CONTENTS
Introduction
There has been a lot of contention around Ivermectin as a possible treatment and prophylaxis (preventative) of Covid-19. Perhaps more so than any other drug. Numerous governments and their domestic media outlets (most, if not all, of the mainstream media and news organisations) have gone to great lengths to paint a negative picture of Ivermectin. They have also gone to considerable measures to discredit those who suggest using it.
The mainstream perspective maintains there is no benefit to be derived from using Ivermectin in relation to Covid-19. It’s also be stated that using Ivermectin could be out-right dangerous. We find it note-worthy that a globa
Merck’s say on the matter
Merck owns the now expired patent on Ivermectin. That patent expired in 1996. Merck’s Ivermectin brand is STROMECTOL®. As the patent is expired, numerous other companies produce generic Ivermectin for a few cents per pill (marketed under numerous brands). We expect it’s safe to say Merck not longer has a great deal of commercial interest in Ivermectin.
On February 4th, 2021, Merck released a public statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic. In summary, Merck does not recommend any Covid-19 related use of Ivermectin. Here’s a quote from their statement:
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;
• No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;
• A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.
Merck Statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Conflict of Interest?
We believe there is little, if any, value in Merck’s public statement about Ivermectin in relation to Covid-19. This is due to a glaring conflict of interest. From a commercial perspective, Merck stands to gain little, if anything, if global sales of Ivermectin took a massive upsurge for the treatment and prevention of Covid-19. Merck have been developing a new drug for treating Covid-19, called Molnupiravir®, and it’s currently set bring in billions of dollars of profits for Merck.
Refer to our page on Molnupiravir.
The Mainstream Narrative
Due to the mainstream media and the way in which it mis-represented Ivermectin, I think it is safe to say most people, if they have heard of Ivermectin, mistakenly believe it’s primarily or solely a drug for horses. We are going to give an overview of how this distortion of facts occurred, and the misinformation involved.
Articles like this (shown above) example from The Guardian were sparked off by an announcement from the FDA. The FDAs Ivermectin message was arguably deceptive. Here is their August 21 2021 post on Twitter:
Similar media campaigns were launched in many other countries.
Here’s a headline from a major New Zealand media company, from September 5, 2021:
Misleading statements like the following became common in the mainstream media:
“Doctors have warned of the dangers of quack cures for Covid-19 after a Sydney man was rushed to hospital after self-administering a drug used to deworm cows called Ivermectin.
News.com.au – September 3rd 2021
Conservatives including ex Liberal MP Craig Kelly have been pushing the drug in the US and Australia as an alternative treatment for Covid-19 for months.”
Here is a quote from an article published by the BBC:
“Thousands of tablets of a horse deworming drug promoted as an alternative Covid-19 treatment despite being unproven have been seized coming into Northern Ireland. Ivermectin is used for parasitic infections in animals and also has some application for humans in small doses.”
Ivermectin: Northern Ireland seizures of unproven drug used for Covid – Sept 15th, 2021
The language used by the BBC, like the other news sources quoted here, comes across to us as an overt attempt to minimise public perception of the human use of Ivermectin, and to present it as primarily a veterinary product. This is misleading and dishonest. It’s a form of dishonesty by omission — namely telling half truths to support a particular narrative, and avoiding the whole truth because it doesn’t serve that narrative.
Here’s a quote from an article in Time magazine, dated August 26, 2021:
America’s Frontline Doctors … has been a leading promoter of ivermectin, a medication typically used to treat parasitic worms in livestock, as a “safe and effective treatment” for COVID-19.
Time — How ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ Sold Access to Bogus COVID-19 Treatments—and Left Patients in the Lurch
Referring to Ivermectin as “a drug used to deworm cows“, and as a drug “used for parasitic infections in animals and also has some application for humans in small doses” or as “a medication typically used to treat parasitic worms” is misplaced and a distortion of the truth. Ivermectin is used extensively in humans—famously so.
There are plenty of drugs used for humans which are also veterinary drugs — although there are likely none as famous and revered as Ivermectin. We think it is fair to say that under normal circumstance it wouldn’t make sense to primarily refer to a highly revered human drug as a veterinary drug or as “horse dewormer”. The situation in which such statements make sense is if, 1) the drug in question is typically only used in animals (or at least primarily used in animals, with relatively little usage in and benefit to humans), or, 2) an attempt is being made to manipulate public perception of the drug in question, and, as the case may be, to also manipulate public perception of people who are advocating Ivermectin’s as a treatment and preventative for Covid-19.
