Comment by ggrothendieck

Not being statistically significant is not a proof that it doesn't work -- it only means they could not reject the possibility that the results were due to chance. The possibility that it slashed the death rate by 3x (which is what happened in the study) when projected to the world wide deaths of ~ 4.5 million would imply saving the lives of 3 million people so it certainly would be worthwhile to check it out. Maybe it was due to chance but maybe it was not.