[kwlug-disc] [OT] Ivermectin

[Steve Izma]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2022 at 11:25:36PM -0800, Ronald Barnes wrote:
> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Ivermectin
> 
> > How bias-free were your pharmaceutical studies? How much of
> > the information and textbooks were associated with
> > pharmaceutical companies?
> 
> If you're alleging that ivermectin was suppressed as an effective
> treatment for Covid19 by pharma companies, then I direct you to this
> statement by the manufacturers of ivermectin, who could have made a lot
> of money from its sales:
> 
> > Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all
> >  available and emerging studies of ivermectin for the treatment of
> > COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. It is important to note
> > that, to-date, our analysis has identified:
> > 
> > * No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against
> > COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;
> > ...

They could not have made any profit off of it because ivermectin
is off-patent and produced for pennies a shot in many different
parts of the world. Their reason for this statement, given their
need for profits, is to discredit a drug in wide use in order to
make room for the replacement drug they were working on
(monupiravir), for which patents and profits apply in spades.

I'll make a small effort to bring this concept in line with the
more usual topics on this list, which I hope helps Paul feel a
little better. Merck trying to sell a for-profit drug to replace
something in the public domain is like Microsoft trying to sell
you Linux -- and also stating that the old Linux is full of bugs
and their new improved version will be healthier for you.

> > Gee, that sounds a lot like the current debates about the
> > approval of vaccines: they are currently only approved under
> > an emergency-use authorization because the usual safety
> > studies have not been completed.
> 
> Interesting that you bring up EUA as a strike against Covid
> vaccines, but not HCQ, when HCQ was used as a Covid treatment
> under an EUA only from April to June 2020.

I'm not defending the use of HCQ, I'm challenging the politics
behind the policy making, especially when politicians and public
health officials ban *discussion* of alternatives to the products
of Big Pharma. In any case, regardless of attempts by U.S.
government agencies to exclude all treatments other than
vaccines, it's pretty hard to compare the safety record of HCQ
(across decades) and that of the mRNA vaccines, which won't even
finish safety trials for another few years. The Wikipedia article
shows that the dosage size at which HCQ becomes toxic is well
known (three people have died of overdoses since the 1950s).

We also need to take into consideration that the EUA for the
vaccines would not be valid if any other treatments were proving
effective. It's in the interest of the makers of mRNA (and other
types of) vaccines to discredit the effectiveness of
alternatives.

We need to try many alternatives, especially those based on
substances and procedures that health workers have become
familiar with, in order to do the right kind of testing of new
stuff.

We try to solve computer problems through discussions and
experimentation in test environments, not in production
environments, or among the general population.

> > On 24 April 2020, citing the risk of "serious heart rhythm
> > problems", the FDA posted a caution against using the drug
> > for COVID-19 "outside of the hospital setting or a clinical
> > trial".[62]
> 
> > On 15 June 2020, the FDA revoked its emergency use
> > authorization, stating that it was "no longer reasonable to
> > believe" that the drug was effective against COVID-19 or that
> > its benefits outweighed "known and potential
> > risks".[65][66][67] In fall of 2020, the National Institutes
> > of Health issued treatment guidelines recommending against
> > the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 except as part of
> > a clinical trial.[50]

These are all FDA or NIH public statements. Given the
revolving-door hiring policies between such government agencies
and the big pharmaceutical companies, we need to ask who's
buttering whose bread?

I again suggest reading the Doidge article
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-vaccines-are-a-tool-not-a-silver-bullet-if-wed-allowed-more-scientific/>
to get a critique of the narrowness of the approach to disease
used by these agencies. As Doidge pointed out last January, there
were over 300 studies about ivermectin, and there are many more
now. We need a process to eliminate bias in appraising these
studies and that can't happen when governments and large
corporations suppress debate about alternatives.

It makes me wonder if Bill Gates's strategies for making vaccines
the exclusive solution have come about from lessons he learned in
the 1990s when he failed to convince the world to suppress open
source. Who was it who called open source a virus?

-- 
Steve Izma
-
Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W6
E-mail: sizma at golden.net  phone: 519-745-1313
cell (text only; not frequently checked): 519-998-2684

==
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and
therefore never scrutinize or question.
    -- Stephen Jay Gould, *Full House: The Spread of Excellence
       from Plato to Darwin*, 1996