Jamaica Gleaner

All hail Pfizermect­in

- ■ Dr Alfred Dawes is a general, laparoscop­ic, and weight-loss surgeon; fellow of the American College of Surgeons; Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedica­l.com.

FOR THOSE who have repeatedly spurned and ridiculed doctors who have promoted the use of repurposed drugs for t he treatment of COVID-19, I hope you have been following the news of late. Blockbuste­r company Moderna has seen its share price slump by more than 27 per cent on the NYSE in the last month. Meanwhile, the scion of big pharma, Pfizer Inc, made a 20 per cent gain as positive news about the expansion of age groups for its COVID-19 vaccine and, most important, their release of a pill for COVID-19 hit the airwaves. GlaxoSmith­Kline, the original patent holders of Ivermectin, saw their share price climb with the approvals for its own US$700 oral treatment for COVID19. Now I’m no analyst, but I’d bet that the bears are out for companies whose gains have been on the back of COVID19 vaccines without a transition to oral treatments.

Conspiracy theorists have long argued that the suppressio­n of cheap repurposed drugs was the bidding of a cabal of ruthless money grabbers, whose main objective was to save lives via vaccines and vaccines only. They’ve been ably abetted by career bureaucrat­s and health administra­tors who regurgitat­e talking points handed down from their overlords above. Now we are seeing much clearer the power of money in this pandemic and how easy it is to manipulate the masses.

Ivermectin, a drug developed 40 years ago and is still listed on the World Health Organizati­on’s (WHO) list of essential medicines, has been reduced to the derogatory designatio­n of a horse dewormer. Advocates who swear by Ivermectin have been lashed as promoting unsafe, unproven cattle medicine. The programmin­g has been so intense that persons with a rudimentar­y knowledge of third form biology now pontificat­e on social media about the horse medicine and denounce trained doctors who support it. So great is their conviction based on news reports that they are sure they’re now the experts.

LICENCES SUSPENDED

Doctors who prescribe Ivermectin have been hauled before medical councils and had their licences suspended. Some of the old guard have closed ranks on the preservati­on of the status quo, that nothing is of use unless it has passed the test of a randomised, double blind, multicentr­e clinical trial. Anything else is mud. That thinking, while protective of the population against snake oils, grants a monopoly on innovation to those with the resources to carry out such studies. Most of the high-quality studies required to pass this stress test are financed by large pharmaceut­ical companies. In essence, the conservati­ve medical establishm­ent, and health authoritie­s that take directives from the WHO, have surrendere­d medical innovation to entities that are corruptibl­e or corrupt. As that has happened, there has been a transition from patient care to a focus on profits and hitting benchmarks.

Pfizer’s new antiviral has been labelled a game changer. It pivots the focus from vaccinatio­ns as the only way out of the pandemic to a focus on early outpatient treatment. The efficacy of the drug was so incontrove­rtible that the study that won its approval was stopped prematurel­y because it would have been unethical to continue. The drug works by preventing the action of a protease that cuts viral proteins into smaller pieces that are used to make the armour of the virus. If the protease can’t cut the proteins, then the virus will not have the required components to make its armour and thus new viruses cannot be produced. It is common knowledge that this works quite well to combat viral infections. What is not common knowledge but is disturbing­ly shocking is what I have to say next.

Pfizer’s drug was developed in 2003 to combat a virus known as SARS-COV. If that sounds familiar it is because it is the close relative of the coronaviru­s that causes COVID19, SARS-COV2. Why was this drug ignored from the beginning of the pandemic? Was it because vaccines would have generated a greater windfall in profits? Why did they sit on this drug and not test and release it earlier if it worked so well on a similar corona virus?

REFUSED TO CONDUCT STUDIES

Ivermectin developers, GlaxoSmith­Kline, has refused to conduct any studies on Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. Their campaign against their creation lent credibilit­y to the chorus of criticism against Ivermectin. They then released their own US$700 oral treatment. Would this have happened if they found out that the cheap repurposed drug was effective? We will never know.

Another disturbing fact is that the Pfizer drug works in the same way Ivermectin does to stop the viral protease from working. So from 2003 at least, we knew that protease inhibitors work. We knew from 2020 that Ivermectin worked against SARS-COV-2 and had protease inhibitor activity. Nobody put two and two together even as hundreds of thousands died from the lack of early outpatient care. It is hard not to believe that money had no part to play in this genocide. Repurposed drugs are usually off patent and the immense profits that can be made off a new drug over the life of a twenty-year profits steer research in a particular direction.

Maybe I am wrong and this is just a series of unfortunat­e coincidenc­es. Or maybe one day we will look back and wonder if the people who facilitate­d this crime against humanity were foolish, gutless or just pure evil. Only time will tell.

 ?? ?? Alfred Dawes
Alfred Dawes

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