Expand search form

COVID-19, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Covid Coincidence

No Comments

“They” say there is no such thing as coincidence. They must have known about Covid-19, the political viral disease.

Is it a coincidence that the year of the Covid is also the year that scientific integrity died? Discourse is the lifeblood of science. I thought we had gotten past jailing or guillotining or dismissing as crackpots people whose scientific theories with which we disagreed. Many scientific mavericks were vilified: William Harvey describing the circulatory system, Ignaz Semmelweis’ advocating for simple hand-washing, Barry Marshall determining that H. pylori, not spicy foods caused peptic ulcers, to name a few. We have a modern day version of public humiliation and worse. Data that does not fit the “official story” is removed from popular social media sites, not reported on mainstream television channels, and hidden from easily accessed public websites.

Was it a coincidence that an all-out campaign to debunk the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment for Covid-19 occurred after President Trump had good words to say about it in an election year? The denigration was relentless, despite 60 years of use in autoimmune diseases for its anti-inflammatory effects. Hydroxychloroquine was also found to have anti-blood clot effects. And with several viruses it was shown to inhibit viral entry into cells and viral replication. All of these properties would be effective in treating Covid-19 symptoms.

Another anti-parasitic medication, ivermectin, has 20 possible mechanisms of action against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including interrupting viral entry into cells and anti-inflammatory action. Significantly, ivermectin is a protease inhibitor, that is, a substance that blocks proteins that allow viruses to reproduce themselves.

Is it a coincidence that Pfizer’s new anti-Covid pill, PF-07321332 is also a protease inhibitor? Notably, Pfizer’s drug would have to be given early after the onset Covid symptoms. This is also the recommendation for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin—a recommendation that many studies ignored when dismissing the value of these anti-parasitic medications.

Is it a coincidence that Merck, who distributes ivermectin, is seeking fast-track approval for molnupiravir, an antiviral agent to treat Covid-19? How convenient that the U.S. government will purchase $1.2 billion worth of the yet-to-be-approved drug. And how predictable that vaccine maker Moderna’s stock fell 11 percentafter the announcement. Vaccines are yesterday’s cash cow. Is it a coincidence that ivermectin costs no more than $100 dollars per treatment course and molnupirivir costs $700 per 10-day course of treatment?

Is it a coincidence that the pharmaceutical and health products industry, to keep their seat at the table, has spent $171,262,239 so far this year in lobbying and that Pfizer and Merck were among the top five clients?

Is it a coincidence that Dr. Fauci, in dismissing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, resurrected his same excuses for not using a drug that frontline physicians found effective for AIDS patients? Physicians begged Dr. Fauci to publicize the use of the sulfa drug, Bactrim, as prevention and treatment for PCP (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) in AIDS patients. According to investigative author Sean Strub, “Fauci refused to acknowledge the evidence and … even encouraged people with AIDS to stop taking treatments, like Bactrim, that weren’t specifically approved for use in people with AIDS.” Dr. Fauci told activists there was “no data to suggest PCP prophylaxis was beneficial and that it may, in fact be dangerous.” Thousands of deaths could have been avoided. This sounds chillingly familiar to his position on Covid treatments. Damn the clinical success. I don’t care if the drugs work; I’m waiting for my pet drugs with high price tags!

Is it a coincidence that Dr. Fauci’s personal favorite AIDS drug, AZT (zidovudine), was ramrodded through the FDA? And that it was toxic, didn’t work, and in fact killed people, like his favorite anti-Covid drug, remdesivir? Remdesivir’s toxic effects were known when it was tested against Ebola virus disease in 2019. By April 2020, it was known that 60 percent of Covid patients given remdesivir had adverse effects, including liver and kidney injury. Worse yet, remdesivir did not improve survival. Indeed, a few months later the World Health Organization recommended against its use, but Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) still has it on its treatment protocol at $3,120 per treatment course.

I have a broader question about why diversity of thought is squelched. Tyrants despise free thinkers. It is not coincidence that President Biden, who wants to exert more federal government control over our lives through vaccine mandates, bought all of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatments that were not in short supply but were being successfully used by “red states.” He vowed that “if governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”

Health and Human Services framed the sequestration more kindly: “This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country.” Is it a coincidence that “governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods” sounds like socialism?

