Raymond L. Woosley, MD, Ph.D., is a Flinn Scholar and professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. He is also the founding president and chairman of the Board for AZCERT, Inc., a non-profit organization funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to work with the College of Medicine to improve the safe use of medications. Dr. Woosley received his medical degree from the University of Miami, FL; his doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Louisville, KY; and his bachelor's degree from Western Kentucky University. After an internship and residency in internal medicine, he completed a fellowship in clinical pharmacology at Vanderbilt University before joining the faculty as founding director of the Vanderbilt Cardiac Arrhythmia Center and rose to the rank of professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and associate director of the Vanderbilt Clinical Research Center. In 1988, Dr. Woosley was appointed chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He also served as associate dean for Clinical Research and director of the Institute for Cardiovascular Sciences. In 2001, Dr. Woosley joined the faculty at the University of Arizona as vice president of the Arizona Health Sciences Center and the dean of the College of Medicine. In 2005, he founded the Critical Path Institute (C-Path), an independent, non-profit organization created jointly by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the University of Arizona to help implement the FDA’s Critical Path Initiative and accelerate the development of new drugs and diagnostics. In 2012, he founded the non-profit AZCERT, Inc. Dr. Woosley’s research has been reported in more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and serves as the basis for eleven patents. For his contributions to medicine, Dr. Woosley has received numerous awards and honors from academic institutions, the Food and Drug Administration and professional societies.
“The very sickest COVID patients are those at most risk for these life-threatening arrhythmias and cardiac effects, and that’s why it’s so important that we look carefully at how they’re going to be used, and what’s the benefit from that use.â€
“There are certain tests that ought to be done before and during the treatment. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people have taken the hope that has been expressed about these drugs and said, well, I want to take them, or I want somebody to give them to me to prevent COVID. And there is absolutely no evidence that that is likely to occur.â€