“A falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it”

The falsehood flies quote is attributed to Jonathan Swift in 1710.  There are variations on this saying, attributed and misattributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill. Irrespective, it’s a sentiment that rings true over 300 years later.

“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”, said French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849. Another pithy phrase we can find ourselves nodding to in agreement. Indeed, the more things change the more they stay the same.

I’m not about to do a whole blog post on favourite sayings, although it’s really tempting to see how many I could string together. The reason these phrases are still used is because they resonate even now. They contain a truism; one we all quickly recognise.

Before I get to my main theme and the real message of this post, let’s do a quick experiment. Below is an extract from a 2011 published paper by Andy Crump and Satoshi Omura. I want you to guess what they’re referring to. I’ve taken out a few words, so it isn’t too easy.

“Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug…., “a dihydro derivative of…” “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.”

Wow, that sounds impressive and kind of natural…

“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.”

If you picked this was about Ivermectin then you’re clearly up with the play, and no doubt aware of the controversy? You may, or may not, have already formed an opinion.

This is the drug that many in the media called “horse de-wormer”. Stated with arrogant and sniggering condescension, of course. What I want to know is, how did a profoundly beneficial treatment given to hundreds of millions of people every year get slimed so badly? The Guardian even felt the need to remind people they weren’t a horse.

Here in New Zealand, on the other side of the world, there was mindless repetition of this falsehood. No doubt people thought they sounded informed, clever even.

There are research articles against the efficacy of Ivermectin and research articles for, including a study published in the American Journal of Therapeutics in June 2021, which concluded the following:

“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.”

It has been used effectively in many countries over the last year of the pandemic as an early (prophylactic) treatment to reduce severity and duration of the disease as well as lowering the demand on limited hospital resources (see here, here and here). Studies into the efficacy of the drug continue in places like the Philippines.

For these populous and often poor nations, the mRNA vaccines weren’t a financial option. Nor was letting their people die in monumental numbers. Ivermectin is doctor prescribed with a well-known health risk profile after more than a decade of use, something the novel mRNA vaccines do not have. I have little doubt that for the leaders of these nations, it was better than doing nothing.

This blog isn’t about the merits of a particular medication because many have been trialled with varying levels of success. What’s interesting is how a medication once viewed as a significant benefice to humanity became so controversial and so politicised.

The best take-down of the less than honest media can be seen in an exchange between Joe Rogan and CNN’s doctor in residence, Sanjay Gupta. Rogan, who contracted COVID and threw it off in a matter of days with the help of doctor prescribed treatments, tackled Gupta on CNN claims he had taken a livestock drug, Ivermectin. Gupta finally admitted his network buddies were out-of-line and shouldn’t have said this. The damage had been done though, and the falsehood flew around the world. Truth is still limping after it.

For context and those who don’t know who Joe Rogan is; he’s a mixed martial arts expert turned media phenomena with an audience reach that runs into the tens of millions. He’s a savvy businessman with a knack for asking probing questions and eliciting authentic responses. There’s nothing plastic or sterile about Rogan and his show. In short, he’s more than a match for CNN - the no longer trusted name in news. CNN has plummeting ratings and audience numbers.

Speculatively we can wonder if the political and media brouhaha over this anti-viral had political roots? It was prescribed to President Trump; one of many medications prescribed for him by an entire team of physicians at a military hospital after he contracted COVID. Given how many wished him serious ill or even death at the time, we can safely say that Trump Derangement Syndrome knows no bounds. CNN and others have kept what audience they have by catering to this.

As a statement of fact, we can note that Ivermectin is out of patent for distributer, Merck, and already provided at low cost or free of charge to huge swathes of humanity. Both Merck and Pfizer have now developed specific COVID anti-viral medications. The purpose of these new medications is to reduce severity and duration of illness and therefore the likelihood of needing hospitalisation. Sound familiar? Estimated cost of Merck’s new COVID anti-viral is $US700 per treatment.

When Pfizer announced it was seeking approval for its anti-viral, it triggered billions in market value losses for other vaccine producing pharmaceutical companies including for BioNTech, which produces its vaccine with Pfizer. Merck also suffered substantial losses. Its anti-viral now had a competitor.

To state the obvious, COVID is big business with high financial stakes. So, imagine what would have happened to the profits of big pharma collectively (and perhaps the investment funds of influential individuals) if it had been found that a well-established, out of patent and super cheap anti-viral drug could be used?

Is it simply coincidence that Pfizer also happens to be a major sponsor of mainstream media, including CNN, in the USA? With the Joe Rogan story, CNN may have been trying to keep a financial sponsor happy and simultaneously do damage to an influential competitor. Not to single out Pfizer, but they're also a major financial contributor to Universities. Do these financial relationships create the potential for conflicts of interest?

"Follow the money" is a line that comes from the 1976 film All The President's Men. It fits nicely with, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The worst of human motivations are eternal.

I suspect that for Governments wanting their people to vaccinate, no competing option could be countenanced. They would have been working on the assumption that vaccination would give enduring immunity. As it turns out, none of the vaccines have lived up to expectations on this count.

While Ivermectin is an existing prescribed medication in New Zealand, it was not approved for use to treat COVID. Doctors were warned. The ‘off-label’ argument was used to rationalise this. However, this simply doesn’t stack-up given the announcement that arthritis and asthma medication would be used (off-label) to help in severe cases of COVID illness.

If it eventually transpires that a cheap and out of patent drug could have been useful, kept people out of hospital or even saved lives, then some serious questions will need to be asked over the influence of money and politics in research and health policy. I wouldn’t count on the media to ask them though. That would entail reflecting on their role and holding Government to account.

In what looks suspiciously like an attempt to manage optics, Pfizer and Merck have announced they’ll allow poorer nations to produce a generic version of their new anti-viral drugs. So long as the safety of these new anti-viral medications is assured, I guess that’s a positive note to end on.