Robert Clancy is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School, and a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s COVID-19 Expert Database, so his opinion is well worth examining. He has two recent Quadrant articles which are highly thought provoking, and should be read by everyone concerned about the Covid issue. The first:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/public-health/2021/10/we-cant-vaccinate-this-pandemic-away/
Ivermectin, doxycycline and zinc need reconsideration. His words: “Thirty frontline doctors in Australia recently treated over 600 patients with COVID-19. The treatment strategy was ivermectin (IVM) with doxycycline and zinc. Five patients required admission to hospital for progressive symptoms. There were no deaths. In a similar number of contemporary Australian patients not treated with IVM, 70 were hospitalised and six died.
This is consistent with world data bases: 31 randomised controlled trials show 62 per cent benefit with IVM, and seven meta-analyses recorded a reduction in death of between 57 and 83 per cent. Experienced clinicians have moved on to combine IVM with additional drugs, usually a broad-spectrum antibiotic such as doxycycline, and zinc, which has viricidal activity.”
However this is not so as the mainstream press has a moral panic about ivermectin, but the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) made shut down the prescribing of IVM by frontline doctors for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. The reason? The vax.
“The main TGA concern stated was that IVM would confuse the public and lead to hesitation to be vaccinated. That, too, is incorrect. Doctors overwhelmingly support vaccination against COVID-19. The combination of safe and effective IVM with a vaccination programme will enhance viral clearance, reduce disease severity, reduce hospital admissions and reduce deaths. However, groupthink quickly led to professional bodies such as the AMA uncritically accepting the TGA policy. Even the Australian Academy of Science weighed in with political support for the TGA’s decision, doing so without any evaluation of the science.
Then came the coup: the regulatory body responsible for registration of doctors, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, warned that prescribing, dispensing, or even publicly discussing IVM, “compromised expected standards of practise”, leaving open disciplinary measures which have since resulted in doctors having their licences revoked. A crescendo of intimidation has ensued, all based on a failure to interrogate the data and understand the clinical circumstance, with perhaps a touch of group hysteria thrown in.”
Isn’t scientific objectivity, truly amazing! The daring critical rationality and open examination of everything! Not likely in political science.
“The mainline press welcomed claims supporting the anti-IVM narrative, with the BBC News plumbing new lows in journalism by combining false conclusions with bias that included misrepresentation of a highly regarded epidemiologist. A recent Sydney Morning Herald article was little better, distorting the science with ideology and bias. The reporter involved has not responded to a request to host a debate on the topic. They never do!”
“There has been a frenetic response by media and government to an orchestrated campaign by pharmaceutical giant Merck promoting its re-purposed antiviral agent, Molnupiravir, before significant data assessment has been completed. Merck is now joined by Roche and Pfizer with their versions of re-positioned “wonder drugs”. All have limited and conflicting data yet make extravagant claims. These antivirals are less effective than IVM and none have acceptable safety profiles. However, we see the Australian government making extraordinary claims and committing large sums to acquire these unproven oral therapies. Who can be advising government to allow such dubious claims and acquisitions at the expense of IVM and the Australian taxpayer?
The charge of hypocrisy and cynicism must first be directed at Merck, but also at “the experts”, Dr.Tony Fauci, governments and, of course, the media. Merck stated IVM had no clinical value mere days before receiving a US$300 million grant to develop Molnupiravir. Available data suggests it provides eight-fold less protection than that found for IVM in the Australian study. Merck acquired Molnupiravir, originally developed by Emory University, after it failed against other RNA virus diseases. Questions about undisclosed data remain to be answered. The drug is a “son of Remdesavir”, a RNA polymerase inhibitor with that failed randomised controlled trials (RCT). The Australian government has bought 300,000 courses of Remdesivir (the US government pays US$1,000 per course). This is beyond logic, certainly not based on science. As the TGA prevented doctors prescribing IVM because it would reduce vaccination rates, the question is simple: How will the TGA draw a distinction between Merck’s Molnupiravir and IVM?
The elephant in the room for Molnupiravir is safety. The drug creates lethal mutants to terminate virus replication. Cell biologists express concern that some live mutants with resistance to vaccines are released into the environment. DNA mutations also occur, which could lead to disturbed growth and cross-generation transmission of genetic changes. The TGA will now have to wrestle with pressure from Big Pharma and government to register a drug with scant clinical data and untested safety concerns after denying the Australian a public cheap, safe and more effective treatment with IVM.
