In the first two installments of this week’s Covid update, Al Brooks discussed the CDC, immunity and a new study on HCQ, here we discuss the problems with pseudoscience.

While the recent successful study of hydroxychloroquine,  that was conducted by a valid source, we discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this week’s Covid-19 is a positive bit of news, the greater risk of the HCX controversy is the reliance on pseudoscience and promotion of it by unqualified sources.

I worked in Beverly Hills for my first year as a practicing ophthalmologist. I was in a group with four other ophthalmologists and it was a celebrity practice. We had many famous movie and TV stars as patients, and lots of other patients with a Hollywood mindset.

If you want to make a living as a doctor, you have to value how your patients feel. For me, there was too much pseudoscience in Beverly Hills. Lots of people came in because they read about some new disease or some new treatment, and they expected me to be excited with them. I was uncomfortable in this environment. It was a pretend world. I saw myself as a medical scientist. After a year, I went off on my own, away from the Hollywood crowd.

I recently mentioned that I ate lunch everyday while in Beverly Hills at the hospital cafeteria with doctors who loved this type of medicine. Many of them looked like movie stars.

As fun as it was to be with them, I felt uncomfortable with their treatment choices. They were quick to use the latest fad because their patients expected it. I only wanted to use things that science showed had a clear benefit. I thought many of the Hollywood docs were pseudoscientists and I would never want them to treat a family member.

I did not meet any who were clearly con men. For me, a con man is someone who is making decisions entirely for fame and money. I have read about many in Los Angeles and I have seen them on TV.

The best con men are very likable and convincing, and their patients love them. Also, many have a lot of supporters in the medical community and a lot of respect in the political world and at their country clubs. But I consider them to be frauds. I resent how they are harming patients by using unproven or disproved treatments instead of ones that have been shown to be effective.

It’s tough to tell someone that his father, mother, or child just died

This is a very important, sacred part of being a doctor. I always saw it as the single greatest responsibility I ever had. It was an honor, but it was also very sad.

Doctor telling patient bad news

As a medical student, I was with residents many times when they had to tell the family that mom or dad died.

I had to do it a couple times as an ophthalmologist. One of my receptionists brought her father in for blurred vision. She thought he just needed glasses. When I looked in his eye, I saw a big, dark lump in his retina. I immediately assumed he had cancer somewhere in his body and it spread to his eye. That made it likely it spread everywhere. I had a very tearful conversation with him and his daughter, but I was the right person to do it. He passed away just a few days later after he and his daughter thought he just needed glasses.

Gina had cloudy vision

I had another patient; I will call her Gina. She was an IV drug addict, but if you met her, you would think she was a perfectly normal woman. Both she and her mother were kind and lovable. I liked them both a lot.

Gina came to me because she had cloudy vision in one eye for a few days. When I looked at her retina, there were white flecks in many of the capillaries. I asked her if she was an IV drug user. She was embarrassed and said that she was. I told her that she probably had talc particles blocking the capillaries.

Furthermore, I said this this was likely all over her body, including in her brain, heart, and kidneys. Also, the person cutting her heroine with talc was not doing it in a sterile lab. The talc probably contained bacteria.

One of her eyes had a haze in the vitreous, which is the gel that fills her eye. Under my slit lamp microscope, I could see that the cloud was composed of white blood cells. She had endophthalmitis, a bacterial infection inside her eye. Without treatment, she would lose her eye. I had the infectious disease doctors at the University of Chicago take over her treatment because she probably was starting to get infections all over her body.

Her mom still looked at me as her primary doctor. A week later, Gina died of massive sepsis. Since her mom saw me as her doctor, I was the one who had to tell her.

These kinds of conversations are devastating for the doctor and the patient. The reason I am telling these stories is because it shows why I am very careful to do what is best for the patient. The patient is trusting me with his eyesight and sometimes with his life. I only want to use treatments that have been tested by many different institutions by reputable doctors and after their work appeared in peer reviewed journals.

I accept that most people have life experiences different from mine. They are comfortable using treatments that have not had this type of validation. I understand that, but based on my life experience, I would never make that choice.

Treat a patient with love

Caring for a helpless patient is a responsibility comparable to what you have as a parent. You must act out of love, and the best choices are made based on facts. As a doctor, my facts came from peer reviewed studies from reputable medical institutions.

I understand that is easy to look for medical advice from people who are very good at getting on the news. For example, the President, Navarro, or many doctors who look and sound professional but are unable to get their work published in peer reviewed journals.

However, I have met a lot of frauds, pseudoscientists, and snake oil salesmen in my career. The best frauds are always the most convincing. But without seeing their work reviewed by a panel of experts and repeated at several other institutions, I would not rely on it to treat a patient.

Treating a patient is sacred, and I saw every patient as a family member. I would only do what I thought was scientifically verified, especially since most of what is not is fraudulent.

Al Brooks’ earlier special reports on the Covid-19 pandemic:

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