We attended the digital funeral today of an innocent victim, slaughtered in a horrific drive-by shooting. That victim was of course Ivermectin, a wonder drug that has over the last two decades saved countless lives. The vehicle involved was the pandemic and the vehicle’s occupants, none other than individuals from within the medical and wellness sectors.

To understand why people sworn to protect their patients at all costs would cross over to the dark side, we need to highlight facts that have surfaced over the last few months. Understanding motive will I hope also enable those who remain skeptical to accept the truth about Ivermectin.

It is not a treatment or prophylactic for Covid-19 or the SARS-CoV2 virus. It never was.

A small, as yet unvalidated possibility exists that it may offer some benefit to late-stage Covid-19 patients, but that remains inconclusive pending further research. Proving Ivermectin’s efficacy in early-stage Covid or as prophylactic poses very real, and some would argue, insurmountable methodological challenges.

All Ivermectin ever claimed to be, was an anti-parasitic drug. It is as much a victim of the intricate web of deceit and deception spun by certain individuals, as the intended targets, who consume it in the mistaken belief it offers salvation.

Let’s begin by examining how that web has begun to unravel and then we’ll take a closer look at those who engineered the deception and why.

The Preprint

Most of the scientific and medical community speaking up on behalf of Ivermectin used the following pre-print as validation for the efficacy of the drug as a Covid-19 treatment. The paper was called Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic and the first of four versions was made available to the public on the 13th of November, 2020.

The preprint was published on researchsquare.com and if you click on the link above you will see that the preprint has been removed and an investigation initiated into the content and contributing authors. Why is explained below.

ReasearchSquare posts the following text in red font above the preprints it publishes as fair warning that the content is not peer-reviewed and should not be considered as anything more than an unverified opinion.

This is a preprint, a preliminary version of a manuscript that has not completed peer review at a journal. Research Square does not conduct peer review prior to posting preprints. The posting of a preprint on this server should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its validity or suitability for dissemination as established information or for guiding clinical practice.

Despite this, the preprint was seized upon, Google scholar showing 43 citations. In case you’re not familiar with publication terms, in scientific journals, a citation is a reference from a published article to a published paper (note, not a preprint) intended to provide confirmation or reference for content.

In short, 43 papers that have done exactly what the warning above suggests shouldn’t be done. Why this warning exists and preprints are broadly unreferenced in the scientific community became apparent as peer review set about validating the integrity of the data in the preprint and claims of plagiarism that had been leveled against the authors.

Examining the Data

Much like forensic auditors check for cooked books, forensic data analysts exist to sniff out anything fishy in sets of data. Nick Browne was tasked with examining the data used in the preprint to validate claims made relating to the efficacy of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19. You can read a full breakdown of his analysis here if the summation below is insufficient.

The data file for the research was made available as a locked Excel spreadsheet, rather than an SPSS 21 file, the tool the preprint authors purported they had used for their analysis. Browne was forced to pay for access to the file and then had to manually guess at the password (1234) before gaining access to the Excel data. From there, things rapidly progressed from bad to worse.

Many of the patients who died appear to be duplicates. According to the original data, there were ‘four’ patients with the initials NME, NEM, and NES (twice), who were all males aged 51 years old, all suffered from diarrhoea(sic), had the same blood hemoglobin levels, were all diagnosed on the 22nd of May, and all died on the 29th of May 2020. They also all share identical values in at least four other data columns.

At least a further ten deceased patients also display evidence of being duplicated. Duplicates make up around half of the recorded deaths. Much of the patient data is identical, but minor changes exist, proving that a simple copy and paste error cannot be the cause of the duplicates.

In no particular order, and again, please refer to the linked report for specifics, Browne also identified issues with;

• Formatting
• Numbers containing non-numeric characters
• Confusion around date formats
• Repeated or cloned sequences of data
• Apparent failures of randomization
• Descriptive statistics that did not match the preprint
• Table results that do not match the preprint
• Other issues included age distribution, trailing digits of numerical variables, study entry and exit dates, and last, but not least, the lack of the SPSS file.

In summation, Browne arrived at the following conclusion;

In view of the problems described in the preceding sections, most notably the repeated sequences of identical numbers corresponding to apparently “cloned” patients, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Excel file provided by the authors does not faithfully represent the results of the study, and indeed has probably been extensively manipulated by hand.

