Fact check: Ivermectin doesn't help against COVID-19
There is a plethora of evidence that it does.
STRONG EVIDENCE IVERMECTIN IS USEFUL TO TREAT COVID-19
There is a great deal of very strong scientific evidence that Ivermectin is helpful in treating Covid-19.
NOBEL PRIZE FOR DISCOVERERS CAMPBELL AND AMORA
Ivermectin was discovered in 1975. The discoverers, William Campbell and Satoshi Amora, were given the Nobel Prize in 2015 for its discovery.
FROM A SOIL SAMPLE NEAR A GOLF COURSE
Satoshi Amora, 大村 智, whose habit was to always carry a small plastic specimen bag wherever he goes, collected a soil sample from woods near a golf course on Kowana, near the south east coast of Honshu, Japan.
Omura isolated and cultured a then unknown species of Streptomyces bacteria, NRRL-1865, to test for anti parasitic effects. It turned out to be very successful against Heligomosoides polygyrus infections against mice.
He sent the sample to William C. Campbell.
They then isolated the active natural compounds, which they called avermectins, then developed a version of one of the avermectins (ivermectin B1) that was suitable for being manufactured, which they called ivermectin.
ENDECTOCIDE - TREATS BOTH INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PARASITES
Ivermectin was first used in animals to treat parasitic nematodes, but was soon found to be effective against ticks and lice as well, and the term endectocide was coined to describe its action. Merck and Co introduced it to the market in 1981 as an animal drug, for controlling gastrointestinal roundworms in sheep, dogs, horses and cattle and the canine heartworm, in which it is particularly useful because IVM targets the larvae but not the adult worms, and so does not risk the catastrophic effects of dead and dying mature adult worms in the heart.
1987 - IVERMECTIN FIRST USED IN HUMANS
In 1987, after it was found to be useful against human diseases onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis, which causes elephantiasis (the 1980 movie Elephant Man is about a man who had this disease), the CEO of Merck & Co., Dr Roy Vagelos, set up the Mectizan Donation Program to donate as much IVM ‘as was needed, for as long as needed, to anyone who needed it’. Since then billions of doses of Ivermectin have been given away. Ivermectin was subsequently found to be useful against soil-transmitted roundworms and scabies as well.
IVERMECTIN: THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE OF DRUGS
Like many drugs such as aspirin, which was first used to treat headaches and is now used to treat circulatory problems, Ivermectin has found to be useful for other applications. The article by Laing, Gillan and Devaney, “Old drug, new tricks” lists some uses that are being explored:
Ivermection has… been used successfully for symptomatic treatment of severe muscle spasticity in patients with spinal cord injuries… Ivermectin was shown to induce intracellular chloride flux in human leukaemia cells in vitro… leading to cell death in leukaemia cells, but not in normal haematopoetic cells. Ivermectin was also effective at slowing tumour growth in vivo in three mouse models of leukaemia, suggesting promise as a cancer chemotherapeutic.
The way the body works is amazingly complex. One of the uses of proteins is for signalling in the body. One signalling protein that is important if there are certain types of cancer in our bodies is WNT-TCF. In many diseases, including many cancers, the signalling protein WNT-TCF does not properly signal the genes to be expressed needed for fighting those cancers (WNT-TCF turns those genes on, essentially.) Apparently Ivermectin is able to target the WNT-TCF proteins.
Because of this, it turns out that Ivermectin may be useful for treating cancers of the colon, skin, lung, breast, ovary, and prostate, as well as gliomas.
In fact the list of diseases where Ivermectin may help is ridiculously long. Including the ones I’ve mentioned already, diabetes, dermatitis, flaviviruses include those causing Zika, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus, Hendra, Newcastle, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, chikungunya, Semliki Forest, Sindbis, Avian influenza A, Human immunodeficiency virus type 1, herpes, and SARS coronavirus 2, tick borne encephalitis, tuberculosis, the tsetse fly, and could (with a higher dose than normal) possibly kill the mosquitoes that spread malaria.
