ABC | Volume 114, Nº5, May 2020

Editorial d’Avila & Lopes COVID 19 Arq Bras Cardiol. 2020; 114(5):753-754 the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” ) is scientifically ludicrous. The authors of the study investigated whether patients with COVID-19 would have a better outcome with hydroxychloroquine. To that end, it would have been mandatory that two similar groups of patients would exist with only one receiving the drug. As simple as this seems, that is not what happened. In addition to the different drugs administered, the groups were from different hospitals, were of different ages, had different clinical conditions and received different additional treatments. Most notably, these patients had different viral loads. How is one to isolate the effect hydroxychloroquine when such marked differences are present? On top of that, four patients who died or went to the intensive care unit (ICU) who received hydroxychloroquine were eliminated from the results suggesting that for some investigators death may be less relevant than the detection of a virus in the nasopharynx. Finally, the sample size was very small not allowing any possible effect from the treatment to be defined. While it is disappointing when a study fails to answer the proposed question, it is worse when it creates social upheaval. This article was peer-reviewed by colleagues and by an editor who could have avoided consequences of this publication had they acted responsibly. A pandemic does not justify forgetting science as mistakes create false hopes that may potentially put lives at risk. There has been variable interpretation of these data by the medical community throughout the world. Whereas many believe that the use of chloroquine is justifiable, that stance is far from unanimous. Many health care workers diagnosed with COVID-19 agreed to participate in randomized clinical trials to help create high-quality data that may potentially benefit thousands of people. It is remarkable that the medical community would band together as subjects in a clinical trial to generate data for a disease they are helping the public fight! This is the correct decision. Only properly designed and executed clinical studies conducted by professionals, hospitals and medical societies globally, and led by experts in clinical research, can offer accurate answers. The medical fraternity has a duty to free us from the setbacks created by the failure to understand scientific methods. “Common sense” and our collective mood cannot justify methodological errors which in turn may adversely impact thousands of lives. Physicians are expected to do what they best do - act in the light of ethics, pragmatically, based on the best that science can offer. Let us be genuine specialists when high-quality scientific data is available. After all, truth always prevails, and science is the tool that most rapidly draws us closer to it. As doctors and scientists, our role is to abate the gap between assumptions and reasoned conclusions as this will benefit patients and the population that yearns for answers provided by medical science. Acknowledgment The authors would like to thank Dr. Andre Zimerman, Dr. Sheldon Singh (English version) and Mr. Julio Tude d’Avila for their critical suggestions and review of the manuscript 1. Gautret  P, Lagier JC, Parola P, Hoang VT, Medded L, Mailhe M, et al. HydroxychloroquineandAzithromycinasaTreatmentofCOVID-19:Results of an Open-Label Non-Randomized Clinical Trial. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020 March ; In Press DOI: 10.1016/j.ijantimcag.2020.105949 References This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 754