We aren’t limited by Browne’s proclivity for professional restraint so we’ll call it as he saw it. The data provided for the preprint are a largely concocted fairy tale, an ambitious con designed to mislead. Manipulation of the data was not accidental but rather intentional, engineered to support very specific predetermined outcomes, for reasons we will examine below.

Plagiarism

Lead-authored by Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Behna, the preprint claimed to represent the results of a multi-center, 600-patient study evaluating the use of ivermectin in preventing and treating COVID-19.

The author’s claims centered around the following;

• Ivermectin significantly reduced both the number of deaths and the length of patient’s hospital stay compared to standard Egyptian treatment protocols
• Ivermectin exhibited a substantial effect in preventing the onset of the disease in the first place, in other words, it acted as a prophylactic against the virus.

The article by Jack Lawrence we will reference with regards to the above can be read in full here, and again, we have provided a summation of his findings below. There are numerous instances in the preprint of text being lifted directly from an original source and not credited. In a schoolboy fashion, the authors have tried to obfuscate the plagiarism by changing a few words in each extract.

Plagiarized Elgazzar et al 2020

“This novel virus infection has incapacitated the world’s medical services framework as well as the political and financial relations [2. As another section in human life opens

up [3, the world is by all accounts divided into two sections pre-and post-COVID19 time.”

Original Heidary & Reza Gharebaghi 2020

“This novel virus has paralyzed not only the world’s health care system but also the political and economic relations [13]. As a new chapter in human life opens up [14], the world seems to be divided into two parts pre- and post-COVID19 era.”

Note: Elgazzar even used the same sources

https://www.nature.com/articles/s414290200336-z

A schoolboy could be chastised and excused for similar behavior, but there can be no excuse offered by the preprint author, Elgazzar, who would be intimately familiar with protocols surrounding scientific publications. The preprint is littered with further examples of plagiarism and Larence uncovered further unethical actions pertaining to the study.

While the disclosures above may shock some, they pale in comparison to what is to follow, namely acknowledging the extent of duplicity and malintent by members of the medical community across the globe. Doctors, scientists, pharmacists, alternate health practitioners, and individuals from the wellness sector have teamed up to exploit vulnerable patients for financial gain in the midst of a pandemic.

That is the only logical and unavoidable conclusion that can be drawn from the Ivermectin fiasco and avoiding confronting this unpleasant reality prevents us from protecting vulnerable patient populations.

Acknowledging the Grift

Medika first became aware of Ivermectin and its ability to kill the SARS-CoV2 virus in a paper in Nature, released in mid-2020. We published an article, highlighting the results, achieved in vitro, and suggested, like others, that immediate trials should be undertaken to see if the effects could be replicated in vivo.

The pandemic was gaining momentum and there would be no shortage of willing trial candidates. The problems though were obvious at the outset. Ivermectin had successfully killed the test tube sample in a laboratory, but achieving similar dosage levels in human subjects was highly inadvisable and patently unachievable without endangering the patient’s health.

Conducting broad-scale trials at tolerable dosages should have been a priority for either the FDA or a recognized European health authority. No one stepped up to conclusively prove or disprove the potential of Ivermectin as a Covid treatment. The lack of credible trials was potentially driven by an industry-wide skepticism of the drug’s ability to impact viruses (it is an anti-parasitic) and although this rationale made sense to scientific circles, the public was unable to make the connect.

A potential ‘treatment void’ had been unintentionally created for Ivermectin and it was into this void, as is so often their want, that the grifters stepped, seizing an opportunity to co-opt the pandemic for profit on a global scale.

Plumbing the dark depths of deception

India was one of the countries that fully embraced the grift. Provincial authorities distributed Ivermectin as a Covid treatment to residents and other countries, notably South American populations, followed suit.

Proving the efficacy of a treatment is often far simpler than disproving its efficacy and the grifters took full advantage, distributing their ‘Covid treatment’ via the global digital conspiracy network surrounding the pandemic. They assured the public that the drug was being intentionally withheld and the rest is history. Across the internet, both the public and many from within the medical community bought into the Ivermectin lie.

A lie that was cemented in many minds as fact by anecdotal evidence, falsified data and manipulated trials like the one conducted by Elgazzar and his colleagues. It is far easier to believe a convenient lie than face an unpleasant truth.

