical researcher includes a placebo group. Drug companies spend millions after basic research suggests an anti-cancer compound will help. And once it is ready for human testing, they don't give it to every cancer patient hoping it will save their lives. They do a placebo controlled study. And sadly even after the basic science and the early studies suggested they had a life saving medication, they often find that it doesn't work in the real world. The placebo controlled study provides the proof.
Dr Raoult surely knows this. And he knows that the overwhelming number of patients in his study were only mildly ill, not facing death. He had time to do it the way that his work would not be questioned.
I don't understand why you are so vigorously defending him. Is he a relative of yours? And the Hippocratic Oath says nothing about how to do a controlled study nor that a physician should give untested medications to everyone in the hope there will be a benefit. It does say you shall not operate on kidney stones.
Actually the dictum "First do no harm" suggests that before doing anything the doctor must weigh the possibility that the treatment is not more dangerous than allowing the natural course of the disease to occur. That has not yet been established in regards to these medications because he didn't do a proper study.