IVERMECTIN IS VERY SAFE.
Ivermectin has a very wide safety margin.
In fact, the dose recommended by the FLCCC front line doctors protocol is 600 μg per kilogram of body weight. This metastudy of four studies into safety of high dose Ivermectin says that 3 doses of 600 μg/kg and single doses of up to 800 μg/kg of body weight are safe and have few adverse events. They say:
Widespread use has demonstrated that ivermectin is a very safe drug with infrequent and mostly mild Adverse Events.
And
With over 30 years of ample use and over 300 million people using it annually, ivermectin is, through its use in MDA campaigns, among the most relevant public health interventions in the developing world. Despite this wide experience, there are still concerns and areas in need of evidence for a better understanding of the safety of ivermectin in order to expand its benefits to new indications and groups, like pregnant women and children <15 kg. The lack of safety data among these population groups results in their exclusion from MDA campaigns. However, recently published PK data from children receiving ivermectin for T. trichiura infections showed lower exposure profiles than adults receiving similar doses of 200 μg/kg, therefore suggesting that higher doses might be necessary in this age group.
Even doses of 2000 μg/kg are safe.
In a study including a limited number of healthy volunteers receiving doses up to 2000 μg/kg (10 times the recommended doses), ivermectin was well tolerated.
AUSTRALIA’S TGA FOUND NO SAFETY CONCERNS IN 2015
This is from the Australian Public Assessment Report for Ivermectin,
Evaluator’s overall conclusions on clinical safety
The sponsors have only provided one new study (066) in 40 healthy subjects which showed good tolerability and no safety concerns at doses ranging from 30 to 120 mg, that is, up to 10 times the proposed dose of 200 µg/kg for treatment of scabies. The PSUR (providing safety data from April 2010 to April 2011) did not identify any new safety concerns for ivermectin.
Ivermectin has been used extensively to treat 6 million people in 30 countries for onchocerciasis caused by the filarial worm Onchocerca volvulus. Ivermectin also has proven effective for the human diseases, loiasis, strongyloidiasis, bancroftian filariasis and cutaneous larva migrans. Several studies have now evaluated ivermectin for human scabies. There were no significant safety concerns reported with the use of ivermectin in any of the scabies studies to date, except for one report of fatal complications in patients from a long-term care facility but these were not confirmed in other studies.
Ivermectin, incidentally, is so safe it was used for school children in a pilot study in Sydney to treat head lice.
USE FOR TREATING COVID-19
In-vitro (in a test tube) studies were the first studies to propose that using Ivermectin to treat SARS-CoV-2 might work.
Since then, 357 studies have been done on Ivermectin’s efficiency in treating Covid-19. These have collected together in an online metastudy, Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 82 studies, on the website, https://ivmmeta.com.
The author of the website, who seems to be anonymous, has explanations and charts analysing every aspect of the studies including results for early and late treatment, hospitalisations, mechanical ventilator, deaths, and he or she analyses the statistical likelihood that the result is by chance.
As you can see, the vast majority of studies favour Ivermectin as an effective treatment for COVID-19:
If you doubt these results it is worth going to the website and looking at the thoroughness of the metastudy. It’s admirably thorough.
There are many doctors who, early on, started treating COVID-19 patients with Ivermectin, and they found it works best with a regimen of vitamins including zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, as well as Hydroxychloroquine. Zinc is the most important; there have been studies that seem to have purposely left out zinc and it seems to have a synergistic effect with Ivermectin.
WHY DON’T THE PUBLIC HEALTH AUTHORITIES RECOMMEND IT, THEN?
Dr Tess Lawrie was in a committee looking at studies recommending Ivermectin early on in the pandemic. Here is her extensive research profile on Research Gate.
It is probably best that you watch the video below, in which she discloses her secret recording of a Zoom call with Andrew Hill, a researcher affiliated with Liverpool University who was a heavy-weight advisor to WHO and worked for WHO’s subsidiary Unitaid.
