October 5, 2020
HCQ for Covid? Courts won’t force FDA’s hand
ICYMI: Two federal courts separately denied requests from plaintiffs who wanted to force FDA to authorize the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat or prevent Covid-19 — despite the fact that there is little to no evidence that it works, and may even be dangerous.
FDA says physicians can prescribe it for Covid, but only off label; it doesn’t want to try to practice medicine:
“FDA generally does not seek to interfere with the exercise of the professional judgment of health care providers in prescribing or using, for unapproved uses for individual patients, most legally marketed medical products.”
The plaintiff’s arguments were unusual, to say the least. In one case, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons argued (among other things) that it was injured “because it had to cancel one of its conferences due to state mandates prohibiting large public gatherings.”
In the other, a man argued that “FDA was effectively holding him and his elderly father hostage by not authorizing the ‘prophylaxis [sic]’ use of hydroxychloroquine.”
