News
Featured Image
Dr. Marcos Espinal, the director of the Department of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis at the Pan American Health Organization, in the Regional Office for the Americas of the WHOIvory Hecker / Bitchute

LifeSiteNews has been permanently banned on YouTube. Click HERE to sign up to receive emails when we add to our video library.

ANALYSIS

July 12, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – A spokesman for the World Health Organization has repeated the organization’s opposition to Ivermectin as a treatment for the Wuhan coronavirus, saying that the over 60 peer-reviewed studies testifying to the drug’s efficacy are “not very promising.”

The comments came in an interview conducted by Ivory Hecker, a former reporter for a FOX affiliate who was recently fired from the station after announcing live on-air the pattern of censorship which the channel was enforcing. Hecker spoke with front line doctors about the effect of Ivermectin on COVID-19, seeming to highlight a blatant rejection of the peer-reviewed data on the part of the World Health Organization. 

Ivory Hecker released her independent report about Ivermectin on Bitchute, delving into the question of why COVID-19 death rates were comparatively much lower at Dr. Joseph Varon’s hospital than national or even international levels. Dr. Joseph Varon is the Chief of Critical Care and COVID-19 Unit at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas. 

Since the emergence of COVID-19, Varon has been very much in the public eye, giving over 1,600 interviews. Yet Hecker noted that there was a subject which, when she had previously interviewed Varon, she had been banned by her former employer from discussing, adding that “almost every outlet” ignored the much lower death rate from COVID-19 in Varon’s hospital compared to others. 

That banned subject, and the reason behind his low death rate, was Ivermectin.

From March 2020 through May 2021, Dr. Varon had 1,293 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but only 86 died, giving a death rate of 6.7%. This rate is almost half of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own death rate of 12.5% in its featured hospitals, and far lower than the national death rate of 20% which Hecker referenced. 

“We have implemented a series of treatment methods that have a very good success rate,” stated Varon. Those treatments were not recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). In fact, Hecker noted that Varon’s treatments were actively warned against by the WHO. 

Dr. Varon was among the small group who developed the MATH+ protocol for treating COVID-19, which was comprised of Methylprednisolone, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Thiamine (Vitamin B1), and the blood thinner Heparin. The “+” referred to other treatments, including Ivermectin, which the WHO and the FDA warned against using.  

Ivermectin, as explained by the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance,“is a well-known, FDA-approved anti-parasite drug that has been used successfully for more than four decades” to treat parasitic diseases. “It is on the WHO’s list of essential medicines … and has won the Nobel prize for its global and historic impacts in eradicating endemic parasitic infections in many parts of the world.”

Varon pointed to the “fantastic success” he enjoyed in treating patients with Ivermectin, and mentioned that Ivermectin’s use and effectiveness was supported by peer-reviewed research. At the latest count, there are now 62 trials, with 32 randomized controlled trials, and over 60 peer-reviewed papers documenting the success of Ivermectin. One such Australian study had earlier discovered that Ivermectin not only blocked the development of RNA viruses such as the Zika virus, influenza, West Nile virus, and Avian flu, but also lethally attacked the coronavirus, wiping out “essentially all viral material by 48 hours.”

In conjunction with his MATH+ protocol creating colleagues, Varon recently compiled a peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, which concluded: 

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.

That group of five became the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), whose treatment protocols won praise from medics around the world. One of the founding members, Dr. Pierre Kory, testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in December 2020, referring to the “mountains of data” in support of their treatment protocols.

Nevertheless, the group has faced severe censorship. Varon stated that he was put in “Facebook jail” every time he mentioned the word Ivermectin, while Dr. Kory described the U.S. as being in “a media lockdown.”

Is the WHO refusing to listen to reason over Ivermectin?

Such confidence in Ivermectin, as supported by the large wealth of peer-reviewed studies referenced by Varon and Kory, is not echoed by the WHO. 

During her report on Ivermectin Hecker spoke via video link to Dr. Marcos Espinal, the director of the Department of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis at the Pan American Health Organization, in the Regional Office for the Americas of the WHO, who objected to the reviews made by Drs. Kory and Varon, claiming that they were not up to standard. 

“Many of these articles are really having methodological flaws,” claimed Espinal. “Many of them are from preprints and also some journals that…you can raise questions [about].”

However, the WHO official’s accusation would appear to be ungrounded, as Kory revealed his paper had been peer reviewed by “two senior scientists at the FDA and a senior scientist at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.” Indeed, the latest count of the Ivermectin studies, numbers a total of 64 peer-reviewed studies.

But such evidence is seemingly insufficient for the WHO. “We need more evidence,” declared Espinal. 

The WHO official continued, first agreeing with Hecker’s suggestion that Kory and Varon’s study was at least “very promising,” but then almost immediately changed his tune, and declared it to be “not very promising.” After stumbling with his words for some moments, Espinal eventually commented: “I would say … that reviews help to give us light.”

As recently as March 31, 2021, the WHO issued a directive on the use of Ivermectin, advising that it only be used for COVID-19 patients within “clinical trials,” and that the current evidence is “inconclusive.”