As an aside, in many ways I have to say feel sorry for Andrew Hill: he is the very definition of a person who has gained the world but forfeited his soul (Matthew 16:26). It may surprise you to know that I pray for him, but Jesus commands Christians to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44); Andrew Hill is the enemy of of us all.
Initially, along with the Tess Lawrie and the team looking at the studies, Andrew Hill been very enthusiastic about the potential of Ivermectin, which is a very cheap and easily manufactured drug and is no longer in patent, but he was pressured by his funders at Unitaid to change his conclusions in the report to make it seem that Ivermectin should not be used.
$30 million in funding for his own projects was at stake, and Andrew Hill took the easy path and changed the wording of his conclusions enough to completely quash any idea of using Ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
Dr. Tess Lawrie secretly recorded the Zoom conversation in which Andrew Hill confessed to all these things, and you can hear him admitting it, but still refusing to change his mind.
It is important to know about this and I hope you take the time to watch the video.
THE AUSTRALIAN TGA DOES NOT RECOMMEND ITS USE FOR COVID 19
The following link is the TGA’s restrictions on prescribing Ivermectin. I am at a loss for words. The evidence is so clear. Their main reason for suppressing a helpful medication is that it might stop people from taking ineffective and harmful vaccines.
https://www.tga.gov.au/media-release/new-restrictions-prescribing-ivermectin-covid-19
The snide remark against those countries which allow Ivermectin to be prescribed, saying effectively they are not developed countries, is a slur on the excellent health system in places like Japan, Brazil, India, and Africa, where Ivermectin is available and in many places, given away freely. Ivermectin in a medically developed country is available as an over the counter medication, it is so safe.
THE UNITED STATES HEALTH SYSTEM IS JUST AS BAD.
A United States Government Accountability Office report was recently released; they were looking into the scientific integrity of the health bureaucracy in the United States.
It’s worth simply reading their summary:
The four agencies GAO reviewed do not have procedures that define political interference in scientific decision-making or describe how it should be reported and addressed. These agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).
The absence of specific procedures may explain why the four selected agencies did not identify any formally reported internal allegations of potential political interference in scientific decision-making from 2010 through 2021. Through semi- structured interviews and a confidential hotline, employees at CDC, FDA, and NIH told GAO they observed incidents that they perceived to be political interference but did not report them for various reasons. These reasons included fearing retaliation, being unsure how to report issues, and believing agency leaders were already aware.
THE AHPRA IN AUSTRALIA IS MUZZLING DOCTORS
The AHPRA COVID-19 vaccination position statement in Australia effectively muzzles Doctors from expressing their opinion either in the surgery or online or even privately about vaccines and alternatives to vaccines such as Ivermectin, explicitly threatening them with deregistration.
I know of an head immunologist in a hospital who refused to put his name to a letter to Centrelink telling them his honest opinion that a very immunodeficient child should not receive the child vaccinations, because they would likely challenge her immune system and kill her. This is not acceptable. That Doctor knows much more than the bureaucrats at the TGA.
Science should not be muzzled.
A new very large scale study analysing Brazilian health data says it reduces death by 92%
This is a great study! It has the longest title I’ve ever seen:
It is now peer reviewed, available here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36196304/
But that’s not why it’s good: it’s a huge, tightly controlled population study looking at the Brazilian data, examining hospitalisations and death rates among Ivermectin non users, irregular uses and regular users.
This study shows that Ivermectin decreased hospitalisations from Covid by 100%, and death by 92%. There was a particularly notable reduction in risk for those with comorbidities, and the study looked at a lot of comorbidities: matched groups by Age, Sex, Race, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), other respiratory diseases, Cardiovascular diseases, cancer, history of smoking, history of stroke, history of Myocardial Infarction (heart attack). Even irregular use of Ivermectin was helpful in cutting the risk from catching Covid.
What is great about this study is that it is asking a simple question, is highly rigorous and looks at real data, and has a very large group of people that it is looking at. There appears to be no statistical games being played.
Overall risk of death for non users was 17.3 in 10,000, risk of death for irregular users was 8.5 in 10,000 and risk of death for regular users was 2.4 in 10,000. The whole study is worth reading and was done really well.
