The Highwire Insider's Report: Episode 416: DIDIER RAOULT UNCENSORED (03/20/25, video 01:56:13). Host: Del Bigtree. Guest: Didier Raoult, M.D.

• Full Episode: thehighwire.com/ark-vid…

• Insiders Report. Full episode and Show Notes Archive including topics and links (linked below):

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SUMMARY

French physician, microbiologist, and infectious disease expert Didier Raoult, M.D. revisits injustices of the COVID-19 pandemic. Raoult was among the first to advocate for a cheap, repurposed drug — chloroquine / hydroxychloroquine — that showed promise in treating COVID. The result: Censorship, scientific suppression, and personal attacks on him and President Trump.

Dr. Raoult reveals what happened during COVID era, global forces that worked to discredit his findings, and why the scientific community turned against him. You may be surprised by his position on origins of COVID-19, pandemics in general, and his take on the Chinese lab leak theory. [NOTE: Some of his views resemble those of another maverick, Sasha Latypova.]

While this interview included much “in the weeds” science, we enjoyed Dr. Raoult’s candor, sense of humor, and imperviousness to what others think about him. Highwire recurring donors also will enjoy the “Off the Record” Highwire+ interview with Dr. Raoult.

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INSIDERS REPORT SHOW NOTES ARCHIVE SECTIONS

Links in full Insiders Report.

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DIDIER RAOULT UNCENSORED

• Science Direct: RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial

• Stat: Fact-checking Trump's claims about hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug he's touting as a coronavirus treatment

• The Washington Post: Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says

• Wikipedia: Raoultella Page

• JAMA Network: Treatment of Q Fever Endocarditis Comparison of 2 Regimens Containing Doxycycline and Ofloxacin or Hydroxychloroquine

• Science Direct: Recycling of chloroquine and its hydroxyl analogue to face bacterial, fungal and viral infections in the 21st century

• JAMA Network: Cinchona Bark and Louis XIV

• Frontiers: Malaria in Europe: A Historical Perspective

• Gilead: FDA Expands Indication for Gilead's Vemlidy (Tenofovir Alafenamide) to Treat Chronic HBV Infection in Pediatric Patients as Young as Six

• NIH: Six-Week Therapy for Hepatitis C Virus

• Biopharma Dive: What Gilead taught pharma about pricing a cure

• Amazon: The Truth About Vaccines Book

• Gates Foundation: Bill and Melinda Gates Pledge $10 Billion in Call for Decade of Vaccines | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Science Direct: Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis

• Science Direct: Outcomes after early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: An analysis of a database of 30,423 COVID-19patients

• Science Direct: COVID-19 in people aged 18-64 in Sweden in the first year of the pandemic: Key factors for severe disease and death

• NIH: Hydroxychloroquine in rheumatic autoimmune disorders and beyond

• The Lancet: Risk of hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a multinational, retrospective study

• The Lancet: RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis

• The Guardian: Surgisphere: governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company

• NPR: WHO Halts Hydroxychloroquine Trial Over Safety Concerns

• NPR: France Bars Use Of Hydroxychloroquine In COVID-19 Cases

• Science Direct: Does spitting in public play a role in transmitting SARS-CoV-2?

• Youtube: Coronavirus : vers une sortie de crise?

• Nature: Fig. 1: Currently described bat virus diversity.

• UK Government: Ebola: overview, history, origins and transmission

• Nature: Whole-genome demography of COVID-19 virus during its pandemic period and on "panvalent" vaccine design

• New York Post: France uncovers mutant, fast-moving COVID-19 strains

• Wiley Online Library: Smell and Taste Loss Associated with COVID-19 Infection

• Wiley Online Library: Appearance of a sore throat caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

• Science Direct: Role of SARS-CoV-2 mutations in the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic

• Science Direct: Role of spike compensatory mutations in the interspecies transmission of SARS-CoV-2

• Wiley Online Library: From viral democratic genomes to viral wild bunch of quasispecies

• The Journal of Infectious Diseases: A(H1N1)pdm09 Influenza Viruses Replicating in Ferret Upper or Lower Respiratory Tract Differed in Onward Transmission Potential by Air

• Amazon: Paleomicrobiology of Humans Book

• Journal of Infection: Plague: History and contemporary analysis

• Wikipedia: Black Death Page

• Vie Publique: Bioterrorism Report

• NIH: Efficacy of Single and Combined Antibiotic Treatments of Anthrax in Rabbits

