Source: Brownstone.org
In the wake of the FDA settling a lawsuit brought against it for wantonly and aggressively smearing ivermectin, the agency has deleted its postings. That’s good, but we shouldn’t forget how egregiously it mischaracterized the drug, ignored copious evidence in its favor, and portrayed its proponents as dangerous crackpots.
About 30 months ago, America’s FDA was publishing articles with headlines like this: “Should I take ivermectin to treat COVID?” Answer: No. The agency also told Americans not to use ivermectin to prevent Covid. Then, in what became known as its infamous “horse tweet,” the FDA even patronizingly told Americans: “Seriously, y’all. stop it.”
Prescribers who advocated for alternate treatments like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine were mocked online by America’s “trusted journalists” as being part of a “right-wing conspiracy” and labeled “hucksters.” Those who didn’t demure to the Covid mRNA or other Big Pharma treatment narratives were banned, fired, and spoken harshly about around the world and into the reaches of the stratosphere in what seemed like coordinated messaging.
Many clinicians lost their jobs – at best. At worst, their reputations, practices, finances, and careers were shattered. If that was not bad enough, after losing their jobs, state medical and pharmacy boards initiated legal proceedings against their licensure, singling out their “off-label” Covid treatments, despite other off-label treatments being a near-ubiquitous component of pharmacy and medical practice.
Within days of FDA’s initial postings above, the American Pharmacist’s Association (APhA) the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP), and the American Medical Association (AMA) all collaborated to release a joint press release condemning doctors who prescribed ivermectin to treat Covid, but it appears that these organizations, instead of actually performing independent analysis of primary literature data, blindly regurgitated FDA, CDC, and NIH plus other government and Big Pharma talking points “strongly opposing” ivermectin use.
For generations and especially during the Covid pandemic, professionals depended on these “elite” medical groups. Some of them have existed for around 170 years and have around $150 million to $1.2 billion in assets, so they clearly had the history, personnel, and wherewithal to objectively examine published data. Even beyond that, the AMA has several floors in a skyscraper in Chicago and the APhA’s Constitution Avenue’s “landmark headquarters” is so luxuriant that it is advertised and utilized as a wedding venue.
Of course, that extravagance was paid for by millions of pharmacists, physicians, and benefactors who expected these organizations to act as a checksum and ensure excellent clinical practice standards. These medical organizations have a duty to honor their histories, responsibilities, and ethical duties to better the human condition through verified scientific evidence. Instead, they appeared to outrageously abandon their obligations from their lofty positions of respect, comfort, money, and power.
APhA, ASHP, and AMA Clinical Declarations Now Indefensible:
On March 22, the FDA rightly acquiesced and agreed to remove their anti-ivermectin postings due to 1) a lawsuit filed against them and 2) the impossible task of having to defend themselves with an overwhelming amount of data disagreeing with not only dispensing medical recommendations, but the published data backing their Covid-19 use (e.g., see below).
With that gone, the APhA, ASHP, and AMA assertions suddenly have no leg upon which to stand.
Several non-FDA links within their press releases have (unsurprisingly) also quietly vanished with no explanation. NIH references are slated to be shut down, on top of multiple FDA and CDC links already no longer working.
Ivermectin Mechanism of Action, History and Evidence:
The broad antiviral mechanism of action of ivermectin is complicated and may partially involve blocking the uptake of viral proteins, but the bottom line is that it has been shown to yield positive results in a variety of published results for Covid-19. Had APhA, ASHP, and AMA pharmacists and physicians independently examined the data, (as I, just one drug-safety analyst without fancy headquarters, have done) rather than simply parroting now-deleted narratives of others, they would have learned that ivermectin works as an antiviral.
It has an extensively proven track record of being not just safe – but astonishingly safe for a variety of viral diseases. This is not breaking or fringe science; it has been known for years. Ivermectin is such a safe and effective drug that back in 2015 it was the first drug for infectious disease associated with a Nobel Prize in 60 years.
While I have stacks of electronic files and printed materials, dog-eared and food/drink-stained, there is a most elegantly presented meta-analysis website designed by some brainy and web-savvy scientists detailing over 100 studies from over 1,000 different scientists, involving over 140,000 patients in 29 countries describing the benefit and safety of ivermectin for Covid-19 treatment. It actually appears to be more extensive than Cochrane’s outdated review of ivermectin which only examined 14 trials – and excluded seven of them from consideration. …