 

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, Uncategorized, What's New

The New Wasteland: COVID-19’s Shameful Legacy

No Comments

Discarded surgical masks strewn along the sidewalk aptly represent COVID-19’s lasting legacy. The federal medical bureaucracy’s response to the pandemic has resulted in a wasteland of lost economic and educational opportunities, psychologically damaged children, terminally lonely nursing home residents, and lives lost to suicide, illicit drug overdoses, and missed diagnoses. 

Thanks to the lockdowns, 140,104 businesses were temporarily closed and 97,966 were permanently closed by September 2020 according to a Yelp survey. Significantly, more than half of these were local small businesses—and small businesses employ nearly half of all American workers. Predictably, the workers who were most affected were not the professionals pulling in a paycheck while working from home. They were the working-class folks whose jobs the bureaucrats considered non-essential.

The disruption of children’s education and socialization will haunt us for years to come in terms of earning potential and mental health. The central planners punished children for months although the mortality in children from COVID-19 is roughly equivalent to that of influenza year to year. Moreover, CDC data shows that attending school or child care was not associated with having positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. 

So why were children barred from attending school? To protect Grandma. Even if children were found to be transmitters of disease—they haven’t been, a sensible alternative to depriving all students of a proper education and social life would have been to ask children whether elders lived in their homes. If so, that group could have been provided with educational accommodations. But the way of bureaucracy is all or none with no room for individual considerations.

Typical of blanket decrees, the most vulnerable fared the worst. Thirty percent of parents from low-income homes reported that their children never logged on to the computer for virtual schooling. And almost half of special needs children received no support. Worse yet, insurance claims for pediatric mental health visits as well as teen overdoses doubled in March and April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.  

Adults fell prey to the dangers of lockdowns. There was an increase in alcohol sales, use of prescription anti-anxiety medications, and domestic violence, Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationreported a 24 percent increase in traffic deaths in 2020. Almost two-thirds of the seriously or fatally injured tested positive for alcohol, marijuana, or opioids. According to the CDC, the 12 months ending May 2020 had the highest number of U.S. overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period (more than 81,000). This increase was mainly due to illicitly obtained fentanyl. 

Anyone who isn’t hidden away in an ivory tower could predict that isolated people deprived indefinitely of their livelihoods, recreational outlets, and family relationships would sink into depression. The CDC reportedin late June, that 40 percent of U.S. adults surveyed were struggling with mental health or substance abuse. And 11% say they seriously considered suicide. These unintended consequences were foreseeable yet Americans were subjected to social isolation in the face of no evidence that lockdowns were a useful COVID mitigation strategy. Ironically, according to CDC data, “masking”, a symbol of our isolation, has made no difference in COVID infections.

With the media’s help, the public health gurus waged a campaign of fear to keep us in line while we waited for Dr. Fauci’s solution: vaccines. One of the medical bureaucracy’s biggest (intentional) missteps was the failure to support early treatment of COVID. They told us to stay home until we couldn’t breathe. Of course, at that point the virus has overwhelmed the body. The scientific elite maligned study after study and thousands of clinical successes with early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in favor of unproven high priced drugs. Despite the CDC and FDA previously acknowledging the 60-year safety record of hydroxychloroquine, it miraculously became harmful in 2020. 

It is as if the medical bureaucrats are making up the ever-changing rules as they go along. They claimed they were “following the science.” Why haven’t we heard from these politically driven experts as hundreds of illegal migrants are released into the United States without COVID tests while U.S. citizens are being fined for not wearing useless masks?

Shameless non-clinician bureaucrats have stolen our lives, stolen the smiles from children’s faces, and bullied a segment of the population into paralyzing fear. Those hiding behind masks (including our precious children) no longer see people as people, but as 170-pound nests of germs and certain death.

Dr. Fauci remains the highest paid federal government employee, and Dr. Birx has moved on to her private air purifier consulting job. Meanwhile, we are left in the wasteland with their legacy: boarded up shops; needless lost lives; and the death of common sense, scientific discourse, and medical freedom that we may never regain. And why?

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, Op-eds, What's New

COVID-19: Black Americans Need Action, Not Navel-gazing

No Comments

On Martin Luther King, Jr.’s holiday, I’m reminded that Rev. King was not only a thinker but a man of action. 

While today’s social justice omphaloskeptics are pondering white privilege, Marxist critical race theory, and “the intersectionality of health equity,” COVID-19 is busy killing black and brown Americans.

Black Americans continue to get infected and die from COVID-19 at rates more than 1.5 times their share of the population. Hispanic and Native Americans face similar disparities. Black Americans are twice as likely to be hospitalized as whites. Moreover, when admitted to the hospital, people from racial and ethnic minority groups were in worse shape than their white counterparts. Consequently, they were more likely to die. 