It could be argued that the establishment emphasised the “animal drug” narrative because significant numbers of people were using veterinary Ivermectin, rather than the human form. Which is true, people were reportedly consuming veterinary Ivermectin in large quantities((New York Times: How Covid Misinformation Created a Run on Animal Medicine)). So, is it the case that governments and media are simply trying to dissuade people from using veterinary Ivermectin? That’s not the way the stories were spun. Rather than investigating and reporting on the bigger picture of why people might be taking Ivermectin, the focus tended to hone in exclusively on the fact they were resorting to using a drug that’s (by insinuation) only for horses and cows.
Further Dissection
Here’s some quotes from an article published by the Seattle Times on September 13th, 2021 [emphasis added by us]:
The Washington Medical Commission is set to consider disciplinary actions on Tuesday against physicians who prescribe a powerful horse dewormer to fight COVID-19.
Since the early days of COVID, there have been two divergent responses. One embraces public health research and touts masks and vaccines. The other downplays the risks of infection and focuses on miracle cures.
…
Now there is ivermectin, which is more commonly used to deworm horses and other large animals, but with a human-strength prescription for parasites and some skin conditions.
More than 88,000 ivermectin prescriptions were reported nationwide in the second week of August, an amount 24 times higher than the pre-pandemic figure, the Washington State Department of Health said in a news release.
No evidence has been found that the drug is effective in preventing or treating COVID-19.
Seattle Times — Discipline doctors who prescribe quack COVID-19 cures (September 13, 2021)
Take the statement, “No evidence has been found that the drug is effective in preventing or treating COVID-19“. Is it true? What about the study the FDA linked to titled, Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19, (mentioned below)?
Ivermectin — The Bigger Picture
It should be pointed out that in 2015 the discovers of Ivermectin where jointly awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for their discovery, in light of its extraordinary beneficial impact on hundreds of millions of people.
Today the Avermectin-derivative Ivermectin is used in all parts of the world that are plagued by parasitic diseases. Ivermectin is highly effective against a range of parasites, has limited side effects and is freely available across the globe. The importance of Ivermectin for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world, is immeasurable. Treatment is so successful that these diseases are on the verge of eradication, which would be a major feat in the medical history of humankind. Malaria infects close to 200 million individuals yearly. Artemisinin is used in all Malaria-ridden parts of the world. When used in combination therapy, it is estimated to reduce mortality from Malaria by more than 20% overall and by more than 30% in children. For Africa alone, this means that more than 100 000 lives are saved each year.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/press-release/
Not only has Ivermectin helped billions of people, it is considered to be extremely safe, as detailed below:
Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found.
Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective
There are few drugs that can seriously lay claim to the title of ‘Wonder drug’, penicillin and aspirin being two that have perhaps had greatest beneficial impact on the health and wellbeing of Mankind. But ivermectin can also be considered alongside those worthy contenders, based on its versatility, safety and the beneficial impact that it has had, and continues to have, worldwide—especially on hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people.
It’s reported((“The program reaches more than 300 million people in the affected areas annually, with more than 4 billion treatments donated since 1987” — https://www.merck.com/stories/mectizan/)) that during the past 34 years over 4 billion doses of Ivermectin have been used in humans.
The above quotes, from scientific journals, paint a very different picture from the messages conveyed by the FDA, MedSafe (NZ), the BBC, and the mainstream media in general. Far from just being “a horse drug”, Ivermectin is literally revered as one of the most important drugs for humans ever invented.
The obvious question — Is there an Ivermectin smear campaign?
Considering Ivermectin’s medical notoriety for its life-saving benefits to billions of human beings, and considering that as recently as 2015 its inventors received a Nobel Prize for their contribution to humanity, why are the mainstream media outlets and numerous governments going to such great lengths to manipulate the public into seeing it as little more than a potentially dangerous horse dewormer? Why are governments and the media engaging in what appears to be little better than a smear campaign against this drug? What happened to honesty, objectivity, and transparency we have every right to expect from our media and governments?
Human Use of Ivermectin
Ivermectin is one of the most broadly used drugs in global health. More than 3.7 billion treatments have been safely distributed in the context of Merck’s donation programme.
Safety of oral ivermectin during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis (January, 2020)
Covid-19 Ivermectin Studies
The consistent message from the MSN is that “there no substantial evidence Ivermectin is of any benefit for treating or preventing Covid-19“. The FDA states, “Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.“((FDA: Why You Should Note User Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent Covid-19))
Oddly, in the next sentence of that FDA webpage there is a link to a study called, “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19“((Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19, American Journal of Therapeutics: May/June 2021 – Volume 28 – Issue 3)). That study concludes: [emphasis ours]
Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.
Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
There are lots of other studies we could refer to indicating Ivermectin is at least worth distributing. It has a high level of proven safety, there’s a significant amount of anecdotal evidence indicating it may be beneficial, and it’s incredibly low cost and high availability.