LAST week saw the first professional medical conference to focus on the use of ivermectin (IVM) as a prophylaxis and treatment for Covid-19. It was hosted by BIRD, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development organisation. Typically, it went unreported on the mainstream media who seem uninterested in Covid treatment.
Some of you may remember a blog I wrote in January in which I reported the advice of Australian professor of pathology Robert Clancy that since vaccines were experimental and may not be efficacious, the public health focus needed to turn to treatment. Two drugs he said were proven, if used early, to reduce admission into hospital and death. They were hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and ivermectin (IVM), the most effective trials including nutraceutical, zinc and intracellular antibiotics, and showing they can be used as prophylactic or therapeutic medications. Clancy argued that from uncertain beginnings, an impressive database had accumulated which strongly supported their use and that, with or without vaccines, they will save lives.
Yet both of these medications, despite such professional advocacy, and despite their widespread and effective use elsewhere, continue to be ignored, dismissed or banned from use in the West.
Now thanks to BIRD, medical experts from around the world have teamed up to present the latest real world research on repurposing ivermectin; a safe drug which they say has the ability to transform global efforts to fight Covid-19 round the world – but only if doctors push back against the unethical decisions of government and medical authorities to block it.
One of the speakers, Dr Tess Lawrie, made an impassioned plea at the end of the conference on this point. She begged doctors to take up this cause. Her determination to keep her communication cool and unemotional and to the point without breaking down is near heartrending. What an impressive woman she is you will see when you watch her talk below. Anyone listening to her concise explanation of how scientific and medical research has been corrupted, how doctors have been left unable to treat patients they could have helped and saved, and her reminder to fellow doctors of their Hippocratic oath, cannot fail to be moved. A transcript follows the video.
I would like to see Whitty, Vallance and Van-Tam be made to watch this in public. They would have to have hearts of stone or have sold them to the devil not to be moved.
This is a transcript of Dr Lawrie’s address:
Before we end, I would like to share with you a few reflections on ivermectin and the state of affairs with regard to evidence-based medicine. As a scientist tasked with providing evidence along evidence-based medicine principles, I have become aware that the hierarchical approach to evidence synthesis, where systematic reviews sit at the top of the evidence pyramid and expert opinion and consensus at the bottom, is no longer appropriate.
This is partly because the integrity of systematic reviews and meta-analysis has become degraded by the increasing requirements about the conduct of randomised controlled trials, the considered gold standard of clinical studies that favour the pharmaceutical industry.
Large randomised trials have become hugely resource-intensive. Seventy-page trial protocols and grant applications required months of time and expertise to jump through all the hoops required for processing and authorisation. In addition, they cost millions of dollars. These requirements play into the hands of Big Pharma, who are the only ones who can afford such trials.
Large randomised clinical trials of generic medicines and non-pharmaceutical interventions which deserve to be evaluated for a number of (word unclear) and cancerous conditions are rare because, frankly, there is no money to be made and there’s no funding available.
In my experience of evaluating trial reports of novel anti-cancer agents, it’s common that early trial findings showing benefit leading to the drug’s approval are contradicted by later evidence showing no benefit. By then, the drug has already been licenced for use and the pharmaceutical company has already made billions.
For this reason, I caution against the unquestioning acceptance of data provided by the developers of novel treatments and strongly suggest these need independent evaluation. Not by academics and institutions receiving unlimited research grants and funding from the pharmaceutical industry and the associated pharma companies and charities, but by independent, objective scientists with no conflicts of interest.
It is time we recognise and scrutinise the involvement of industry and institutions once known for their scientific integrity and all the so-called public/private partnerships and charitable foundations that have facilitated the corruption of science and our honourable profession: healing.
They who design the trials and control the data also control the outcome. So this system and focus of industry-led trials needs to be put to an end. Data from ongoing and future trials of novel Covid treatments must be independently controlled and analysed. Anything less than total transparency cannot be trusted.
With regard to the evidence permit, there needs to be a new approach, an integrated evidence approach instead of a tiered, hierarchical approach. Instead of a pyramid, in my opinion, a circle would be more appropriate where the centre represents the integrated body of evidence from different sources.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised trials would then represent one of several types of evidence, including observational studies, real world data, quantitative data on people’s views and experiences and doctors’ expert opinion.
This would inform clinical practice decision-making in a much more holistic way.
All of these different types of data are critical to the big picture, and integration of these data has been absent in the evaluation of all interventions imposed on the public over the course of the last year. Instead, authorities have cherry-picked science and the scientists to support their flawed decision-making processes.
The story of ivermectin has highlighted that we are at a remarkable juncture in medical history, where rigorous scientific evidence, our training and experience, the tools that we use to heal and our connection with our patients, are being systematically undermined by relentless disinformation stemming from corporate greed.
The story of ivermectin shows that we as the public have misplaced our trust in the authorities and have underestimated the extent to which money and power corrupts. Had ivermectin been employed in 2020 when medical colleagues around the world first alerted the authorities to its efficacy, millions of lives could have been saved and the pandemic, with all of the associated suffering and loss, brought to a rapid and timely end.
Since then, hundreds of millions of people have been involved in the largest medical experiment in human history, mass vaccination with an unproven novel therapy. Hundreds of billions will be made by Big Pharma and paid for by the public.
With politicians and other nonmedical individuals dictating to us what we are allowed to prescribe to the ill, we as doctors have been put in a position such that our ability to uphold our Hippocratic Oath is under attack.
At this fateful juncture, we must therefore choose: will we continue to be held ransom by corrupt organisations, health authorities, Big Pharma and billionaire sociopaths? Or will we do our moral and professional duty to do no harm and always do the best for those in our care?
The letter [Editor’s note: we assume this letter had previously been discussed] includes urgently reaching out to colleagues around the world to discuss which of our tried and tested safe older medicines can be used against Covid. Holding medical forums free of conflict of interest like this one and banding together as health professionals to stand up to the medical tyranny that has been imposed on us and the public over the past year.
To this end, I suggest we form a new World Health Organisation, a health organisation that represents interest and well-being of the people, not corporations and billionaires. An organisation focused on optimising human health and potential, not contraception and population control, but a people-centred organisation.
Never before has our role as doctors been more important because never before have we been complicit in potentially causing so much harm.
I ask all doctors here today to look into their hearts and remember their oath so that we can move forward united in the protection of those we serve and with the greatest of courage. Thank you
