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Governments and WHO Changed COVID-19 Policy Based On Suspect Data From Tiny US Company (theguardian.com) 140

Posted by BeauHD from the red-flag dept.
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known U.S. healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world's most prestigious medical journals. Surgisphere, whose employees appear to include a sci-fi writer and adult content model, provided the database behind Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine hydroxychloroquine studies. Data it claims to have legitimately obtained from more than a thousand hospitals worldwide formed the basis of scientific articles that have led to changes in Covid-19 treatment policies in Latin American counties. It was also behind a decision by the WHO and research institutes around the world to halt trials of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine. Late on Tuesday, the Lancet released an "expression of concern" about its published study. The New England Journal of Medicine has also issued a similar notice. According to an independent audit by authors not affiliated with Surgisphere, the article includes a list of "concerns that have been raised about the reliability of the database." Some of the main points include: Surgisphere's employees have little or no data or scientific background; While Surgisphere claims to run one of the largest and fastest growing hospital databases in the world, it has almost no online presence; and The firm's chief executive, Sapan Desai, has been named in three medical malpractice suits.
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Governments and WHO Changed COVID-19 Policy Based On Suspect Data From Tiny US Company More

Governments and WHO Changed COVID-19 Policy Based On Suspect Data From Tiny US Company

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  • Similar to anonymous sources. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @06:48PM (#60142574)

    To become irrefutable science all you need is one shady company to come up with some fake data and then pay a whole bunch of money to launder that phony data through a bunch of "credible" sources and then spread it through the mainstream media like it's the absolute scientific truth.

    • Broad problem, unfortunately. [retractionwatch.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      In this case, the real question is, who paid them to do it and why. This requires a proper criminal investigation, it did not occur by accident, it happened on purpose. The corrupted data, how many people will it kill, due to delays in the studies, tens of thousands. How did the fake data make it through the system so readily, who paid for it and who greased it's passage through the system, who else was involved. This stinks of a political stunt by the Corporate DNC to target Donald Trump and fuck the conse

    • yep that is pretty much how the anti vaxx movement got so strong, one dodgy scientist with faked data that got published and the consequences are still being felt now even though the data and study have been acknowledged as wrong.

  • I'm surprised WHO didn't review the data (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @06:50PM (#60142578)

    Governments... Well they're the best elected knee-jerk reaction fools money can buy the world over. But WHO really should know better. It's their job after all.

    • Yeah, seriously! Not just the WHO, but also the Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. Hope the latter two take a good 10 years to get their reputation back.

      But the WHO... should have known better! Especially when they already made mistakes in this area and you got the US overly criticizing them. They should have known to be extra careful.

      As for the folks behind this company, I hope they get raked over the coals in as many legal jurisdictions as possible. They took a potential treatment from "it doe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You completely mistake the timeline involved here. This data _cannot_ be verified in a matter of weeks. To make matters worse, the raw data was not even available.

    • Yes, WHO should know better. But as I have been saying here, literally for months, now: they don't.

      Go read WHO publications yourself. They are a political organization with little evidence of actual scientific rigor in their published papers.

      Why the world trusts their opinion on anything is a complete mystery to me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rldp ( 6381096 )

        Why not google the belt and roads initiative.

        Surely intimidation and bribery aren't a mystery to you?

    • These are the kinds of mistakes people can make when they have a deep-seated belief that "Trump MUST be wrong". A scientific study that contradicts Trump's claims (and moreover can be used to dunk on Trump with science) then gets less scrutiny than it otherwise should have.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sooo, you think the WHO can review data that legitimately will have taken months to years of establishing contracts to get in a week or so? The WHO is still pretty good (despite what some people claim), but they do not have superpowers.

      • It has been pointed out that the data for Africa is clearly flawed, as it includes information which even the best hospitals in Africa have trouble compiling because they largely lack the monitoring equipment needed to measure the alleged data, least of all at such a scale.

        https://twitter.com/JamesTodar... [twitter.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          As soon as you know where exactly to look, data review becomes easier. At that point you will already have invested a non-trivial amount of time and man-power though. There is also a need for initial suspicion, and that clearly was there here or we would not yet know.

          What you are overlooking is that this data _was_ found to be flawed in an uncommonly short time. Be satisfied with that and stop criticizing a complex process in an exceptional situation for not delivering immediate perfect answers. Science is

    • The WHO is no longer acting in based on science and fact, they are concerned about offending nations that act irresponsibly and simply regurgitate political lies from member nations.

      I'm glad the US is withdrawing from WHO, I hope/expect that money that would have gone to WHO goes to a more deserving group working on health issues.