In order to reach this conclusion, a “guideline development group” was put together which examined data from just 16 randomized controlled trials. This group stated that there is a “very low certainty” whether Ivermectin reduces mortality. The reason for this statement was reportedly due to the “small sizes and methodological limitations of available trial data.” Furthermore, the group did not look at whether Ivermectin could prevent COVID-19.

“It is so not subtle what they did,” condemned Dr. Kory. “They basically just dismissed immense amounts of data.”

Hecker put the challenge to Espinal over the alleged deliberate ignoring of data, to which he responded: “No I disagree. I categorically deny.”

But Kory is not the only one claiming that the WHO deliberately misled the public on the matter of Ivermectin. Philippines medical professional, Dr. Benigno Agbayani, stated in April of this year that the WHO were being dishonest in an earlier March 3 report on Ivermectin’s use for COVID-19. 

“They did not include prophylaxis, because I think they’re afraid to recommend it, that’s why they did not make a comment,” Agbayani stated. “If you look at the way they studied it, they did include so many other studies … there seems to be a bias in those recommendations and we feel that they do not want to look at certain studies preferentially, and this was observed even before this recent announcement.”

In fact, the non-profit Indian Bar Association has served a legal notice on Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, a Chief Scientist for the WHO, for the harm she allegedly caused on the Indian people, due to her campaigning against the use of Ivermectin. It accused Swaminathan of running a “disinformation campaign against Ivermectin by deliberate suppression of effectiveness of drug Ivermectin as prophylaxis and for treatment of COVID-19,” despite the “large amounts of clinical data” documenting the effectiveness of the drug. 

India has promoted the use of Ivermectin for treating COVID-19, and following a mass distribution of the drug in recent months, saw a dramatic decrease in deaths related to COVID-19. 

The government of the Indian state of Goa even decided to administer Ivermectin to all citizens over 18 years of age, whether or not they tested positive for COVID-19. Defending this decision, Goa’s Joint Secretary for health, Vikas Gaunekar, accused the WHO of promoting faulty data: “There are some reports which have found that the analysis by WHO on this medicine is flawed and that the mortality rate is actually much lower if the said medicine is used for early treatment as well as prophylaxis.”

Ivory Hecker asked Dr. Espinal what the WHO thought was working in India to bring down COVID-19 cases. However, Espinal evaded the question by answering: “Look we don’t usually get into the internal affairs of countries in detail like that.” 

A financial affair?

Such reticence on the part of the WHO – and indeed agencies such as the Food and Drug Agency – to recommend Ivermectin, could perhaps be linked to financial considerations.

Dr. Varon declared that it was his opinion that money was completely behind the rejection of Ivermectin. “I truly believe that what we’re dealing with here is economical interest.” Ivermectin is a cheap drug, priced in single digits ($3-$10), whereas Varon noted that the anti-viral drug Remdesevir, also used for COVID-19, is priced between $2,000 to $6,000 dollars per dose.

He is not alone in proposing this idea. Dr. Agbayani suggested that it was financial gain which was behind the statement issued against Ivermectin by the drug company Merck, which first developed the drug some 30 year prior, but which now no longer owns the drug. 

“Merck is coming out with a new drug for the early treatment of COVID-19. How can Merck make money out of ivermectin, if the patents already expired in 1996?” he asked.

The same could be seen to apply to the COVID-19 experimental vaccines. Such treatments are only granted Emergency Use Authorization provided that “there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives” for the treatments being authorized. Vaccine companies have received billions in funding in order to produce the experimental drugs, something that would not have occurred had Ivermectin been publicly known and promoted as the effective treatment for combatting COVID-19. 

WHO promoting vaccines for financial gain?

Meanwhile, last December, the WHO changed its own definition of herd immunity to now be something which is only achievable when the “vast majority of a population are vaccinated.” 

Such a change in definition of terms and subsequent health policy, could be explained by examining the chief funders of the WHO. Data from 2018 showed that after the U.S., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were the chief donors to the WHO. Furthermore, the international vaccine alliance GAVI founded by Gates, came in at fifth. 

Earlier this year former WHO insider, Astrid Stuckelberger, Ph.D, made startling revelations about the nature of the organization, claiming that the vaccine-promoting Bill Gates essentially controls the WHO. 

Such was Gates’ financial support of the WHO, that he allegedly asked to be part of the WHO’s executive board — like a member state. While Stuckelberger could not say if he had been granted this permission, she suspected that Gates created three-party contracts with member states and the WHO, essentially placing him on par with the WHO in terms of power wielded. 

Gates himself is making billions through his promotion of vaccines throughout the world, and declared in spring 2020 that life would not go back to normal until the population is “widely vaccinated.”

Meanwhile, according to Stuckelberger, the Gates founded organization GAVI “can do whatever they want” without repercussions. The police, for example, are barred from conducting an investigation and collecting evidence if GAVI were to be implicated in a criminal investigation.

With such prominent financial backing coming chiefly from vaccine promoters such as Gates and GAVI, the WHO could be accused of having a conflict of interest in its opposition to Ivermectin.