I would like to share with all of you my article on Trial Site News. It speaks specifically of evidence based medicine. That’s what we’ve all been led to believe is the only type of research that is valid. The truth, however, is far from that. I believe the conclusions of editors in chief of our most respected peer reviewed journals would have some crucial information to share. I hope you’ll enjoy reading my post.
Many years ago, I was on a mission to understand the process of “standard of care”. As you likely know, insurance companies will only reimburse for medications and treatments that have received the designation of “standard of care”. My first step was trying to uncover who in fact makes the determination of which medicines or procedures should be considered as part of standard of care for any particular medical problem. It appears that a board is convened and they vote on possible new additions into the standard of care bucket. This search proved more challenging than I had anticipated, however. What I was able to uncover, is that physicians and researchers are part of this extremely critical and important board. When I scratched below the surface, I learned that those who I was able to identify as being on the board have financial or employment ties to the pharmaceutical industry. That inherent conflict of interest will prevent medicinal herbs and nutraceuticals/supplements from ever getting a foot in the door into this process, despite the dozens of clinical trials proving their efficacy.
The same holds true for repurposed drugs. The FDA does allow the “off-label” use of FDA-approved drugs and does not routinely require them to complete additional rigorous testing when used for expanded purposes. Approximately 20% of all prescriptions written on any given day are for the “off label” use of FDA-approved drugs.
It is important to understand that there is a tainted relationship with the truth which has negatively impacted our efforts to validate evidence-based medicine (EBM). Don’t take my word for it, rather listen to what the editors-in-chief of peer-reviewed journals have concluded about this issue. As you likely know, two of the most prestigious and respected peer-reviewed journals are the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the Lancet.
Harvard physician Marcia Angell former Editor-In-Chief of the NEJM said: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgement of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor.” Her 2005 book, The Truth About the Drug Companies – How They Deceive Us And What We Can Do About It is one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. Be forewarned that it will change your views about our healthcare system as you realize the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has on every aspect of our health care.
Dr. Relman, another former Editor-In-Chief at the NEJM said this: “The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”
Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-In-Chief of the Lancet, in his article Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma? concluded that “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness”.
What these editors-in-chief have essentially concluded is that there is regulatory capture of our public health agencies; the NIH, the CDC and the FDA. I thought that was cause for celebration. This new insight had the capacity to bring about necessary change within these highly respected journals. I actually thought that those holding power in these prestigious journals had finally pulled aside the curtain of corruption that had been happening within these academic, hallowed halls of scientific truths. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Dr. Tess Lawrie, the Director of The Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd in the UK, had been consulting for the WHO for many years providing analysis of countless drug trials and has been a trusted data analyst for them. She co-authored a submission to the Lancet Respiratory Medicine Journal titled Ivermectin for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Following a rigorous and extensive review by 4 independent peer reviewers, the article passed peer review and was ready for publication. The senior editor decided otherwise however. “We don’t doubt that this is an important paper, and would likely be widely picked up, and as such, we want to make sure that it includes as high-quality evidence as possible to ensure we spread a message that is strongly supported by the evidence. Therefore, on this occasion, we have decided not to publish your manuscript.”
Tess Lawrie, as one of the most published researchers/analysts in the world, had never had this happen to her before where a paper passes the tedious and lengthy peer review process and then is pulled at the 11th hour from publication by the editor-in-chief. To date, this has happened to 3 other well-respected, highly published scientists/researchers who attempted to have their ivermectin analysis published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal. To date, they only appear to consider publication for negative ivermectin papers.
Covid-19 has provided us with another option for assessing the effectiveness of ivermectin via real-world observational studies via the inclusion of hundreds of millions of subjects. The region in India called Uttar Pradesh is such an example. With a population of over 240 million people, they were able to execute an extensive test and treat protocol and provide the mass distribution of “home medicine kits”. Within 6 weeks, the dramatic decline from 35,104 daily cases at the end of April, to less than 694 daily cases by June 7, was evident for all to see. Maybe this reflected vaccinations instead of the distributed home medicine kits, you might be wondering, but it’s easy enough to google the rate of fully vaccinated people in Uttar Pradesh during that time period, which you’ll find was 3.3%. Fortunately, these observational trials are not subject to similar conflicts of interest which appear to be the prime culprit with EBM. There are many small, poor countries around the globe who have also had remarkable success with early treatment with ivermectin, so Uttar Pradesh is not an outlier. The WHO actually praised India for its remarkable management of the pandemic during this period of viral surge. They neglected, however, to mention that 12 mg of ivermectin was in every home medicine kit. I decided to go on a search for the documents which list the entire contents of the home medicine kits and couldn’t find them. I contacted the WHO requesting that information and received nothing but silence. It was the local news organizations in India who cited the specifics of the home medicine kits along with outstanding articles by the investigative journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer for this publication.