No need to worry, President-elect Biden has promised a racial disparities task force in response to COVID. Gee, 35 years ago, the Health and Human Services’ seminal Heckler Report on health disparities found that minorities had a lower life expectancy and a higher death rate from heart disease and diabetes, among other things. Just what we need: another task force to ruminate about disparities.

It is well known that black Americans have persistently higher rates of hypertension compared to whites. Indeed, 75 percent of black people in the United States develop high blood pressure by the age 55 compared to 55 percent of white men and 40 percent of white women. To make matters worse, fewer black than white Americans have their blood pressure controlled. Additionally, black American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to have diabetes as well as more complications, such as amputations and kidney failure. 

Early in the COVID journey, clinicians found that hypertension and obesity were key predictors of COVID mortality. Not surprisingly, black patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes compared with all other racial and ethnic groups combined. And the obesehospitalized patients were more likely to die. Further, people with darker skin—63 percent of Hispanic people and 82 percent of black people have low vitamin D levels. And vitamin D may lessen the severity of COVID disease.

In one study, compared with other racial groups, black people were less likely to have been tested for COVID prior to being seen at the hospital. The researchers noted that the key advantage to earlier diagnosis is the decrease in community spread. The study fails to acknowledge that early diagnosis would lead to early treatment. Why? The party line is that there is no early treatment. Not true. Early treatment works.

Given the severity of the COVID illness in black Americans, one gets the feeling that withholding treatment is a familiar tune. In the disgraceful 40-year Tuskegee experiment, treatment was withheld from black men so scientists could learn the natural history of the disease. The control group continued to receive placebos, despite the fact that penicillin became the recommended treatment for syphilis several years into the experiment. Praise the Lord for randomized controlled studies.

Do Dr. Fauci and his pharma cronies care about black folks? (He didn’t seem to care about the AIDS patients). He exhorts about the need for controlled studies and dismisses vast clinical experience. But as Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC noted, “waiting for more data is often an implicit decision not to act, or to act on the basis of past practice rather than on the best available evidence.” 

Nations with plenty of black and brown folks, such as Cuba, India, Algeria, and Costa Rica are achieving lower overall death rates with early treatment with hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug with an over 50-year safety record. Other countries are using ivermectin, a safe antiparasitic used to treat scabies. Perhaps because these drugs are inexpensive as compared to the new expensive potential wonder drugs and the cost of ICU care, poorer countries were eager to try something that worked, rather than wait for a piece of pie in the sky. 

Repurposing of FDA-approved drugs that have been used safely on millions of patients is not new. Amazingly, a combination of an antibiotic (doxycycline), a diabetes drug (metformin), a treatment for intestinal worms (mebendazole), and the cholesterol-lowering statin, Lipitor was found to extend the survival of people with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer! The authors of the innovative study noted that “it is well recognized that high-cost randomized controlled trials may not be an economically viable option for studying patent-expired off-label drugs. In some cases, randomized trials could also be considered as ethically controversial.” Money talks, helping patients walks.

While hand-wringing over the tragic COVID patient deaths, the “chosen ones” silence discussion about preventive and early treatment. Senate hearings on the subject were ignored, even mocked. There’s no need for early treatment with safe medications because the (experimental) vaccine has arrived.Meanwhile people continue to needlessly die.

Let’s not repeat Tuskegee. When there is a low risk and reasonable likelihood of helping, let the patient and doctor choose between doing nothing or actively treating. Positive clinical results and the morality of life and death matter more than crowing about scientific purity.

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Censorship Kills

No Comments

Election irregularities, Chinese spies seducing a congressman, and the shocking revelation that “Dr.” Jill Biden was not a real doctor briefly let us turn our attention away from COVID-19. Unfortunately, COVID is still here and has made it to Antarctica. COVID continues to directly or indirectly hasten deaths. Along with the arrival of two much anticipated vaccines is a new active variant. The effects of both remain to be seen.

For months we’ve heard that COVID is not like the flu. It is a different animal. It may leave the infected person with long term aftereffects. Given the potential problems, the FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS and the alphabet health agencies should be advocating for early pharmacological treatment and prevention. Instead, we are told to wash our hands, wear masks—which may or may not help—and to stay away from one another. Indeed, as California’s Health and Human Services Secretary admitted, the state’s order banning outdoor dining and closing playgrounds was “not a comment on the relative safety” of the activity but a tactic for keeping people at home. 