• NIH: Human Anthrax: Update of the Diagnosis and Treatment

• Yale News: What shapes a virus's pandemic potential? SARS-CoV-2 relatives yield clues

• Wiley Online Library: The emergence, spread and vanishing of a French SARS-CoV-2 variant exemplifies the fate of RNA virus epidemics and obeys the Mistigri rule

• Science Direct: Dental pulp as a source of low-contaminated DNA

• New World Encyclopedia: Chicken

• MDPI: New Patterns for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and Adjustment of Prevention, Control and Surveillance Strategies: The Example of France

• NIH: Chicken as Reservoir for Extraintestinal Pathogenic Escherichia coli in Humans, Canada

• Oxford Academic: Swine Farming Is a Risk Factor for Infection With and High Prevalence of Carriage of Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

• The Telegraph: Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

• Nature: Estimating the human health risk from possible BSE infection of the British sheep flock

• CATO Institute: How One Model Simulated 2.2 Million U.S. Deaths from COVID-19

• Imperial College London: Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPls) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand

• Big Think: What Einstein and Bohr's debate over quantum entanglement taught us about reality

• Amazon: Homo Chaoticus Book

• Genomics Education Programme: Hidden viruses in the human genome

• BMC: Koala retrovirus diversity, transmissibility, and disease associations

• Cell: The piRNA Response to Retroviral Invasion of the Koala Genome Graphic

• Frontiers: 'Cannibalism' of exogenous DNA sequences: The ancestral form of adaptive immunity which entails recognition of danger

• Medline Plus: What is noncoding DNA?

• Science Direct: Retroposon

• The Wall Street Journal: Fauci Warns About Hydroxychloroquine and In-Person Party Conventions

• The Guardian: Covid-19 study on hydroxychloroquine use questioned by 120 researchers and medical professionals

• NPR: WHO Halts Hydroxychloroquine Trial Over Safety Concerns

• IFL Science: IQ Scores In The US Have Recently Dropped For First Time This Century

• Science Direct: A negative Flynn Effect in France, 1999 to 2008-9

• National Center for Education Statistics: Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)

• World Population Review: Countries by IQ - Average IQ by Country 2024

• Education GPS: France Adult skills (Survey of Adult Skills, PIAAC, 2023)

• FDA: Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines Explained

• Newsweek: Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans

• Johns Hopkins: U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries

• Justia: Duration of Patent Protection Under Federal Law

• Twitter/X: FDA Ivermectin Tweet

• The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene: Ivermectin Mass Drug Administration to Humans Disrupts Malaria Parasite Transmission in Senegalese Villages

• World Medical Association: WMA Declaration of Helsinki - Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants

• Minn Post: Private-sector physicians run clinical trials mostly for the money, study finds

• Nature: Controversial COVID study that promoted unproven treatment retracted after four-year saga

• Springer Nature: Advancing Discovery

• Nature: About the Editors

• Science Direct: Regulation of medical research in France

• Research: Didier Raoult Awards & Achievements

• Google Scholar: Nicholas White

• Scientific Index 2025: Didier Raoult

• Plos Medicine: COVID-19 prevention and treatment: A critical analysis of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine clinical pharmacology

• Our World in Data: Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, United States

• The New England Journal of Medicine: Effect of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with Covid-19

• European Journal of Internal Medicine: Chloroquine and COVID-19: A western medical and scientific drift?

• Universite De Nancy: Les Intoxications Aigues a La Chloroquine

• JAMA Network: Chloroquine Suicide

• Science Direct: Acute chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine toxicity: A review for emergency clinicians

• Age of Autism: WHO "Solidarity" and UK "Recovery" Clinical Trials of Hydroxychloroquine using Potentially Fatal Doses

• The New York Times: Stop Bashing G.M.O. Foods, More Than 100 Nobel Laureates Say

• MDPI: The Development of Herbicide Resistance Crop Plants Using CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Gene Editing Graphic

• Pfizer: NASH

• American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases: Prevalence of chronic liver disease and cirrhosis by underlying cause in understudied ethnic groups: The multiethnic cohort

• Cell Metabolism: Fatty Liver Disease Caused by High-Alcohol-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae

• MDPI: Endogenous Ethanol and Triglyceride Production by Gut Pichia kudriavzevii, Candida albicans and Candida glabrata Yeasts in Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis