NewsRescue
The tale of the century continues to yield wondrous twists and turns, with the latest being the harsh dismissal of a well known anti-parasitic medication currently being used in the fight against Covid-19.
The US Food and Drug Administration, FDA in rather unusually rash terms tweeted a release giving an unusual condemnation of Ivermectin, accompanied by a picture of a horse and the words, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4
— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021
In the linked article, the FDA wrote,
“There seems to be a growing interest in a drug called ivermectin to treat humans with COVID-19. Ivermectin is often used in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals.”
And then under that conflicted itself by writing,
“Ivermectin tablets are approved at very specific doses for some parasitic worms…
Discourage Self Medication Without Destroying the Medical Practice
The FDA’s harsh rebuke of the use of Ivermectin a drug that has been in use for treating various human conditions since 1981, in the management of Covid appears to be related to an uptick in reports of poisoning by people who have recently ingested animal formulas of the drug.
But how the FDA would now broadly condemn a drug approved for human use for treatment of parasite infestation and other conditions and one of the World health organization, WHO’s drugs on the “WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (aka Essential Medicines List or EML) brings confusion to the medical field.
Quoting from a WHO 2018 update:
“This proposal is an expansion of the indication for ivermectin, which is currently included in the EML as an intestinal anthelminthic and an antifilarial (Sections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2) (WHO 2017). Ivermectin has been used extensively in humans, alone against onchocerciasis and in combination with albendazole against lymphatic filariasis (LF) since the 1980s (WHO 2006). It has played a key role in the elimination programmes of these two neglected tropical diseases and was more recently approved for the treatment for Strongyloides infections.”
WHO: https://www.who.int/selection_medicines/committees/expert/22/applications/s6.6_ivermectin.pdf?ua=1
The WHO EML “contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system.”
Several clinical trials have found Ivermectin to be effective in managing covid. See:
The WHO has approved of Ivermectin only for Clinical trials in the fight to manage Covid. And this is in humans. See: WHO advises that ivermectin only be used to treat COVID-19 within clinical trials
The problem is, must the FDA resort to rewriting medical practice to promote changes in public behavior?
Can the drug administration find another way of discouraging self-medication and the use of veterinary formulas on humans without promoting false and potentially damaging information about known and popular medications.
Does the new announcement not discourage and affect compliance in patients who may have been prescribed this essential medication by their health care providers in America and abroad?
The Same Happened with Hydroxychloroquine, Remember!
We recall that other drugs on the WHO Essential Medicines List, Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were similarly discredited as unsafe by the US administration despite these drugs being some of the oldest and longest and most widely used for decades in the fight against malaria in Africa and Asia.
Again see a proposal for Hydroxycholoroquine’s use being expanded on the WHO Essential Medicines List:
“This proposal is an expansion of the indication for HCQ, which is currently included in the EML and EMLc under the heading MEDICINES FOR DISEASES OF JOINTS (Section 29.2 Complementary List). HCQ has been used extensively in humans, with an original indication to prevent or cure malaria. Since 1950s, HCQ, has also been successfully used to treat several infectious (Q fever, Whipple’s disease, fungal infections), rheumatological (cutaneous and systemic lupus erythematosus, antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren’s syndrome) and oncological diseases (strong antiproliferative, antimutagenic, and inhibiting autophagy capacities) with more than > 20 recent ongoing clinical trials of association of HCQ with radiotherapy and chemotherapy [1] ).”
WHO: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/essential-medicines/2021-eml-expert-committee/applications-for-new-indications-for-existing-listed-medicines/i.12_hydroxychloroquine.pdf?sfvrsn=23677d7b_4
It is not absurd to suspect that the US drug and disease agencies are only interested in promoting vaccines and expensive medications. And that they will go to any extent to rewrite conventional medicine and destroy decades of confidence and convention in medical practice in the pursuit of their political decisions on managing Covid.
