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The guy who died from self medicating did so by consuming chloroquine phosphate in a mixture designed for aquarium cleaning. The fact that the media put it on f
by twomoretime 7y ago
The guy who died from self medicating did so by consuming chloroquine phosphate in a mixture designed for aquarium cleaning. The fact that the media put it on full blast was nothing but a smear campaign. For once Trump was not acting foolishly for tweeting about a medicine which is literally poised to save millions of people during a crisis. There were already at least two papers with positive results at the time of the tweet, and we have a mechanism by which the drug may function.
Chloroquine is generally safe and well tolerated. And it is not hard to properly dose. People take it prophylactically when traveling to certain countries with non resistent malaria. The fact that some idiot killed himself should not be enough to limit our own rights to knowledge and potentially self treatment during a crisis where the government has unquestionably failed.
- robertpelloni 7y agoThey overdosed is my guess. The woman reported they each took "a spoonful" in soda. A teaspoon is 4 grams. An overdose is 2 grams. I don't know why this isn't reported anywhere. It was probably the right chemical, as far as I can tell there isn't an aquarium specific formulation, Chloroquine Phosphate is Chloroquine Phosphate. You could just as easily overdose on the prescription if you downed a handful of pills. I'm upset they didn't report this correctly because now people can still die from an overdose and people who might have had access to the aquarium chemical might have saved themselves with proper dosage.
- belorn 7y agoAs I understand it, the aquarium cleaning product in question is a mix of formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, copper sulphate and chloroquine. It is used to treat the fish parasite Amyloodinium ocellatum. Taking a spoonful of that stuff is always a very bad idea. Even if one could find "pure" Chloroquine Phosphate without all the other stuff, Chloroquine Phosphate is not the same as Chloroquine Phosphate. You can charge or remove electrons and still call it Chloroquine Phosphate, you can put it into different crystal formations, and I am probably forgetting other tricks that exist in chemistry to completely alter the behavior of a drug.