Here’s their conclusion from the paper:
Conclusion
The regular use of ivermectin decreased hospitalization for Covid-19 by 100%, mortality by 92% and the risk of dying from Covid-19 by 86%, when compared to non-users. Protection from COVID-19 related outcomes was observed across all levels of ivermectin use, with notable reduction for risk of death in the over 50-year-old population and those with comorbidities. The reduction in infection rate was significant, irrespective of level of ivermectin use. The results of this prospective observational study of a strictly controlled population of 223,128 participants reinforce the efficacy of ivermectin and the demonstration of a dose-response effect.
I was alerted to this by a Steve Kirsch article:
FINAL THOUGHTS
The evidence indicates that Ivermectin is a very safe, effective treatment for COVID-19. It is completely against all the principles of scientific integrity and knowledge to muzzle scientists and Doctors.
CHANGE LOG
8 August 2022 added the part about the Brazilian study from my article July 2022
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LINKS
IVERMECTIN
Laing R, Gillan V, Devaney E. Ivermectin - Old Drug, New Tricks?. Trends Parasitol. 2017;33(6):463-472. doi:10.1016/j.pt.2017.02.004
Voorhis, van Huijsduijnen, and Wells - Profile of William C. Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura, and Youyou Tu, 2015 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine; Where new drugs come from: A Nobel tale of ancient Chinese texts and a Japanese golf course 2015 | PNAS 112 (52) 15773-15776 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1520952112
Gharebaghi, Reza - Ivermectin: a systematic review from antiviral effects to COVID-19 complementary regimen. The Journal of Antibiotics 2020/issue 9 pp.593-602 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-020-0336-z
Götz, Magar, Dornfeld, Giese, Pohlmann, Höper, Kong, Jans, Beer, Haller, Schwemmlea - Influenza A viruses escape from MxA restriction at the expense of efficient nuclear vRNP import. Sci Rep. 2016; 6: 23138. Published online 2016 Mar 18. doi: 10.1038/srep23138
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6048202/
SAFETY
Guzzo, C.A.; Furtek, C.I.; Porras, A.G.; Chen, C.; Tipping, R.; Clineschmidt, C.M.; Sciberras, D.G.; Hsieh, J.Y.K.; Lasseter, K.C. Safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of escalating high doses of ivermectin in healthy adult subjects. J. Clin. Pharmacol. 2002, 42, 1122–1133. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12362927/
Navarro, M.; Camprubí, D.; Requena-Méndez, A.; Buonfrate, D.; Giorli, G.; Kamgno, J.; Gardon, J.; Muñoz, J.; Krolewiecki, A. Safety of high-dose ivermectin: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J. Antimicrob. Chemother. 2020, 75, 827–834. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31960060/
Guzzo CA, Furtek CI, Porras AG et al. Safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of escalating high doses of ivermectin in healthy adult subjects. J Clin Pharmacol 2002; 42: 1122–33.https://accp1.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009127002237994?sid=nlm:pubmed
Australian Public Assessment Report for Ivermectin (TGA) 2015 https://www.tga.gov.au/sites/default/files/auspar-ivermectin-151209.pdf
Currie MJ, Reynolds GJ, Glasgow NJ, Bowden FJ. A pilot study of the use of oral ivermectin to treat head lice in primary school students in Australia. Pediatr Dermatol. 2010 Nov-Dec;27(6):595-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1525-1470.2010.01317.x. PMID: 21138467.
TREATING COVID-19
Leon Caly, Julian D. Druce, Mike G. Catton, David A. Jans, Kylie M. Wagstaff - The FDA-approved drug ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Antiviral Research, Volume 178, 2020, 104787, ISSN 0166-3542, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2020.104787 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011
Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 82 studies. Covid Analysis, Apr 25, 2022, Version 189 [Together Trial impossible data, blinding, randomization, and protocol failures, Strongyloides, BBC, GMK, SSC] https://ivmmeta.com