YOUTUBE has SUSPENDED Senator Ron Johnson after he posted a video promoting hydroxychloroquine as a means to treat COVID-19.
The site said that the politician’s video violated its policy of medical misinformation, despite studies that show that the malaria drug CAN treat the deadly disease.
The offending video was uploaded on June 3 and featured the Republican politician talking at a virtual event hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club.
During it, he claimed that he supported hydroxychloroquine – a disease-modifying drug used to treat malaria – as a means to help end the pandemic.
He also used the platform to criticise the Trump and Biden administrations for “not only ignoring but working against robust research [on] the use of cheap, generic drugs to be repurposed for early treatment of Covid.”
YouTube quickly removed the video citing its potential to spread medical misinformation to patients and health personnel.
A YouTube spokesman told Fox News that it was taken down: “In accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus.”
Johnson then hit back on Friday accusing YouTube of censorship.
He said: “YouTube’s arrogant Covid censorship continues.”How many lives will be lost as a result?
“How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas? This suppression of speech should concern every American.”
A previous set of studies had suggested that there was no evidence that hydroxychloroquine could be used to treat coronavirus with some suggestions that its use as a treatment for the virus could even kill you.
However, last month Trending In The News revealed that fresh studies into the drug could actually increase a Covid-19 patient’s survival rate by up to 200 percent.
Carried out in New Jersey on 255 patients, it emerged that ventilated parents with a severe case of the virus and treated with high doses of hydroxychloroquine with zinc had a better chance of successfully battling it.
Many Republicans, such as former President Donald Trump, had previously been mocked by members of the scientific community for touting the malaria drug as a potential cure for coronavirus last year.
Dr Anthony Fauci, who is chief medical advisor to the President, had an interest in the drug but said more data was needed to prove it was effective.
Trump had reiterated he had been taking the drug after receiving a letter from a New York doctor based in Westchester, who supposedly used it to treat over 300 COVID-19 patients.
He told reporters he took a pill daily, along with a zinc supplement.
Hydroxychloroquine can be used as treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and porphyria cutanea tarda.
It can only be used to treat malaria in areas where where malaria remains sensitive to chloroquine.
It’s mostly sold under the name Plaquenil in the United States, but can be found under other brand names too.
The drug works by modifying the underlying disease process, and regulating the immune system – rather than treating the symptoms.
Currently, the CDC “strongly encourages clinicians, patients and their advocates, and health system administrators to regularly consult the COVID 19-treatment guidelines” before the use of any such drug.