Stay home — although 66 percent of new coronavirus hospitalizations in New York were in people who had not routinely left their homes. Stay inside — although there are studies echoing observations during the 1918 flu pandemic finding that people who went outside had better outcomes. A recent Spanish studyshowed that 80 percent of patients with COVID had low levels of vitamin D. Another study found that people with adequate vitamin D levels had a 51 percent lower risk of dying from COVID. People at risk for vitamin D deficiency include those who have dark skin, are elderly or overweight, or stay indoors. Interestingly, these groups are particularly hit hard by COVID.

Simply put, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Any risk of taking proper doses of vitamins and minerals is dwarfed by the risks associated with COVID. Useful vitamins and minerals include zinc (inhibits viral replication), vitamin D3 and vitamin C, and quercetin (to help drive zinc into the cells). Additionally, melatonin, a hormone found naturally in the body that regulates our sleep cycle, also has significant anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and mitochondrial protective effects.

What are we to do if we get ill from COVID? While the numinous Dr. Fauci says we urgently need early treatments, existing effective treatments are largely ignored, discouraged, or even prohibited. The party line recommends doing nothing for symptoms of fever, coughing, or breathing problems other than rest, stay home, drink fluids, and monitor. The threshold for calling the doctor is appalling: coughing up blood, trouble breathing, chest pain, confusion, severe drowsiness, or “a blue tint to your lips or face.” Wait until you turn blue?! 

I have a better idea. Don’t just curl up in bed. Call the doctor right away and request pharmacological treatment, backed by evidence. Sadly, most potential patients are unaware of early treatment because Facebook, Twitter, and Google, the de facto arm of government communication, block the information or permanently delete the accounts of physicians who advocate for safe, effective treatments. 

They argue that the use of well-known medications is “off-label,” that is, prescribing a drug for a different condition or dose than the FDA had approved. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 20 percent of all prescriptions in the United States are for off-label use. This is often done when the “doctor has seen evidence that a certain drug works well for an off-label use.” For example, using a diuretic to treat acne or a chemotherapy agent as a preferred alternative to surgery for an ectopic pregnancy. Billions of doses of [censored] and [censored] have been safely used for over 50 years. Repurposing anti-parasitics as antivirals certainly is not out of the realm of medical innovation.

Sitting at my Apple computer that could have been built by Uighurs in Communist re-education camps, I received another email from someone lamenting that he was blocked from social media. No, it wasn’t for child porn (like the former political consultant right-hand man of congressperson Barbara Lee), but for advocating early treatment of COVID-19. These “cancelled” physicians are not receiving $37 million innovation grants, but are saving patients’ lives for a few dollars a treatment. 

The COVID horse is out of the barn. We need to tame it. Let’s start by educating patients, influencers, and policymakers about early treatment with [censored] and preventive measures such as [censored] and the proven uselessness, arbitrariness, and social and economic costs of [censored] that serve to make “poor people poorer” and erode trust in public health officials.

We silently watched as a shameless Nancy Pelosi played games with COVID financial relief legislation hoping to influence an election. Physicians and patients must not stand on the sidelines while political vultures feast on the carcasses of terminally lonely and depressed, drug overdosed, or financially ruined Americans.

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Elections, Featured, Media & Press, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

COVID-19 Won the Presidential Election

No Comments

One is hard-pressed to deny that Joe Biden is a weak, corrupt, pathologically lying, creepy dirty old man who has lived off the government teat for 50 years. And he allegedly won the 2020 presidential election. Are Americans that ignorant? Or has Joseph Stalin’s political philosophy that has been simmering in America for years finally come to fruition? COVID was the not-so-secret agent.

The COVID pandemic was Nancy Pelosi’s stated reason for inserting blanket mail-in voting into a COVID financial relief package several months before the election. This method is a breeding ground for fraud. It is not absentee voting where the voter requests a ballot. With mail-in, a ballot is sent to anyone on the voter rolls—dead or alive. Magically, after all the ballots were mailed out, the CDC announced that people suffering from COVID could vote in person as long as they told the poll workers of their condition.

During his bloody 30-year career, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) made two immediately pertinent points. First, “Political power does not rest with those who cast votes; political power rests with those who count votes.” 

The second point lays the foundation for the first: “The press is our Party’s sharpest and most powerful weapon.” The Left’s plans for fundamentally changing America were upended by three years of peace and prosperity. Enter the media collaborators. CNN has a permanent sidebar banner with global statistics with no context. There were never stories on recoveries or successful treatments, of which there are many inexpensive, home-based therapies. Many studies demonstrate positive results from the anti-inflammatory antiparasitics hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, fluvoxasmine (antidepressant), budesonide (inhaled steroid), vitamins D and C, quercetin, and zinc. 

