RE: I checked on PubMed, the database of medical research articles. He has no publications. Any physician who thinks he has success in treating a condition can publish a case study, which is not a controlled study result, but an invitation for others to do further research.
There are two kinds of doctors, those like Fauci who have the time and money to do clinical trials, the double blind type that requires volunteers and takes months to complete, then requires you to have them peer reviewed in a medical journal, which will of course take months to be published.
Then those who are in the so-called BATTLEFIELD, who have to use what they have at their disposal to treat patients AS SOON AS THEY CAN since it is a matter of life and death.
Dr. Zelenko belongs to the latter kind. And he does not even claim credit or originality for what he is doing. He cites past PUBLISHED studies made by doctors in China, South Korea and most recently in Marseille, France by Dr. Didier Raoult and his team. He also cites past studies he read in medical journals.
To make a long story short — WE ARE NOT LIVING IN NORMAL TIMES. If a doctor sees evidence in the past that it has worked, and he sees good reason to try it and his patients trust him enough to try it, I see no reason why it can’t be tried. What is the alternative?
As for Zelenko’s having no published studies, WHY DOES HE HAVE TO PUBLISH ANYTHING? AS A DOCTOR, HE HAS ENOUGH PATIENTS TO KEEP HIS DAY BUSY. What he can do is REFER to published studies in the past.
I enumerate some for you here:
1) Hydroxychloroquine application is associated with a decreased mortality in critically ill patients with COVID-19 | medRxiv
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20073379v1
2) Early treatment of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: A retrospective analysis of 1061 cases in Marseille, France
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7199729/
3) Hydroxychloroquine reduces viral load in COVID-19 patients
As for inviting others to do further research, Dr. Zelenko is doing JUST THAT.
The prestigious St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, NY is launching a study using essentially Zelenko’s cocktail. On newly symptomatic patients with underlying conditions, Hydroxychloroquine and zinc will be given to all of them.
This study is IN COOPERATION and IN CONSULTATION with Dr. Zelenko himself.
I realize that the image of the maverick scientist or physician working valiantly to find a cure at the last minute is romantic and very popular in science fiction shows. But reality does not work that way. In the real world, finding cures takes a lot of time and drudgery. In the real world, scientists work years to find treatments for life-threatening diseases. They know that people are dying every day that a treatment is not found, but they cannot speed up the process. It is physically impossible.
Some of the research programs I used to oversee were for investigational drugs that had been in development since the 1990s. Yes, if we could show that those drugs are effective and that the benefits outweigh the risks, we could save a lot of lives. But until we can show that, we are not pushing them into the patient care setting. And people continue to die because we can't overcome the laws of physics.
Dr. Zelenko belongs to the latter kind. And he does not even claim credit or originality for what he is doing. He cites past PUBLISHED studies made by doctors in China, South Korea and most recently in Marseille, France by Dr. Didier Raoult and his team. He also cites past studies he read in medical journals.
Charlatans love to cite studies, but that does not make them credible. They are counting on their intended audience not having the know-how to go look up those studies for themselves to see what they actually say. There are legitimate studies of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine at all different stages of the clinical trial process.
As for Zelenko’s having no published studies, WHY DOES HE HAVE TO PUBLISH ANYTHING? AS A DOCTOR, HE HAS ENOUGH PATIENTS TO KEEP HIS DAY BUSY. What he can do is REFER to published studies in the past.
Yes, if he is really showing something groundbreaking, he would publish. He has had plenty of time to do so. Publishing is one way that doctors establish their credentials.