COVID-19 CINDERELLA DRUGS
Many people know the fairy-tale of Cinderella, the poor girl whose evil stepmother forced her to do all the hard chores cleaning the house while her stepsisters primped and lolled about. Eventually Cinderella was invited to the palace ball, the shoe fit, and she married the handsome prince. Perhaps that will be the fate of a long disregarded, little white pill in this pandemic.
Since early 2020 there has been a deluge of misinformation, speculation, proposed fake cures, fantasy, conspiracies and just plain BS. Traditionally when pandemics hit, it is open season for charlatans, false prophets and unscrupulous “healers” to come out of the woodwork. In the first thirty years of the AIDS pandemic at least thirty different cures for HIV were touted. In one month in 2006 I heard of three different cures for HIV, one from a man in New York, one from South Africa, and one from the President of Benin. So many cures, so little time! In this pandemic we have had “miracle cures” touted by Donald Trump – hydroxychloroquine – and Brazilian President Bolsonaro – Ivermectin. Many of these are dangerous and none of them work. As the age old saying goes, caveat emptor - buyer beware. My own maxim is – when in doubt, follow the science.
I became infected with HIV in 1983. Thirty-eight years later I have never been sick with that disease except when first infected. How did I accomplish that? First, I joined a research study called MACS, the largest and longest running study of HIV in the world. Then on New Year’s Day 1989 I started taking AZT, the first but not particularly effective antiretroviral drug – ARV – to treat HIV. Then I started experimenting on myself with safe but potentially effective complimentary therapies. By 1991 had made my first discovery. Eventually I became an internationally known AIDS researcher.
After studying virology and immunology for ten years I focused on how viruses and the immune system interact - how they affect each other. Scientific journals report that viruses steal the essential trace element selenium from cells and the immune system. In large part that can explain how viruses make cells, organs, and people sick. It also helps explain how viruses cause the immunodeficiency that results in AIDS, and death from Ebola, Covid-19, and other viral diseases. Declining selenium levels cause the thymus gland to reduce production of immune regulating CD4 cells. The rapid increase in viral load and resultant depletion of selenium causes CD4 count and the immune system to collapse. Immune dysregulation, a “cytokine storm”, organ failure and death follow like night follows day. It is a sequence of cause and effect.
What can be done to avoid this? Two things. One – slow viral replication as early as possible - from the very start of infection.
And two - replenish the body’s selenium supply as rapidly as possible. Anyone who has ever had a friend or family member with HIV probably knows about the two major classes of ARV drugs – protease inhibitors (PIs) and reverse transcriptase inhibitors (RTIs). Those were specifically designed to work against HIV and do not work against other viruses. What most people have never heard of is nuclear-factor kappa-binding inhibitors (NF-kBIs). NF-kBIs are science’s best kept secret. Few scientists are familiar with them, and even fewer doctors are aware of them. They were the neglected stepchildren of HIV research but now with Covid-19 they are ready for their Cinderella moment.Howard Armistead is an AIDS activist, Director of the Selenium Education and Research Centre (SERC) in Johannesburg. Find out more at sercsa.org