Any argument against IVM or HCQ use in treating COVID-19 is not based on science. Rather, it is politically driven, in tune with the pharmaceutical companies’ profit motive. Who is pulling the strings?”
Professor Clancy goes on to critique the standard genetic vaccines, which he argues are limited. At last someone in Australia is discussing the case study of Israel:
“While doctors support the current vaccine roll-out, reported “danger signals” must be clarified. Both the DNA-vector vaccine (AstraZeneca) and mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) behave as predicted by biology relevant to airways’ protection (something not understood by the vast majority of “experts”): short duration of protection limited to control of systemic inflammation, with little impact on infection of the airways.
Israel was used as a laboratory for the Pfizer vaccine. Six months after vaccination, there was essentially no protection against infection or mild disease, although protection against severe disease remained at 85-to-90 per cent. Thereafter came a rapid and progressive loss of protection against more severe disease. Infected vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects have similar viral loads and transmission capacity. Immunity following natural infection is better and more durable than that induced by vaccination, so there is no sense in immunising those who have had COVID infection in the preceding six months.
In an Australian context, by New Year 2022, it is estimated about two million vaccinated Australians will have lost protection against infection and mild disease. Infections will increase as borders are opened and we re-enter the international community.
Our lockdown policy has limited the acquisition of natural immunity. Although we can expect high levels of infection with less severe disease, pressure on hospitals will increase. The experience of Israel and Iceland, each with high vaccination rates of 85 per cent or more, provides a possible scenario for Australia. In Israel, with a population of less than 10 million, the “third wave” continues, with 1500 new cases and 30 deaths a day (at the time of writing). More concerning are reports of high COVID mortality in older vaccinated subjects in some jurisdictions. Variants such as the further-mutated Delta variant in the UK will continue to appear, with unknown infectivity, response to current vaccines and pathogenicity. Perhaps of greatest concern is the observation in the UK, and now in Sweden, that older vaccinated individuals have a higher incidence of COVID infection than those who are unvaccinated. At the same time others are describing a state of immune deficiency following vaccination with genetic vaccines.
At this stage it is unclear as to whether this “deficiency” of the immune response is limited to the antibody response to COVID virus. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has done “Immunology 101”, as enhancing antibody (ie antibody that promotes infection, rather than limits it) is well recognised in RNA virus infections, and “antigen excess causing a downregulation of immunity” is a basic tenet of immunology. Forgotten by most, is that genetic vaccines cause a large and unregulated amount of antigen (ie the spike protein) to be synthesised within the cells of the body, and the immune response will be a function of those unknown dynamics. These facts and the concerns they raise should be front and centre for regulators as they examine data to make decisions in regard to booster shots. The duration of protection following boosters is completely unknown, as is whether genetic vaccine boosters distort the immune system with net suppression. Are we setting ourselves up for monthly boosters, higher incidence of infections, more serious adverse events, or even more concerning immune outcomes. We just do not know! If ever there was a need for a safe , cheap effective oral therapy, now is it.
The concern for all genetic vaccines is the damage caused by uncontrolled release of toxic spike protein from cells throughout the body, and cell destruction due to T cells and antibody directed against spike protein, expressed on cell surfaces. It is too early to know if there are long-term complications caused by injected mRNA due to displacement of physiological mRNA by synthetic “capped” mRNA in vaccines, or prion disease such as Parkinson’s disease, due to “prion sequences” in the spike protein.
There are disturbing signals reporting severe adverse events and post-vaccination deaths across the globe. A high percent of these “signals” appear to have a causal relationship in subsequent analyses, reinforced by post-mortem reports showing specific tissue changes. Yet we are now seeing a push to vaccinate children under 12 who neither get severe disease nor significantly spread it. The cost/benefit of immunising children has been widely criticised, while misinformation continues to be delivered through the press. Similar concerns persist with respect to vaccination of pregnant women despite short term data from Pfizer suggesting safety. Incidence of miscarriages remains unclear. Follow-up of infants must be able to exclude complications due to placenta damage from spike protein and genetic changes due to injected mRNA.”
In conclusion Professor Clancy asks whether “legal sanity be sufficient to counter the pharmaceutical lobby and pressures they will bring on regulatory bodies?” He says that we must live in hope, but from the story told in his article I very much doubt this.