  • One more reason for careful-double blind studies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @07:05PM (#60142616) Homepage
    This is one more reason for careful, randomized double-blind studies. At this point, the information about whether this treatment works has become hopelessly bogged down in politics and retrospective studies in both directions. Retrospective studies are by nature limited, even when they come from good data. Until we get good double blind randomized results, we cannot read into this very much. For example, it is possible that doctors have been prescribing hydroxychloroquine to the patients who were most sick, so the treatment looks bad. One could actually have a complication in the other direction if the drug is limited and so doctors don't prescribe it to the patients they are sure are going to die.

    We need to wait for randomized trials which will be done in the next month or so before making any strong conclusions. And we need to do so, separate from any politics; that means that people who are partisans against Trump need to not just crow about every single study that shows it is bad, no matter how poor the study, and by the same token people who support Trump need to stop trumpeting every pro- hydroxychloroquine no matter how crappy. Getting this right is important, and biology is not dictated by our political preferences.

    • Sucks that this got politicized (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @07:34PM (#60142716) Journal

      > And we need to do so, separate from any politics; that means that people who are partisans against Trump need to not just crow about every single study that shows it is bad, no matter how poor the study, and by the same token people who support Trump need to stop trumpeting every pro- hydroxychloroquine

      So much this. This is important. This is life or death. Choose something else to root for your favorite politiball team.

      Secondly, humans tend to believe what we want to believe. I do, Trump does, Pelosi does, humans do. And we CERTAINLY tend to espouse those beliefs that will benefit us. Certain Democrat leaders made an unforced error when they positioned themselves such that good news for a covid treatment is bad news for their career. Early on, when we had only very preliminary evidence, certain politicians took an "anti-HCQ" position that they absolutely didn't have to take - just so they could disagree with Trump on one more thing. Then they keep doubling down, putting themselves in a position where of we get an effective treatment that hurts their re-election chances. There was no need for them to setup a themselves up with that conflict of interest between the good of the country and their own self-interest. They could have just said "I'm eagerly awaiting the results of the studies". But instead they took a position such that now our leaders have a self-interest in doing what they can to frustrate any progress on finding out in which cases these medications might be helpful.

      There are several different proposals to make our government less partisan, including single transferable vote. Those proposals are starting to look a lot more attractive now. It seems we keep getting more and more partisan ever since the Robert Bork mess sent us down an ugly road.

      • Hate Trump if you want, but CNN and friends' Trump Contrarianism, where anything Trump does must be met with an evening panel of talking heads decrying it on first principles of opposition rather than rational analysis and debate, is not serving the country well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
        Exactly. We got a health crisis but wearing a mask or not has become a political statement. Viruses have no political affiliation, economic standing, or schedule. Only need humans to host and replicate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dog77 ( 1005249 )
      Here is one double blind controlled study that suggests hydroxychloroquine by itself does not provide much benefit as a preventive a measure:
      https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/... [nejm.org]

      Even though this study was double blind, they surveyed the participants at the end of the trial as to whether they were given hydroxychloroquine or the placebo, and while many were not sure, of the ones that did think they knew, 86% correctly said they got the hydroxychloroquine and 68% correctly said they got the placebo.

      • IMHO, another problem is the obsession with black & white absolute outcomes: prevevent/fails-to-prevent, or survives-vs-death.

        The theoretical basis for HCQ(+zinc, + other things) is, "impairs ability of virus to infect cells & replicate thereafter, so that once the immune system notices & responds, fewer cells will be infected, resulting in less inflammation & net injury."

        Almost by definition, this requires taking the meds prior to infection... or at least, having them readily available to t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dog77 ( 1005249 )

          The theoretical basis for HCQ(+zinc, + other things) is, "impairs ability of virus to infect cells & replicate thereafter, so that once the immune system notices & responds, fewer cells will be infected, resulting in less inflammation & net injury."

          And while there are other theories on why HCQ might help, I agree that this is the most promising; in particular because the one study that has actually studied HCQ with zinc suggests a significant benefit (almost cuts the rate of death in half):
          https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]

          I would like to see attempts at measuring zinc levels in COVID-19 patients to see if zinc deficient patients fall into a high risk group. I know they have done this with vitamin-D, but so far I have not seen any attempt to do th

  • I have worked in the healthcare field. (Score:5, Informative)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @07:19PM (#60142656) Homepage Journal

    While I understand the Guardian author is trying their best, they're missing a key element of understanding in this issue.

    In the United States, the majority of medical claim processing is handled by just one company. If you're willing to sign the relevant privacy agreements, they would sell you access to their data. Furthermore, they also employ statisticians to ensure the data is properly anonymized, so you need not even hire a statistician.