Social media refused to post materials favorable to the President or unfavorable to his opponent. I presume we are supposed to be impressed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifying that he should not have censored news about Hunter Biden’s internationally sensitive business ventures. Too little, too late. But he knows that. He had a mission to complete: emulate Pravda, censor and manipulate speech, and sway the election. 

We knew this was coming. 60 years ago Nikita Khrushchev predicted of the United States, “your grandchildren will live under communism.” If we didn’t believe Stalin or Khrushchev, maybe we will believe Hollywood. Given the perpetual “2 weeks to flatten the curve” lockdown and the paucity of non-Pravda network news, 50-year-old television shows have become welcome substitutes. The 1967-68 series called The Invaders was premised on aliens from another planet descending upon Earth to “make it their world.” The aliens’ dialogue was eerily familiar to the current authoritarian COVID Great Reset social engineering blather. 

In The Ivy Curtain episode an alien “college” course instructed new alien arrivals that “fear is an emotion that dominates all human behavior.” The aliens would “use fear as a weapon, to twist anxiety into hate, suspicion into violence, cowardice into surrender.” COVID was the convenient vehicle to induce fear. Was The Invaders pure entertainment or allegory? 

On the technical side, 2019’s futuristic Terminator: Dark Fate  is prophetic. When Facebook, Google, Twitter, and big tech hyperbolically propagandizing the coronavirus – excuse me, Skynet’s machines began to overtake humans, the government told the people to hide and isolate for a while. Hiding became the “new normal” until one strong leader inspired humans to fight the machines.

The one-sided news presentation, the post-election fortuitous release of 2 vaccines and revelation of Biden’s lockdown plans, mayors and governors and congresspersons flagrantly attending and planning celebrations—maskless, opened many eyes to the media’s manipulation. Some voters are feeling like someone who got drunk in Las Vegas and woke up in bed married to a stranger or in a bathtub of ice minus a kidney. Stalin has another thought for these folks: “Words are one thing – deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds.” Sounds a bit like Barack Obama. President Trump’s words did not do justice to his deeds. Everything was for Americans – more jobs, energy independence, improving national parks, medical choice for veterans, prison reform, advancing historically black colleges, opportunity zones in poor neighborhoods, and on and on.

By contrast, the compassionate Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez launched the Trump Accountability Project. The hit list included individuals who worked for the Trump for President campaign, Republican National Committee, and affiliated PACs in 2016 or 2020, those who staffed his government, individuals who worked in any role as a political appointee in the Trump Administration, and those who funded him, and the millions of Americans who elected him. This hateful website silenced itself but the Stalinesque sentiment runs deep and is certain to resurface.

COVID-19, Guest Column, Media & Press, Politics, What's New

Dr. Jane’s Pearls

No Comments

COVID-19: Who Is Responsible for ‘Unfathomable’ Deaths?

You may well ask why the U.S. should be a world leader in per-capita COVID-19 deaths. Our morning paper calls passing the 200,000 mark “unfathomable.”

A better question: Why is the death rate about 75 percent lower in many countries?

The gap seems to be between countries that treat COVID-19 early or prophylactically with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and those that, like the U.S., discourage or prohibit its use.

Findings of favorable results with HCQ or chloroquine began to be reported in global publications as early as Feb 6. Most Americans first became aware of HCQ on Mar 19, when President Trump mentioned it during a press conference, alongside other hopeful treatments. He said: “Now, this is a common malaria drug. It is also a drug used for strong arthritis… And it’s shown very encouraging—very, very encouraging early results… I think it could be a game changer. And maybe not.”

After this, the war on HCQ was on. The President was accused of “touting” an “unproven” and even “very dangerous” remedy. Most of more than 160 media reports published in April and May managed to work the adjective into headlines or opening sentences. Positive evidence mounted but was dismissed as “anecdotal.” Americans were told that we needed to await the “gold standard”—randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Organized medicine discouraged use, and state governments restricted or banned HCQ for COVID-19 (but not for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis).

