The president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Patrice Harris, says President Donald Trump's promotion of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus is an unproven and unsafe statement.
"You could lose your life," Harris said during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Sunday. "It's unproven. And so certainly there are some limited studies, as Dr. Fauci said. But at this point, we just don't have the data to suggest that we should be using this medication for COVID-19."
Trump during the White House coronavirus task force briefing on Sunday asked reporters, "What do you have to lose?
"I want them to try it, and it may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn't work, there is nothing lost by doing it."
Harris says only FDA-approved medication or drug should be used to fight off the virus.
"There could be negative side effects," Harris said. "There could be deaths. This is a new virus, and so we should not be promoting any medication or drug for any disease that has not been proven and approved by the FDA."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the coronavirus task force, has pushed back against Trump's talks of using hydroxychloroquine.
"The data are really just at best suggestive. There have been cases that show there may be an effect, and there are others to show there's no effect," he said Sunday during an appearance on CBS's "Face The Nation."
"So, I think in terms of science, I don't think we can definitively say it works."