Doctors (the term is used loosely) have taken advantage of a vulnerable patient population to sell them drugs and in case you think this deplorable behavior was limited to non-western countries, the evidence suggests the west drove the trend. This is not simply supposition but fact.

In the US, rapidly formed organizations like America’s Frontline Doctors, a despicable congruence of dishonest doctors, pharmacists, and marketing individuals set about creating the ultimate pill mill for not only Ivermectin but the other darling of Covid conspiracies, hydroxychloroquine. You can read more on that here, including comments from exploited patients, shown below the article.

This pattern of profiting by deception from the sale of Ivermectin and other Covid cures continues unabated. We have unintentionally created the environment where large sums of money can be made from misleading the public in the midst of a pandemic. The fact the public’s health may be forfeit is irrelevant to the quacks and charlatans claiming to be healers.

These individuals are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, caregivers, and individuals of science. The lie could not exist without their duplicity and in many instances, the lie exists at their instigation. It is a hard truth to face and one we look away from. We need to openly acknowledge this and develop effective methods to prevent future occurrences.

Ivermectin’s lasting legacy should not be as the drug that failed to treat Covid and fooled the world. It should be seen as the drug that taught the world about a bitter pill, one we need to swallow now, lest we repeat history.

The post Ivermectin is Dead and Buried Despite NIH Website Misstep and Twitter Buzz appeared first on Medika Life.

They are doing all this for money and they need to be stopped.

We are not referring to the healthcare heroes on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic, but a group of medical misfits that have appropriated the name America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLD), as a moniker for their motley band of quacks and con artists. They are extremely dangerous, with ties to radical conservative extremists, witchcraft, paranoia, conspiracies, and do not possess a shred of actual experience dealing with Covid patients on the frontlines of the pandemic. They are, in short, frauds, exploiting a pandemic for their own financial gain.

They are, and we are ashamed to admit it, doctors. Doctors, however, in name only and that is the intent of this article. If, like so many of us, you would like to see the end of their orchestrated campaign of covid misinformation and attacks on the covid vaccine, join us in deplatforming their social media, reporting them to their individual medical boards, and filing reports with the Department of Justice. They are an affront to the medical profession and a danger to public health.

Their website blatantly tries to combat official Covid-19 advice and destroy public confidence in the covid vaccines for reasons we will explain below. Here is a screenshot from their website where they refer to the vaccines as experimental. This is a false and misleading statement.

They continue to spread advice about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid despite this having been publically disproven by open studies conducted under the auspices of the World Health Organization and other medical boards. They continue to question the efficacy of masks, thereby encouraging the spread of the virus. Their actions will lead to trusting members of the public accepting their advice and people will die as a result of severe Covid-19. It could be someone close to you.

If you want to protect vulnerable members of your community, register your outrage by contacting the links in the footer of this article or reporting the individual doctors to their relevant medical boards (shown below each doctor listed below).

If you don’t think they pose a risk, then have a look at their petition to stop the covid vaccines. If they were to have their way, your grandparents, parents, and at-risk sectors of our community would be facing Covid-19 without the benefit of a vaccine. Still, think they aren’t dangerous?

Incidentally, no one is enforcing the covid vaccine. That is patently untrue and under the American constitution, you cannot be forced into taking a vaccine. It remains a personal choice.

Their website displays a whole range of supposed “hydroxychloroquine home treatments” for Covid-19, the suggestion a clear one. You can treat Covid-19 at home. This is untrue, not based on any verifiable clinical data and in flagrant breach of the FDA’s policy of advertising cures or treatments for Covid-19. The following screenshot is again taken from their website, in the event they should remove it.

To be clear, there are no home treatments for Covid-19. If you suspect you have contracted the coronavirus, please quarantine and if you are in an at-risk category, dial 9-1-1 and seek immediate medical help.

Why all the effort?

Great question and as will all these cons, profit is at the heart of the sales pitch. In this instance, it wasn’t even very well hidden. Initially, politics and Trump’s agenda to reopen America provided funding and impetus for this group. With those agenda’s now behind them, the business has been repurposed for profit.

Convince the American public you have the cure for Covid-19 in the form of hydroxychloroquine and then proceed to supply it to them through your network of unethical doctors, who are only too happy to write out prescriptions that a complicit pharmacy then fills.

