In my previous post about Doc Romy, Covid 30, Dr. Romeo Quijano on IVM and vaccine mania (April 11, 2021) which is the #1 most viewed article in this blog, a certain Dr. N.A. Meriales criticized Doc Romy in the comments section. Below are Doc Romy's reply to him/her, sometime April 2021, and Dr. Meriales' prior comment. Enjoy.
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Hi, Dr. Meriales,
Thank you for your comments. I hope to hear more comments (especially criticsms) from other doctors. Patients will be better served if there is frank discussion among doctors who may have different beliefs and opinions about prevention and treatment of disease.
Allow me to respond to your comments:
1. You say “The website is utter garbage having no contact links or names responsible for its content... there is a lot of doubt on the creators of the site. It can be written by any conspiracy theorist who wants zero accountability on the contents.”
It is not true that the website has no contact links or names. The c19ivermectin.com website is a reference website, as clearly indicated in the main FLCCC website (Ivermectin in covid-19, https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/), which I presume you have explored since you looked at the FAQ section. With a little bit more diligence on your part, you would have discovered that the main FLCCC website does have contact links and names. Please look again: FLCCC_about_contacts https://covid19criticalcare.com/about/contacts/ Your language “utter garbage” :
There is no valid reason for your judgment that the website is “utter garbage” and for insinuating that the content “can be written by any conspiracy theorist who wants zero accountability”. This is uncalled for and manifests gross disrespect to the FLCCC physicians.
FLCCC Physicians
https://covid19criticalcare.com/about/the-flccc-physicians/
2. Why cite a pre-print paper?
Utilising the findings from research papers posted in pre-print servers is a standard practice, especially in the medical sciences, particularly during the health emergencies. There are numerous examples of new therapeutic interventions that have been used during the Covid-19 pandemic even before the peer- reviewed studies were made available. Examples of pre-print adopted therapeutics are remdesivir, corticosteroids, monoclonal antibodies, convalescent plasma and the vaccines. These drugs were widely adopted before the peer-review process was completed on the pre-print manuscripts. For the Covid-19 vaccines, inoculations began even before a pre-print manuscript was made available. To dismiss the value of a meta-analysis of ivermectin studies because it has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, willfully ignores both the extreme importance that pre-prints play in the rapid dissemination of medical knowledge in a pandemic situation. You also seem to ignore the fact that one of the main authors of the pre-print meta-analysis paper is an experienced, highly respected reviewer of the Cochrane Collaboration, the most credible and internationally recognised global independent network of experts whose systematic reviews and meta-analyses of scientific papers. Furthermore, peer-review takes months and is not perfect, especially under the present situation where most scientific papers in the medical field are strongly influenced by the big pharmaceutical companies. Even WHO, in a consultation in September 2015 on “Developing Global Norms for Sharing Data and Results during Public Health Emergencies” (https://www.who.int/medicines/ebola-treatment/data- sharing_phe/en/) issued a statement saying: “It was unequivocally agreed by representatives from leading biomedical journals that public disclosure of important information of potential relevance to public health emergencies should not be delayed by publication timelines, and that pre-publication disclosure must not and will not prejudice journal publication. It was agreed that pre-publication information sharing should become the global norm in the context of public health emergencies...There was consensus that the risks and potential harms to individuals of non-disclosure of important information provide a strong ethical rationale for rapid sharing of data...Participants called upon all researchers from public and private sectors to make data publically available, including results from studies that are inconclusive or have not led to the expected results.”
Nevertheless, there are at least 12 peer reviewed randomised clinical trials on ivermectin that showed positive results. Thousands are dying every day. It seems that these deaths are acceptable to those who are saying we should wait for more peer-reviewed published studies before using a potentially life- saving drug with a decades long record of clinical use safety which is even better than paracetamol.
3. Shouldn't we wait for more clinical trials?
In the FLCCC analysis of ivermectin studies, 12 of the 24 controlled trials results are prospective and randomized and include over 2,000 patients. This is similar to the case of corticosteroids being accepted to be included in the standard of care in COVID-19 overnight on the basis of a randomized controlled trial which included 2,000 patients treated with dexamethasone. The ivermectin case has more justification for use based on the number of patients in the 9 observational controlled trials with a total of over 4,000 patients. Thus, there are nearly 7,000 patients and 24 controlled trials of ivermectin in varying sizes and designs and countries, with nearly all resulting in consistent, reproducible, large magnitude, statistically significant findings of efficacy as a prophylactic and in early and late phase disease. Given these marked reductions in transmission, hospitalizations, and death, any further studies using a placebo would be unethical. There are in fact many historical examples where new treatment modalities with dramatic beneficial effects were accepted mainly because of common sense and without the benefit of randomised clinical trials. These examples would include: sulfonamides for sepsis, streptomycin for tuberculous meningitis, ether for anesthesia, cisplatin, vinblastine, and bleomycin combination for testicular cancer, closed reduction and splinting for fracture of long bones with displacement, among many others. The effects of ivermectin on the prophylaxis and treatment ofCovid-19 in most studies available are dramatic enough that there is really no need to wait for further randomised clinical trials to start using the drug for patients who are clearly faced with the significant risk of serious consequences, including death.
Thank you again for your comments and if you have further comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely yours, Romeo F Quijano
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Dear Prof. Quijano,
I am a former student of yours at the UPCM and now a faculty member of the same. I find it inappropriate that you should cite c19ivermectin.com as a reference. The website is utter garbage having no contact links or names responsible for its content. In its own FAQ link, it states: “Who is @CovidAnalysis? We are PhD researchers, scientists, people who hope to make a contribution, even if it is only very minor. You can find our research in journals like Science and Nature. For examples of why we can't be more specific search for "raoult death threats" or "simone gold fired". We have little interest in adding to our publication lists, being in the news, or being on TV (we have done all of these things before but feel there are more important things in life now).”
“We have little interest in adding to our publication list...” places a lot of doubt on the creators of the site. It can be written by any conspiracy theorist who wants zero accountability on the contents.
Another dubious citation is from researchsquare.com (3). It is a PREPRINT, not a published paper. From the site itself, posted at the upper right hand corner of the page, in red: “Preprints are preliminary reports that have not undergone peer review. They should not be considered conclusive, used to inform clinical practice, or referenced by the media as validated information.”
I want a solution as well to this COVID-19 pandemic, but I would rather look at validated, peer-reviewed, Level 1 evidence than the citations above.
Thank you. Please stay safe.
Dr. N.A. Meriales
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