Facebook has taken down a video posted by right-wing news site Breitbart and retweeted by President Donald Trump, showing a doctor vehemently making false claims that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a “cure for Covid” that allegedly racked up 17 million views before being removed.
The video shows a group of people calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors”, standing on the steps of Capitol Hill, led by Stella Emmanuel, a Houston-based doctor who labelled studies casting doubt on the effectiveness of the antimalarial drug as “fake science.”
Emmanuel claimed that she is using the antimalarial drug because of a 2005 study, published by the National Institutes of Health, which claims Chloroquine, a more toxic version of hydroxychloroquine, can prevent the spread of coronavirus in cells.
She claimed that she put herself and her staff on hydroxychloroquine as a prophylaxis, and that she treated more than 300 patients and “none of them died.”
Yet last month, the NIH halted a clinical trial of the drug, saying that while a study showed that treatment caused no harm, the drug was “very unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients with COVID-19.”
The NIH also advises against using the drug as a treatment for coronavirus.
The video has since been removed from Facebook and YouTube, with Facebook’s policy communications director Andy Stone tweeting: “We removed it for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.”
But versions of the video continued to circulate on Twitter as of Tuesday morning, with one version retweeted by Trump, according to a screenshot by the Daily Mail, before being deleted.
Trump revealed in May that he was taking a two-week dose of hydroxychloroquine prophylactically.
Forbes has contacted the America’s Frontline Doctors group and Breitbart for comment.
The New York Times’ tech correspondent, Kevin Roose, said he couldn’t remember any video that “spread this quickly,” adding that it spread faster than conspiracy film ‘Plandemic’ that was viewed at least 8 million times before social networks took action.
The #2 most-engaged post on Facebook today is a Breitbart video of a group of doctors claiming that hydroxychloroquine is “a cure for Covid” and “you don’t need a mask.”
14 million views in 6 hours. (For scale, Plandemic got ~8 million in a few days.)
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020
While YouTube took the clip down, a 2-hour stream of the same group of doctors making similar claims about hydroxychloroquine, citing limited studies, remains on the Breitbart YouTube channel.
There is no approved treatment for coronavirus, and the race is on to develop a vaccine that could be available later this year. Global interest in hydroxychloroquine, a drug normally used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, exploded earlier this year after small studies in France and China suggested that it could be used to treat Covid-19.
Public endorsement by populist leaders like President Trump and Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro drummed up interest in the drug but subsequent research has shown that the treatment did not benefit coronavirus patients, and further WHO trials were scrapped.
Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug to treat Covid-19. Along with the NIH, the FDA says it can trigger abnormal heart rhythms.
Forbes report
![Rev. Fr. Anthony Odiong, a US-based Nigerian Louisiana Catholic priest, was arrested in Florida on Tuesday for possessing child pornography, according to law authorities. The suspect is reportedly accused of many other cases of sexual assault. The Waco, Texas, Police Department announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday that officers detained Father Anthony Odiong in Ave Maria, Florida, with assistance from the United States Marshals Service. Waco police announced in March that they had received "credible information" about a sexual assault allegedly committed by Odiong in Texas in 2012. “During the subsequent investigation, a case of possession of child pornography was uncovered,” the police said. The priest was apprehended in Florida by the Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force. The Waco Police Department said that he will be extradited to Texas. Odiong had previously served in the Archdiocese of New Orleans before being removed as priest in December of last year due to controversy over homilies in which he claimed, among other things, that the Catholic Church was being taken over by "the gays." At the time, the priest was also accused of abusive behaviour; a Louisiana lady claimed in U.S. bankruptcy court that Odiong had committed both financial and sexual abuse against her. Prior to joining the New Orleans Archdiocese, Odiong served in at least two Texas parishes. On Tuesday, Waco police stated that during their sexual assault investigation, "the presence of other survivors was revealed." “Multiple women have come forward to tell similar experiences as the sexual assault survivor who reported the initial allegation,” the police department said. “Survivors’ experiences ranged from sexual assault and indecent assault, more commonly recognised as groping, and financial abuse, with some survivors experiencing every element of Anthony Odiong’s manipulation.” The police said they “believe there may be more survivors, and we wish to speak with anyone who [has] had similar encounters” with the priest. The Archdiocese of New Orleans issued a brief news release on Tuesday noting Odiong's arrest in Florida. The archdiocese “encourages anyone with any information to contact law enforcement,” the release said.](https://chronicle.ng/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ezgif-6-4730550ede-450x300.jpg "Odiong: US-based Nigerian Catholic priest convicted over sexual assault")