The treatment of HCQ goes “from bad science to malpractice,” according to a just-released white paper “Hydroxychloroquine and the Burden of Proof: An Urgent Call to Depoliticize Medicine in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” The Economic Standard, September 2020. Take-home lessons:

  • Flawed and even falsified studies were published and promoted by media outlets eager to discredit Trump, while positive studies were impugned or ignored.
  • HCQ is commonly prescribed for at least 25 indications in addition to malaria.
  • HCQ’s prolongation of the QT interval is in the mid-range of 30 commonly used drugs.
  • Hundreds of drugs have been approved without RCTs, including tetanus vaccine, insulin, tetracycline, warfarin, heparin, prednisone, Keflex, and high-dose penicillin for neurosyphilis.
  • Only 8.5% of the American Heart Association’s guidelines are supported by RCTs.
  • A meta-analysis covering 43 studies concludes: “HCQ was found consistently effective against COVID-19 when used early, in the outpatient setting,” adding, “No credible study found worse outcomes with HCQ use. No mortality or other serious safety issue was found.”
  • Four RCTs were problematic for many reasons.

A hundred thousand lives may be needlessly lost because safe, effective treatment was denied. Who is responsible? Influential bureaucrats who control policy and messaging? Social media censors? Major media outlets? Health plans and hospitals? Professional associations?

September 22, 2020

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Lowering the Barr

No Comments

The excoriation of Attorney General Barr at the congressional hearing was as low as politicians could go on the lack of humanity and civility scale. The Barr hearing was more like a Roman circus than a search for answers to important national issues. If this is what congress calls performing their duty under the Constitution, we are in for real trouble. Finger wagging, talking over, showboating, and developing soundbites for their reelections are not a search for truth.

It appears some congresspersons had been to a training session where they were told to call Attorney General Barr “Sir” as an expression of contempt, not respect. Chairman Nadler advised him that “our members expect sincere answers today and our country deserves no less.” However, unfriendly congresspersons continually asked questions in the form of statements and as Attorney General Barr began to respond, the congresspersons instantly interrupted him by “reclaiming their time.” To his credit, Attorney General Barr calmly responded, “but this is a hearing. I thought I was the one that was supposed to be heard.” Accusing someone of a crime and then gagging him officially crosses into Stalin’s henchman’s “show me the man and I’ll show you his crime” territory. 

Two moments sank to a new low. Referring to Attorney General Barr’s kind words about the recently departed John Lewis, Rep. Cedric Richmond obnoxiously declared, “you should [sic] really should keep the name of the honorable John Lewis out of the Department of Justice’s mouth.” Descending into the realm of subhumans, Chairman Nadler refused to grant Attorney General Barr a 5 minute break after hours of grilling. Refusing someone a (likely bathroom) break is a tactic straight out of enhanced interrogation techniques for dummies. 

The next day, during a congressional hearing on anti-competitive activities, the four “Big Tech” CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Alphabet (Google) were treated with kid gloves by all but a few congresspersons. Perhaps to protect a large source of campaign donations, denials of bias were allowed to go unchallenged despite evidence to the contrary.

 Concurrently, physicians trying to save their patients’ lives are being “cancelled.” YouTube removed as “misinformation” videos of the physicians who advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine for early treatment of COVID-19, based on their extensive personal as well as international treatment successes. Hydroxychloroquine is an FDA-approved medication with a 65 year history of safety—not morning glory seeds. 

With all the garbage on Twitter, the removal of the physicians’ video based on the justification that it did not comport with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations seems extreme. Recall that WHO also did not recommend wearing masks, the new Holy Grail of COVID-19 prevention. And are we to believe the same crowd who excoriated President Trump as racist for blocking travel from China at the end of January while they were encouraging people to frolic in crowded Chinatown in late February? 

Let’s look at a couple of examples of accepted medical tenets that were initially dismissed. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician, famously was ridiculed for advocating handwashing after performing autopsies before touching living patients. In less than 6 months after handwashing was instituted, post-partum (childbirth) fever mortality rates dropped 90 percent, from 18.3 percent to less than 2 percent. Despite the evidence, he was vilified and eventually was admitted against his will to an insane asylum where he died 2 weeks after being severely beaten. Now, failure to wash hands is unthinkable.

More recently, in the mid-1980s Dr. Barry Marshall was convinced that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria, rather than the stress, acid, and spicy foods theory. Resistance was fierce: “Everyone was against me. But I knew I was right.” Finally, he drank a Petri dish with some thousand million bacteria, including cultured Helicobacter pylori and shortly developed documented stomach ulcers. Dr. Marshall received the 2005 Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Given that other prior coronaviruses, MERS (2012) and SARS (2003) still pop up, it is likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, physicians want safe, affordable (less than $30 per full treatment), readily available COVID-19 treatments for their patients. Hydroxychloroquine—not a big Pharma moneymaker—is effective for many patients and physicians with experience simply want to educate others about another weapon in the fight against an ugly virus.

