Suppressing COVID-19
What’s all the stir against using ivermectin against COVID-19? Is there really anything technically in favor of it? Glad you asked.
In the late 1960s, Japanese microbiologist Satoshi Omura found medicinal potential in a newly discovered soil bacterium, Streptomyces avermitilis. He sent a culture of it to a collaborator, William Campbell of Merck, a pharmaceutical company. Campbell directed Merck’s research and development of ivermectin, a natural compound produced in that organism’s fermentation process, and found it safe and highly effective against roundworms and other internal parasites in animals, and eventually in humans.
In 1987, Merck committed to donate ivermectin for control of “river blindness”, a dreaded roundworm disease, for as long as necessary, and did the same in 1998 for elephantiasis. Effective against other human parasites worldwide by millions of people over several decades against roundworm and other dread parasitic diseases with extremely few adverse effects, it’s registered for certain internal parasites in the U.S.
Omara and Campbell were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine because of the humanitarian benefits of ivermectin. It’s listed by the World Health Organization as an “essential medicine.” Last year, an international team of scientists published in the American Journal of Therapeutics’ systematic review an analysis of numerous scientific studies of ivermectin against COVID-19 in humans, showing it safe and effective against COVID-19 in humans. It’s officially approved and supported for COVID-19 by the governments of several countries.
Although it is legal to prescribe, distribute and use it for that purpose in the U.S., federal and many state agencies nonetheless strongly discourage the public and medical practitioners from using it. That’s a major roadblock to suppressing the COVID-19 pandemic. But maybe you already knew all that …
Bob Callihan
Potlatch
Editor’s note: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals. Learn more at bit.ly/34ujyaV