    You, dear reader, could start up a medical information company today with just 3 key items:

    1. An understanding of the relevant medical privacy laws and the willingness to abide by them, and
    2. The hardware to host the database, and facility with requisite physical security requirements, and
    3. The capital to purchase access to the datasets.

    Of course, you would also need to know your way around the medical billing world, and have the understanding of medicine necessary to know which sorts of queries to run, but it could be done by just a handful of people familiar with the medical field. Most studies are just statistical regression run against large datasets, and it appears this company is just a data squatter/speculator who waited for the right time to capitalize on their investment.

    The chief objections raised are not relevant to whether the data is valid or not; the 73 vs 71 cases claim could just as easily have been a corrected typo. Yes, there could exist someone out there just forging data, but such a case would be so easy to prosecute ("your honor, the defendant has no contracts with any of the major claim processing companies or hospitals...) it would require a certain kind of stupid to believe you wouldn't be caught... (Though, OTOH, Theranos comes to mind...).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by martinX ( 672498 )

      "Data it claims to have legitimately obtained from more than a thousand hospitals worldwide".

      Given that many errors have been uncovered, perhaps hospitals that do have connections with this company may like to re-examine their relationship.

  • Well, the drug was obviously no mirical cure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @07:37PM (#60142732)

    If it works at all, it works in the margins of statistical analysis. If it worked in an obvious way there would be no need for large data sets to verify it. "I gave it to 5 patients and 3 of them recovered much quicker than I would have expected.". There was no need for statistics for penicillin -- it instantly cured an obviously dying man (until it ran out).

    Interesting how something as non-political as the effectiveness of a drug has become so political. If you like Trump, you *know* it works. If you hate Trump, you *know* it does not work.

    • Well it takes a politician to make something political.

      • Can't happen in a vacuum. You have to have a mentally compromised shitbag on the other end to receive the political message and discard reality in favor of the viral information load.

  • When this first came out, I was suspicious - so many hospitals, in such a short time, and by who? Then, such a startling result from what I know to be a mere trace tendancy, seemed 'incredible', in both senses of the word. But 'everyone' was sooo convinced that the was the death knell for HCQ. But, here we are, less than two weeks later, with it being shunned. In the meantime, the knock-on effects - WHO shutdown - has caused delays in comprehensive studies, delaying effective treatment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by orlanz ( 882574 )

      Honestly, it wasn't a death knell for HCQ. There were plenty of studies that said it should be further evaluated. But this resulted in a "don't rush" mentality because it could be more dangerous than we though. Personally, I was still going through the French study and hadn't even gotten to this one.

      But I don't want to reduce the severity of the crime here, this crap delayed potential effective treatment by alteast 3 weeks. And everyone involved should be demoted and have a pretty big stain on their rep

  • They put a *temporary hold* on the trials because there was already several studies which were lending weight to the drug being more harmful than good. Other medical bodies including Australian ones have ongoing randomised control trials underway to test for prophylactic effect and also as a treatment for already investigated. A nice summary here fwiw. https://www.mja.com.au/journal... [mja.com.au]
    • They took action based on a cursory review of a paper in The Lancet. They assumed The Lancet did it's job and, you know, peer-reviewed it. Since we now know that The Lancet dripped the ball, the WHO is reversing their decision.

      These are the the top medical professionals, they failed to do their job and just trusted the other guy did his job so they wouldn't have to.

      They were lazy, made mistakes, PRECISELY when we needed them the most, in the middle of a world pandemic.

      • Re: They didn't change policy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by felixrising ( 1135205 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @09:48PM (#60143100)
        Unfortunately science has its limitations, and those include 1) peer review by respected publications AND 2) scrutiny by other professional scientists AND 3) reproduction by independent scientists and subsequent rinse/repeat of steps 1, 2 and 3. In the context of other already halted trials, and the apparent weight of evidence, doesn't it seem prudent to implement a temporary hold on WHO sponsored trials? I think it does. You make the best decisions on the information you have available at the time, those decisions were right when they were made, having new information come to hand which materially changes the basis for those decisions is a basis to revise those decisions, but it doesn't make the initial call wrong.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rldp ( 6381096 )

          "science has its limitations"
            - felixrising

          wow

          this is the most honest thing I have ever read on slashdot since the cmdrtaco days

  • Who is the adult content model? For research purposes, of course...

  • Now we all see why the US is so eager to defund the WHO. They didn't want it to be known that the US democracy and free market completely fucking sucks when it comes to honesty. No different from China.

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