What is Ivermectin?

“Ivermectin is a Nobel prize winning generic drug on the WHO’s Essential Drugs list. Endorsed by FLCCC.net (authors of MATH+ protocol) for prophylaxis, mild, moderate, severe (ICU) COVID-19. And anecdotally for a subset of long haulers. Originally used as anti-parasitic (worms, river blindness), now recognized as broad anti-viral, anti-bacterial, with potential as chemotherapy adjuvant for cancer. Used over 40 years (3.7B doses), and considered for mass administration for malaria by the WHO.”¹

Ivermectin, an inexpensive drug with a long safety history, was found to cure Covid-19. You may not have heard of it though; like hydroxychloroquine, it has generally not been permitted as a treatment for Covid-19.

Dr. Pierre Kory speaks to the US Senate about Ivermectin

Dr. Pierre Kory, a member of the group of eminently qualified doctors who discovered that Ivermectin is a miracle drug for Covid-19, spoke, on December 10, 2020, before the Senate Committee on “Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a Covid-19 Solution, Part II”.² He was very adamant that the NIH study Ivermectin for home treatment of Covid-19; it was too difficult for him to continue caring for hospitalized patients who he knew were not going to make it but would have if they had early at home treatment with Ivermectin. Instead, they are leaving patients go home with a positive Covid test result and no medication. Yet, despite all the positive research and results obtained and publicized about this remedy, no US agency appeared to be interested.

Listen to his emotional opening remarks below.

 

From the transcript:

“… We now have data from over 20 well-designed clinical studies, ten of them randomized, controlled trials, with every study consistently reporting large magnitude and statistically significant benefits in decreasing transmission rates, shortening recovery times, decreasing hospitalizations, or large reductions in deaths. This clinical data is also supported by multiple basic science, in-vitro and animal studies. Our manuscript, completed one week ago, is already out of date due to the near daily emergence of new, positive ivermectin studies. The manuscript has been posted on the medical pre-print server OSF (Open Science Foundation) and can be downloaded here https://osf.io/wx3zn/ or on our organization’s website, www.flccc.net. A more updated meta-analysis and review authored by a group of Ph.D. researchers and scientists includes all ivermectin studies as of December 4th, 2020 and can be found on the c19study.com website here: https://ivmmeta.com/.

“These data show that ivermectin is effectively a “miracle drug” against COVID-19. … Our group held a press conference this past Friday, December 4th at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, issuing a “Call to Action.” We made a formal request to our national and global health care agencies and leaders to rapidly assess the growing scientific evidence on ivermectin and update treatment guidelines accordingly. We noted that the last treatment recommendation on Ivermectin is from August 27th where on the NIH website, they recommended that Ivermectin only be used in clinical trials and they based that recommendation as “expert opinion” only given the lack of clinical studies at the time. There is now a wealth of studies reporting efficacy of ivermectin. In that press conference, we called for a rapid and updated review of this evidence in the hopes a treatment recommendation could be made and thus saving many thousands of lives, quickly. The press conference was broadcast via the Associated Press and Univision to nearly every country globally. The Health Ministry of the Government of Uganda is currently reviewing our manuscript with the intent of incorporating our treatment protocol into a national treatment guideline. It is now 48 hours later and, although it has been shared widely, we have not heard from:

“• Any national news radio, newspaper or television station.
• Any single member of any U.S health care agency.
• One notable exception is the interest shown by the Health Ministry of the Government of Uganda as they are currently reviewing our manuscript with the intent of incorporating our treatment protocol into a national treatment guideline.
We know of no similar effort by any US health care agency at this time. (This point can be omitted if necessary)

“This is unacceptable as we have documented evidence that leading members of Operation Warp Speed, including Janet Woodcock had planned to watch our press conference as have multiple members of the CDC and military as well as journalists from major national news outlets who watched. Again, 48 hours later and no contact from any health official or major news outlet. We are still hopeful to hear soon from the government and media.”³

A family sues for Ivermectin for their dying mother

In “The Drug That Cracked Covid“,⁴ author Michael Capuzzo relates the story of the family of Judy Smentkiewicz, who were forced to obtain a court-order to compel the hospital to give her Ivermectin, as she lay dying of Covid in late December, 2020.

“Finally, he [Judy’s son Michael] watched the video, and thought Kory was “incredible,” with top credentials, “and his passion is crazy.” Within minutes, “I called the ICU and told the attending physician, ‘We want my mother to be on this medication.’”

“The doctor said no. Ivermectin wasn’t approved for COVID-19, and “we don’t experiment on our patients.” But Michael pushed harder. “I’m a bull,” he said. After several back and forths, a hospital administrator gave approval for one dose, 15 milligrams of Ivermectin. Less than twenty-four hours later, “Mom is off the ventilator.”

“The nurses were shocked. Michael was jubilant. The next day his mother was sitting in a chair talking to him on Zoom. But then Judy regressed. They moved her to a cardiac floor, her heart was racing, and “she was going downhill,” Michael says, and he asked the doctor for another dose of Ivermectin. This time the “no” from the doctor and administration was final. That day the family retained Buffalo lawyer Ralph Lorigo, who studied Kory’s video and the FLCCC website and sued the hospital to give their mother more Ivermectin.

