HANDS up if you have a child with long covid . . . no? OK, hands up if you know a child with long covid . . . still no? Final question, hands up if you have heard of long covid in children . . . really, no? Well, you won’t be able to say that again if you read this.
Our old friend Global Health NOW of February 4 provided a link to two articles with an entry which reads as follows: ‘Long covid in children will be studied more closely in three clinical trials launching this year, including the largest paediatric long covid trial to date – which will recruit 1,300 children, teens, and young adults for a randomised placebo-controlled trial of low-dose naltrexone to treat fatigue. The 19th /The Sick Times.’
Yes, you read that correctly: clinical trials of a drug for a condition which probably does not exist. And, if you read the articles, you will see that it is not only naltrexone that is to be tested, the trials will also test larazotide and taurine.
It is probably safe to assume that sales of naltrexone, larazotide and taurine are not as buoyant as Big Pharma would like. The solution: perpetuate the myth of the dubious condition called long covid and, having conned enough adults into being treated, extend the myth to children. After all, children are the future . . . of profits.
According to the article in the Sick Times (hmm, wonder what that newspaper is about): ‘Millions of children with long covid face denial, gaslighting, and a lack of medical treatment and drug trials.’
Quite what a medical intervention will do about denial and gaslighting is not clear, but hey, we can solve the drug trials issue by setting them up and getting them enrolled, whether the drug works or not.
Turning to the drugs to be tested, naltrexone is an opioid antagonist, which means it is used in people with opioid dependence to block the euphoric effects of the opioids. It also has anti-inflammatory properties which are the justification for its use in long covid.
Naturally, naltrexone is not without its side effects, two of which are vivid dreams and insomnia, and who does not want those in their kids? Other common side effects include nausea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, nervousness, and abdominal pain. Strangely, all of these are already supposed symptoms of long covid. I could make this stuff up, but why bother?
Next up is larazotide, which blocks leaky gut syndrome, and which was developed for coeliac disease.
Its introduction into the long covid arsenal is justified because some of the ‘symptoms’ of long covid are associated with stomach and intestinal problems. But wait for it . . . larazotide is not licensed for use in the UK. I think the intention here is obvious, using children to test a drug for wider use in the wider population.
And the pièce de résistance, taurine, which is a nutritional supplement, is going to be administered to counter any adverse nutritional consequences of the administration of larazotide. As I say, I could make this stuff up, but . . .
The real scandal here is not that medicine is experimenting, it always has, but that it is doing so in the absence of a clearly defined disease, robust diagnostic criteria, or convincing epidemiology, and choosing children as the proving ground. What is being tested is not merely naltrexone, larazotide, or taurine, but a narrative: that uncertainty can be medicalised, that speculation can be funded, and that ethics are flexible when the cause is fashionable enough.