The players in this not so elaborate con are as follows. America’s Frontline Doctors, Ravkoo Pharmacy and Speakwithanmd.com

Here’s how the chain works, not that it’s important, but it will provide a roadmap for the FDA and DOJ to follow. I encourage any journalists who want to explore and expose existing relationships between these entities to investigate further.

Step 1: American Frontline Doctors – The marketing arm

They discredit conventional Covid-19 treatments and scare people off the vaccine in favor of hydroxychloroquine, which as we all know, isn’t that simple to get hold of anymore. They achieve this with a concerted campaign of misinformation and pseudoscientific materials published on their website and spread through social media. They become visible, they become political and they become radical. At the top of their site is a link to purchase hydroxychloroquine, which takes you to this page.

Step 2: Speakwithanmd.com – Distribution

You cant shift your product, which, annoyingly, requires a prescription, without the necessary paperwork. How do you address this across numerous states? Easy, you hook up with an online service that allows your network of doctors to prescribe to their heart’s delight, state by state. Possibly the cleverest bit of the con. You can see the network on this page and I suspect having a look at the prescriptions issued by these doctors would make for fascinating reading.

Here’s what their page says about America’s Frontline Doctors on Speakwithanmd;

• America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) are available in every state. Physician Consult Fee is $90. We see patients between 7 am and 9 pm and we will try hard to see you on the day you contact us but it could be the next day.

• Through telemedicine we can offer convenient and affordable healthcare services to patients. Telemedicine is an excellent option for nonemergency situations, including prophylactic (preventive) and early (home) treatment of COVID-19.

• Our physicians are hydroxychloroquine knowledgeable and fully aware of the science and data regarding its safety and efficacy.

Step 3: Ravkoo Pharmacy – Fulfillment

Linked on their page on Speakwithanmd.com is Ravkoo Pharmacy. Officially, according to America’s Frontline Doctors, partnered with them to ensure all the scripts are quickly filled and dispatched. We have reached out to the Ravkoo CEO, Alpesh Patel for comment regarding their association with AFLD, but have not, at the time of publication, received a response.

Cutting the head off the snake

Let’s start with the originator or founder of AFLD, Dr. Simone Gold. Her most recent claim to fame is a photograph of her in the Capitol building, surrounded by her fellow protestors, after having forcibly gained entry. Her statement that she did not know it was illegal to enter the building should be seen for what it is. Complete bullshit.

She is a trained Stanford lawyer. Ignorance, claimed or otherwise, is not acceptable as a legal defense. You lie, Ms. Gold, and you should be locked up, along with your other seditious conspirators.

Simone Gold, MD, JD, is a board-certified emergency physician in Los Angeles, California. You can view her current status here. She graduated from Chicago Medical School before attending Stanford University Law School to earn her Juris Doctorate degree. Impressed? Well, don’t be. We all know education is not a prerequisite for either common sense, morals, or ethics, none of which Ms. Gold appears to possess.

Her California medical license includes her unverified claim that she is involved in patient care 30-39 hours per week and indicates a practice location in Hesperia, a bedroom community of about 100,000 at the edge of the Mojave Desert. Efforts to determine where specifically she may practice were unsuccessful.

Any platform offering medical advice alongside the sale of the founder’s book and featuring prominent “donate” buttons all over the site is by definition, highly suspect. The strapline Gold uses to advertise their site “Empowering patients and physicians with independent, evidence-based medicine.” is laughable. There is no hard evidence-based medicine taking place in their deluded world.

The quotes Gold references from reputable sources are taken out of context or reflect earlier views, now scientifically repudiated. No sane doctor or medical student would waste five minutes on the journals or papers she uses to justify her flawed agenda. Simply put, Dr. Simone Gold and her band of merry co-conspirators are trying to pull the wool over your eyes for personal financial gain. She is trying to mislead you and is, in effect, threatening your life and the lives of others.

To clarify just how radical her medical views are, let’s take an excerpt from one of her websites, where she responds to a comment on an article she wrote on maks.

then, given these big neocons’ vaccination programs intentionally spreading sterility (as well as thimerosol-caused autism, & even the very diseases being vaccinated against, esp. measles & polio);

Perhaps, Ms. Gold, you would care to explain why that anti-vaccine stance doesn’t quite gel with your comments on your petition website. Here they are, in case you’ve forgotten making them.