“Judge Henry Nowak of the New York State Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on an emergency basis as “a matter of life and death.” He ruled that a woman was dying in the middle of a pandemic with no known treatment for COVID-19 and a safe, long-established drug had affected her “miraculous turnround,” and ordered the Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital to immediately start Judith Smentkiewicz on four more doses of Ivermectin, per her family doctor’s prescription.

“The hospital refused to carry out the judge’s order. The hospital’s lawyer insisted on a hearing to make his case that no patient has the right to choose their own medicine. The debate ensued as Judy lay dying.

Dr. Kory’s story

Capuzzo entwines  Dr. Kory’s story within Judy’s. Dr. Kory, is part of a group of doctors, led by Dr. Marik, who spent untold hours searching for a cure and many more hours helping to treat patients around the world. As far back as March 2020, Kory and his colleagues were successfully treating patients.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, the hospitals that Marik and Varon led had COVID-19 beat. They achieved remarkably high survival rates at their hospitals at a time when 40 to 80 percent of patients in the U.S. and Europe were dying from the disease. Their success was achieved with the group’s now-famous MATH+ protocol for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

“The cocktail of safe, cheap, FDA-approved generic drugs—the steroid Methylprednisolone, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Thiamine (Vitamin B1), and the blood thinner Heparin—was the first comprehensive treatment using aggressive corticosteroid and anti-coagulant treatments to stop COVID-19 deaths. Both were novel approaches strongly recommended against by all national and international health care agencies throughout the world, but later studies made both therapies the global standard of hospital care. In addition, Kory, Marik, et. al published the first comprehensive COVID-19 prevention and early treatment protocol (which they would eventually call I-MASK). It is centered around the drug Ivermectin, which President Trump used at Walter Reed hospital, unreported by the press, though it may well have saved the president’s life while he was instead touting new big pharma drugs.” (See page image above.)

…

“A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.

“Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.”

The NIH, FDA, and CDC still won’t recommend Ivermectin

The NIH updated their treatment guidelines on January 14, 2021, shortly after Dr. Kory’s testimony.⁵ This new recommendation for Ivermectin, while not a ringing endorsement, is the same recommendation given to monoclonal antibodies and donor plasma used for Covid-10 patients.

“The COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) has determined that currently there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.”

The FDA, despite Ivermectin being listed by the WHO as an essential drug, all the evidence provided by Dr. Kory and his colleagues supporting Ivermectin for Covid-19, and the regular use of approved drugs for off-label use by doctors,⁶ still claims that Ivermectin is unacceptable as a therapy for Covid-19.

On their webpage entitled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19″,⁷ they state the following:

“The FDA has not reviewed data to support use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or to prevent COVID-19; however, some initial research is underway. Taking a drug for an unapproved use can be very dangerous. This is true of ivermectin, too.”

Why has the FDA not found it to be worth its time to review the data that supports the use of Ivermectin when it could save people’s lives?

The CDC is still waiting for better clinical trials. Its website states:

“There are insufficient data for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.”

Waiting for clinical trials when people are dying was not always the case. Only 8 years earlier, in 2013, when MERS was an epidemic in the Middle East, Dr. Fauci, whose NIAID is part of the NIH, agreed that it was appropriate to use two existing antiviral drugs for patients coming to the emergency room even though the drugs had only been shown effective against the disease in petri dishes.⁸

“We don’t have to start designing new drugs,” a process that takes years, Fauci says. “The next time someone comes into an emergency room in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, you would have drugs that are readily available. And at least you would have some data.”

Even though the treatment hasn’t gone through definitive trials, Fauci says, “if I were a physician in a hospital and someone were dying, rather than do nothing, you can see if these work⁴⁸.”

What changed since then?

Michael Capuzzo on journalists

“I got onto this story on Mother’s Day, 2020, when my wife Teresa … and I watched Dr. Kory testify to the U.S. Senate about his group’s first breakthrough, a steroid treatment that was saving 95 percent of COVID-19 patients when 80 percent were dyingin New York City and the world was in panic. To our surprise, as longtime journalists—we met at The Philadelphia Inquirer—Dr. Kory was cancelled by a global news blackout. Was not a treatment that could save the world news?

…

“We live in a remarkable media age where a positive story on CNN, perhaps more so than a peer review in ‘The New England Journal of Medicine, will instantly encourage doctors in two hundred countries to use a perfectly safe and legal drug and save humanity. I call on my fellow colleagues, including former colleagues and friends at The Washington Post and The New York Times, to open their hearts and minds to legitimate, unreported doctors and therapies and write about all sides of the Ivermectin story, like journalists always have. It is a historic opportunity. For the first time in the long journey from Gutenberg to Google, journalists may be the ones to save the world. ⁹’¹⁰

Michael Capuzzo’s plea to fellow journalists

Watch on YouTube here

An unfortunate conclusion

Dr. Kory:

“The world has gone mad,” … All over the world, people [are] fighting for their lives not only against the coronavirus but against their national public health societies, their most respected hospitals and long-trusted doctors for the right to use the little generic pill that cracked COVID-19.”¹¹

 

Additional resources:
Is Ivermectin the New Penicillin?