The vitriol and disregard for fact-finding on the part of congresspersons and the dissembling on the part of the social media giants leaves one wondering: Do the people who savaged Attorney General Barr and gave big tech a pass want people to live in fear of living life? Do they want people to be unemployed and dependent of the government for survival? Do they want children to stay home from school and regress from normal childhood development? Do they want the country’s economic boom to remain in the rear view mirror? Would they allow people to needlessly die in order to gain political power?

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Medicine, Op-eds, What's New

Hoarding Toilet Paper is Not the New Normal

No Comments

By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD

During my last visit to the grocery store, after directing me to the hermetically sealed conveyor belt, the clerk grinning proudly said, “welcome to the new normal.” No, thank you. These ad hoc restrictions on our liberties are not normal—at least in the United States of America.

In the name of public health, prisoners have been released from jail, physicians are being restricted in what drugs they can use to treat their COVID-19 patients, and cancer patients are having their treatments delayed as “elective.”

Every day 7,400 people die in the United States from many causes, including infectious diseases, but running totals are not broadcast on every medium. The unceasing barrage of news programs about the coronavirus/COVID-19 have become a means to whip us into submission.

The mayor of Los Angeles is perversely proud that 99 percent of “non-essential” businesses are closed and threatens to sue those who have not closed. A local town has issued 129 citations at $1,000 a pop for non-compliance. Riverside county plans to cite residents witnessed to have their faces uncovered.

Obamacare’s architect, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, has suggested that the country stay on lockdown for one and a half years, or “until we find a vaccine or effective medications.” This is lunacy.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 40 percent of women, 37 percent of men and nearly half of parents with a child younger than 18 years old report they have either lost their job, income, or had their hours reduced without pay. A classic 1979 study found that for every 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate, mortality increased by 1.2 percent, cardiovascular disease by 1.7 percent, cirrhosis of the liver by 1.3 percent, suicides by 1.7 percent, arrests by 4 percent, and reported assaults by 0.8 percent. Pre-pandemic, nearly 20 people per minute were physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. Predictably, episodes of domestic violence and child abuse have now increased. Closed businesses have become easy targets for thieves.

There is a rational course of action without shutting down human contact and the economy. Sweden has no more deaths or symptomatic infections per capita than many other countries despite choosing to merely encourage its citizens to physically distance as much as possible.

We must allow physicians to treat their patients as they see fit with effective drugs. Multiple physicians around the world are reporting success with hydroxychloroquine: a new off-label use for this FDA-approved drug for a new virus. If this virus is akin to Armageddon, then all reasonable ideas should be welcomed. The erection of barriers to the use of this potentially life-saving drug by many governors and state medical boards is appalling and unforgiveable. Hydroxychloroquine was approved for medical use in the United States more than 60 years ago. It has been safely used for years for malaria prophylaxis, autoimmune disease, and porphyria, a blood disease affecting hemoglobin (that carries oxygen to our tissues). Hydroxychloroquine is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, the “most effective and safe” to meet the most important needs of a health system. Widespread use of this inexpensive drug could obviate the need for ICU beds and ventilators.

In addition to early treatment, we must have a rational policy for getting people back to work. All states are not affected equally. Let’s test every working person for antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. We may find that many have had an asymptomatic infection. These immune individuals will not pass the disease to others. At-risk individuals can choose to stay at home.

Ending the lockdown is not about Wall Street or disregard for people’s lives; it about saving lives. Advanced stages of non-COVID diseases, suicides, domestic violence, increase in substance abuse and mental health disorders, permanent poverty, and dissolution of the middle class are unacceptable. Our society must not be fractured into those who live in gated communities and those who live in the streets, trailer parks, and decaying homes that they can no longer afford to keep up.

We all want to do our part to attenuate the number of serious COVID infections in our communities. But we cannot hand our lives over to the government, particularly when the virus has become an opportunity for Congress to pass pork-filled legislation, for showboating governors to out-quarantine each other, and for politically connected tech companies to share cell phone tracking data with the government. I would hate to think some have a financial incentive for promoting a yet-to-be tested and approved vaccine in lieu of an effective, inexpensive and readily available treatment.

