The agency trashes a cheap, off-patent drug for COVID-19, clearing the way for a new blockbuster drug. Action Alert!
The FDA recently issued a statement warning patients not to use the drug ivermectin, an off-patent drug for river blindness, to treat COVID-19, despite substantial evidence of its efficacy. The very next day, Merck announced positive results from a clinical trial on a new drug called molnupiravir in eliminating the virus in infected patients. Yet again, the FDA is working as Big Pharma’s partner in crime, attempting to deprive Americans of affordable and effective medications to protect drug companies’ bottom line.
Earlier this year we reported on the evidence supporting ivermectin’s use for COVID-19. A group of frontline doctors, the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), wrote a paper summarizing the evidence recommending the drug:
- All 8 available controlled trial results show statistically significant reductions in transmission;
- 3 RCT’s demonstrate large statistically significant reductions in transmission rates;
- 5 RCT’s show statistically significant impacts in time to recovery or hospital length of stay;
- 1 RCT showed a large, statistically significant reduction in the rate of deterioration or hospitalization;
- 3 RCT’s showed large, statistically significant reductions in mortality.
Further, some researchers have noticed that African countries that had previously distributed ivermectin in mass campaigns to fight river blindness are experiencing lower infection and mortality rates from COVID-19.
In its statement, the FDA does not assess or comment on this impressive array of data. Rather, the agency simply states that there is a danger of overdosing on ivermectin, given it is also used on animals at higher doses which can be dangerous to humans. FLCC, on the other hand, report that ivermectin has a low rate of adverse events, with the majority being mild and transient. Serious adverse events were found in one study to occur in less than 1 percent of patients.
This, to us, seems like a rather transparent attempt to discredit a cheap drug that drug companies can’t make any money off of to clear the market for the introduction of a new blockbuster drug that will cost thousands of dollars and likely be dangerous. We believe the FDA did something similar in attacking brain health supplements like vinpocetine and picamilon, clearing the way for new blockbuster Alzheimer’s drugs that mostly flopped.
Ivermectin could be saving lives. We cannot let the FDA’s blatant cronyism go unchecked.
All of this underlines how broken the healthcare system in this country is. The government pushes expensive, often dangerous medicines for COVID (remember remdesivir?) and other illnesses while ignoring low-cost alternatives that either cannot be strongly patented or are off-patent. Who will fund clinical trials on these alternatives when the exorbitant cost of the trials cannot be recouped? And without the trials, they can’t go through FDA approval and thus cannot make disease claims for treating COVID or any other disease.
Action Alert! Send a message to Congress, alerting them to the benefits of ivermectin and the FDA’s inexcusable and misleading warning about this drug. Please send your message immediately.