Granny Science versus The Miracle Mineral Against Covid {Part 2}

In the early 2000s, a young girl of sixteen arrived at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Lusaka, Zambia emaciated and sick with AIDS. There, in addition to standard hospice care, the sister in charge Sister Mary gave the young woman selenium tablets to help her. Sister Mary reported that the young woman regained her appetite, gained strength and the weight she had lost, eventually recovered, and went home. Of course, this restoration of immune function would have been only a temporarily cure since she still needed ARVs to fight the virus. However, it does reflect why doctors use the term “the miracle mineral.” This occurred on a more massive scale during the 2014-16 Ebola Crisis in West Africa. When Dr Jerry Brown working with the Liberian Ministry of Health added 1.2mg of selenium per day to the then standard-of-care for Ebola, the mortality rate in his Ebola treatment unit quickly fell by 46.8%. Liberia tried selenium because German doctors had reported that selenium therapy completely eliminated deaths in an outbreak of deadly Marburg haemorrhagic fever virus in Angola, and Chinese scientists had reported an 80% reduction in deaths from a Hantavirus haemorrhagic fever epidemic in China. If Dr Brown had used 2.0mg of selenium daily as the doctors in Angola and China had, the mortality rate in the Monrovia ELWA-ll Ebola treatment unit easily should have fallen by 65%. High-dose selenium therapy is very safe to use in advanced disease. Selenium shows similar benefits against HIV disease. Dozens of medical journal articles report the multiple ways selenium helps against HIV/AIDS and the extensive benefits it provides against almost all opportunistic infections. Selenium works as an anti-viral (ARV) via several different mechanisms including inhibiting both the reverse transcriptase enzyme, and the primary stimulant to viral replication, the cellular replication factor nuclear-factor kappabinding (NF-KB). The NF-kB protein increases both inflammation and the replication of HIV as well as many other viruses, including SARS-2. This does not mean selenium is as strong in inhibiting HIV replication as ARV drugs are or can be used in place of them. It should not. But it should be used in addition to ARVs to improve overall treatment efficacy and boost CD4 count and haemoglobin levels. In 2015 Dr Julius Kamwesiga and his group of Rwandan and Canadian researchers reported in the journal AIDS that just one tablet of 200mcg selenium daily could slow progression of HIV by 43.6%. Nothing else except ARVs can do that. Harvard University in conjunction with the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research reported at the Toronto AIDS Conference in 2006 that in advanced AIDS patients 200mcg of selenium daily added to advanced HAART therapy more than doubled the increase in CD4 count and tripled the increase in haemoglobin compared to HAART therapy alone. Science has shown that although they are not the strongest inhibitors of viral replication, selenium supplements are the strongest, quickest way to increase CD4 count. This is because the body’s selenium level has a direct effect on the production of CD4 as compared to CD8 white blood cells by the thymus gland. Since HIV causes the thymic generated decline in CD4 count by gradually using up and draining the level of selenium in the body, AIDS accurately can be called Acquired Immune Deficiency of Selenium. has it been compromised? In Zambia from 2002 through 2006, 100,000 people died on average every year from AIDS as the Ministry of Health (MoH) refused to inform people about selenium therapy against HIV, or to provide that proven life extending therapy to them. The MoH said they could not provide selenium because “ARVs are coming,” even though they would not arrive for several years. When the first generation ARVs - AZT and D4T - did finally arrive, they were not particularly effective and caused a painful epidemic of peripheral neuropathy side effects. Meanwhile the employee HIV-committees in every government ministry had decided to use and were supplied selenium. That included every ministry but one – the Ministry of Health.

The MoH employee health committee was not allowed to access selenium. Eventually the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health was removed from his position for stealing over $3 million of Global Fund money. Zambia was penalized by the Global Fund Against AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria for that diversion of funds. Sepsis or blood poisoning occurs when bacteria or viral infection causes extensive cellular damage with toxins pouring out from dying cells. That causes a chain reaction of cellular and tissue destruction, putrefaction, and eventually organ failure. Severe Covid-19, AIDS, Ebola, and other killer viruses cause a death spiral sequence of end-stage disease consisting of a cytokine storm, sepsis, multiple-organfailure, and death. A review of the last twenty years of research on selenium’s effect on sepsis and organ failure shows that the more severe the stage of sepsis, the greater effect selenium has against it. Different trials showed that high dose selenium supplementation can reduce death from sepsis and multiple-organ-failure by between twenty and ninety percent. This compares with the reduction in mortality rates in viral diseases by using selenium of between 46.8% and 80%. Some months ago, a member of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee for Covid-19 recommended that selenium be added to the standard protocol for treating Covid-19 in KwaZulu Natal. This recommendation by a top professor of medicine from a major university was rejected. Of course, when Covid-19 first arrived, the South African Ministry of Health recommended everyone take vitamin C, although vitamin C has never been shown to independently reduce the mortality rate of any viral disease. Selenium has repeatedly demonstrated a huge impact reducing death. Why does the MoH fail to recommend something that has repeatedly been shown to be extremely safe and highly effective against viral disease? What is their rationale? Howard Armistead is an AIDS, Ebola, and Covid-19 researcher. He is Director of the Selenium Education and Research Centre in Johannesburg.