In the first major research scandal to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, The Lancet, one of the world's most influential medical science journals, has retracted a research paper by four authors Dr Mandeep R. Mehra, Dr Frank Ruschitzka, Dr Amit N. Patel and Dr Sapan Desai who reported that malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, touted by US President Donald Trump as "game-changers" in the fight against COVID-19, increase mortality in patients.
Just as context, this development comes at a time when hydroxychloroquine has proved ineffective in the first large study which tests it in people in close contact with COVID19 infected people. These results were published this week by the New England Journal of Medicine.