SMD & AFLDS is NOT “anti-vaxx” or in any other form to be considered or mislabeled as disapproving of established, reputable vaccines when taken voluntarily without coercion. 

Gold first rose to notoriety when she appeared in a viral video touting hydroxychloroquine back in July of 2020. She was accompanied by Stella Immanuel, MD (we exposed Immanuel’s quackery/witchcraft here), James Todaro, MD, Bob Hamilton, MD,Dan Erickson, DO, Richard Urso, MD and Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD.

In a later article from the Washington Spectator exposing more lies about the media face of Simone Gold and the Republican-backed politics and people enabling her, Emergency physician Nick Sawyer, disturbed by the implications for medical practitioners that Gold and the AFLD poses, had this to say.

The America’s Frontline Doctors campaign, he says, “violates two of the primary principles of medical ethics. Medical ethics has four major principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. As hydroxychloroquine offers no clinical benefit and may be harmful, it violates the first two tenets. Further, their statements place actual frontline physicians treating patients with Covid-19 in conflict with patients’ right to autonomy.

To have Simone Gold’s medical license investigated, you will need to place a formal complaint with California’s medical licensing authority. This link will take you directly to the Califonia Medical Board’s page for filing a complaint online. Gold is not acting in the interest of public health and her outspoken views and advice on the coronavirus, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and the covid vaccine are not in keeping with her profession’s very clear overriding mandate – First do no harm.

Report Gold and America’s Frontline Doctors directly to the Department of Justice by following this link. The page contains information and telephone numbers or you can call directly on COVID-19 Fraud Hotline: 1-888-C19-WDPA.

Here is information on the other medical voices that have lent support to Gold and enabled her reach online and on Social Media. They are, in Medika’s opinion, incidental and Gold is the driving force behind AFLD.

James Todaro, MD

Todaro, an ophthalmologist based in Michigan who is no longer practicing, graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2014. His medical license, which was classified as “educational limited” in Michigan, expired in 2019. According to his LinkedIn profile, Todaro has not practiced medicine since 2018. He co-founded an investment fund called Blocktown Capital.

Bob Hamilton, MD

Hamilton, a pediatrician and school liaison with America’s Frontline Doctors, has been practicing in Santa Monica, California — home to his private practice, Pacific Ocean Pediatrics — for more than 30 years. He has hospital privileges at Providence-St. John’s Health Center and the UCLA-Santa Monica Medical Center. He has been vocal in suggesting schools re-open, citing no risk to children from Covid-19

Dan Erickson, DO

Erickson is the co-owner of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California. He is a former emergency physician, according to reports, who was featured on national television in late April after he claimed data his center had collected showed that COVID was more widespread and less harmful than reported in medical journals.

The American College of Emergency Physicians and American Academy of Emergency Medicine issued a joint statement condemning Erickson’s claims, calling them “reckless and untested musings” that are “inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19.”

Richard Urso, MD

Urso is an ophthalmologist at Houston Eye Associates in Bellaire, Texas, who has been touting HCQ for COVID-19. He told Fox News host Laura Ingraham earlier this month that he has been working with the drug for 30 years and has never had a patient with a heart issue.

He also said during that interview that HCQ was “safer than Tylenol, aspirin, Motrin.” In 2003, Urso paid a $1,500 fine to resolve allegations that he didn’t provide a narrative of medical records to an attorney for a patient’s personal injury lawsuit.

Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD

Ladapo is a physician and health policy researcher at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, according to his UCLA profile. His primary research interests include diagnostic technology cost-effectiveness and decreasing cardiovascular disease population burden. He is also an adjunct professor of population health at New York University-Langone, a spokesperson confirmed and sees patients at Langone Medical Center.

He has cared for COVID patients at UCLA, he wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial in early April, though that could not be confirmed (a UCLA Medicine spokesperson declined to answer questions and said Ladapo declined to comment). On the Supreme Court steps, he said nothing about treating COVID-19 patients himself.

Simone Gold, MD, images are all used in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, commonly known as “fair use law”. This material is distributed without profit with the intent to provide commentary, review, education, and increase public health knowledge.

Still don’t get it?

If you still don’t believe that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are sold to you as part of an elaborate medical scam. please read this article on why we just can’t say at this point which treatments are actually useful in reducing deaths.

The post Exposing America’s Frontline Doctors and Their Financial Empire Built on Hydroxychloroquine appeared first on Medika Life.