According to Dr. Lawrie, ivermectin “has been recommended in 39 countries, about 28% of the world’s population”. If you live in the U.S., you’ve likely only heard ivermectin trashed as a horse dewormer or dangerous drug that has caused ER’s to be prevented from treating serious emergencies and poison control centers being overwhelmed with calls. That disinformation has been debunked by Mary Beth Pfeiffer and others, but not forgotten. The truth is something we should all be celebrating. Despite what you have been hearing and reading in the media, there is more than adequate data proving that little, vilified ivermectin is actually capable of halting the replication of this virus, via 3 different cellular mechanisms which, if distributed widely, would lead to the end of this pandemic. That is exactly what happened in Uttar Pradesh.Let’s take a look at why ivermectin is so vilified by our public health agencies and mainstream media. Merck, the expired patent holder on ivermectin, essentially did a smear campaign on ivermectin, making false claims about its lack of safety and effectiveness, and the FDA, CDC and mainstream media picked up on it and ran with it. If you read carefully, you will see that many different media publications, and their so-called pundits, continue to repeat the same memes regarding ivermectin, even to the exact wording. To me, that suggests a very disappointing lack of independent investigative journalism on the part of all of our so-called trusted media. You can read multiple articles on Trial Site News where outstanding investigative journalists have revealed the truth about all of this dis/misinformation. Since it was hard for our public health agencies to challenge the myriad research on ivermectin specifically, they chose instead to distract us from the truth by focusing on people using the veterinary form of ivermectin and, again, were also responsible for false claims about that. Why would they do that you might be asking? Merck is seeking EUA for their shiny new, mutagenic early treatment drug, Molnupiravir. That pill is set to cost $700 per course, while ivermectin, an off-patented FDA-approved drug, with one of the best long-term safety profiles of any drug, goes for pennies around the globe and a handful of dollars in the U.S.. Merck chooses to maximize profits over lives and our public health agencies appear willing to cooperate. They only required 1 phase III clinical trial, which was actually stopped before completion, due to reported high efficacy, with less than 400 treatment subjects, in order to seek EUA approval. They were not evaluated by an independent peer-reviewed journal nor was there adequate investigation into long-term safety issues. Ivermectin, on the other hand, has 67 international clinical trials involving 49,516 subjects, but that’s apparently “insufficient evidence” to consider an EUA on a drug that has been on the market for 40 years and has an outstanding safety record. If that’s not bad enough, there are now multiple observational trials, which our public health agencies refuse to even consider, involving hundreds of thousands of people in regions around the world who have also achieved remarkable success with ivermectin. Shouldn’t the WHO have been putting together a packet of information for ALL countries that haven’t been able to achieve adequate vaccination distribution, encouraging them to follow the protocol that has proven to provide outstanding success against Covid-19 in Uttar Pradesh? Instead they hide the facts about ivermectin. I believe they should be put on trial for their participation in the massive, unnecessary deaths of citizens around the globe. In fact, India’s Bar Association has filed a lawsuit against the WHO’s chief scientist for misleading the world about ivermectin.
It’s literally unbelievable and unimaginable to wrap one’s brain around this deceitful reality. The lessons we learned from the Mueller report points us in one direction – follow the money. Our public health agencies are funded by average Americans through our tax dollars, but also by pharmaceutical money. That’s like letting the fox in the hen house. It’s easy to appreciate the conflicts of interest that this system of regulatory capture has created. The WHO has stated that they have to go around the world, on bended knee, begging for donations to fund their global organization and as such, they are obliged to consider the needs and interests of the donors in their decision making. That admission is crystal clear yet it remains in the shadows of our public health agencies, who are essentially doing the same thing. Former, and future, pharmaceutical executives are often sitting on boards and panels that directly affect our health care decisions and policies.
Isn’t it beyond time for us to re-evaluate and remove the conflicts of interest that have become endemic in our public health agencies and our peer-reviewed medical journals? The journals have taken an interesting position. They believe that by asking the authors of their research to list their conflicts of interest, at the bottom of the article, that should eliminate any issues associated with the reality of conflicts of interest. Ask any physician you know if they review the conflicts of interest statements in determining the reliability of any research that they’ve just read. That reminds me of the tobacco industry’s requirement of noting on cigarette packages a warning that smoking may cause cancer. How well did that work in reducing the rate of smokers in this country? Where were our trusted public health agencies, whose very job was to protect the public health, when efforts needed to be made, to intervene on this urgent issue on the dangers of cigarettes? It took private attorneys to prove that cigarettes were deadly. Our public health agencies were unable or unwilling to do whatever may have been necessary to protect the public from this cancer-causing addiction. I keep waiting to see some action regarding secondhand smoke given the scientific research pointing to the harm that it causes. To allow parents to drive in their cars smoking, while a child is riding in the car, is unconscionable yet there is nothing preventing them from doing so. If a drunk driver has a child in his/her car, and that results in a deadly accident, that drunk driver would be charged with manslaughter.
I believe the only solution is to somehow get this urgent information out to the general public. A Pulitzer prize-nominated journalist, Michael Capuzzo, sent a plea out to his fellow journalists that unfortunately went unheeded:
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 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.