People are saying America will never be the same. Hopefully, this will not mean the statists have succeeded in using COVID as an excuse to enact laws that will permanently curtail our liberties and freedom to practice medicine in the best interest of our patients.

Bio: Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is Immediate Past President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School.  Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law.  She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers.

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Medicine, Op-eds, What's New

Will the FDA Find Courage in the Age of COVID-19?

No Comments

By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD

While on lockdown to save our neighbors from a lonely death from the disease called CoViD-19, many of us have turned to movies. I beg you not to rent Pandemic, Contagion, or 28 Days Later. Try Harriet instead. Harriet Tubman was the epitome of bravery and courage in the face of insurmountable odds. Her escape from slavery and returning again and again into the belly of the beast to save others should inspire us all. The health professionals working day and night to care for an ever increasing number of sick patients make me proud to be a doctor. And kudos to the grocery store workers, postal workers, police and many others who are performing essential jobs with a smile.

This is the time for positive action, not panic. For background, coronaviruses are a big family of RNA viruses named for the crown-like spikes found on their surface. They exist around the world cause mostly upper respiratory tract infections (“common colds”) in adults. This new coronavirus is in the same family as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) identified in humans in 2002 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) identified in 2012. The CoViD-19 virus is called SARS-CoV-2 for its similarity to SARS-CoV.

While scientists are furiously experimenting with possible vaccines, the virus is sprinting from country to country despite travel restrictions. There are likely among us “healthy carriers” of the virus who have no signs or symptoms of the disease but can infect others. So if CoViD-19 is here for a while, the world has to look to effective treatments of afflicted individuals today—not a year from now. Some researchers seem to have found a strong contender.  

Separate studies from a major medical center in France and jointly from South Korea and China have found that inexpensive, readily available anti-malarial drugs chloroquine phosphate or hydroxychloroquine are an effective treatment. But the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is dragging its feet, despite the President’s urgings, to approve the drug for anti-viral use. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the White House’s advisor has dismissively called the studies “anecdotal” meaning “based on or consisting of reports or observations of usually unscientific observers.”

In 2004, separately a Belgian virologist and our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that chloroquine inhibited SARS-CoV growth in primate cells when given before or after exposure to the virus. Human trials could not be done because thankfully the SARS epidemic had just ended. Fast forward to February 2019. In South Korea, these drugs were given by physicians and scientists in the CoViD-19 Central Clinical Task Force. These studies showed “certain curative effect” with “fairly good efficacy.” Further, patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT scan images, and required a shorter time to recover compared to parallel groups.

More promising is a study of 36 patients actively ill from CoViD-19 by a noted research team from France. Of the 20 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, 70 percent had no detectable virus within 6 days; those treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (an antibiotic with some anti-viral action) had a 100 percent success rate. Yes, the study is small, but these are extraordinary times.

On March 22, Gov. Cuomo announced that the FDA is allowing New York state to start a trial of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Let’s move on this!

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are approved by the FDA for malaria, rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematosus. The FDA is well aware that physicians prescribe plenty of drugs that are “off label,” that is drugs approved by the FDA for other conditions. Indeed, one fifth of all prescriptions are off label. For example, aspirin was approved for pain relief, but had many years of off-label success for the prevention of heart attacks before the FDA finally approved the off-label use.

Mike Tyson said “we all have a plan until we are punched in the face.” FDA’s “plan” is to regulate products and promote safe and effective drugs. This is the FDA’s moment to bravely keep us safe by shifting gears and deregulating a valuable product. Pharmacists must be allowed to fill such prescriptions. Let doctors do what they do best: use their independent judgment. Let physicians consult with their patients and let them choose to take the off-label medicine, or approved anti-viral medicines that have failed against CoViD-19 in studies—or no treatment at all.

While people are struggling to pay for their next meal, we need bold action now. For 6 billion dollars all Americans could be treated—saving hundreds of billions of dollars in lost income and retirement savings.

Bayer began with donating 3 million tablets to our government. More companies are stepping up. Novartis has pledged a global donation of up to 130 million hydroxychloroquine tablets, pending regulatory approvals for COVID-19. Mylan is increasing production in West Virginia to make 50 million tablets. Teva is donating 6 million tablets to hospitals around the U.S. For context, each patient’s treatment would use up to14 tablets.

Do your job, FDA and protect the public. Approve hydroxychloroquine now for COVID-19. Meanwhile, physicians may legally prescribe these drugs because they are approved for other indications.

Bio: Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is Immediate Past President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School.  Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law.  She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers. 

Close Menu