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Medicine

'No Effect Whatsoever' Found for Ivermectin in Major Study (msn.com) 296

In 1999 Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Hiltzik won a Pulitzer Prize. Now a business columnist for the Times, he writes that Ivermectin, "the latest supposed treatment for COVID-19 being touted by anti-vaccination groups, had 'no effect whatsoever' on the disease, according to a large patient study." (Alternate URL here) That's the conclusion of the Together Trial, which has subjected several purported nonvaccine treatments for COVID-19 to carefully designed clinical testing.

The trial is supervised by McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and conducted in Brazil. One of the trial's principal investigators, Edward Mills of McMaster, presented the results from the Ivermectin arms of the study at an Aug. 6 symposium sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Among the 1,500 patients in the study, he said, Ivermectin showed "no effect whatsoever" on the trial's outcome goals — whether patients required extended observation in the emergency room or hospitalization. "In our specific trial," he said, "we do not see the treatment benefit that a lot of the advocates believe should have been" seen...

The Ivermectin camp, as I reported earlier, is heavily peopled by anti-vaccination advocates and conspiracy mongers. They maintain that the truth about the drug has been suppressed by agents of the pharmaceutical industry, which ostensibly prefers to collect the more generous profits that will flow from COVID vaccines. The problem, however, is that the scientific trials cited by Ivermectin advocates have been too small or poorly documented to prove their case. One large trial from Egypt that showed the most significant therapeutic effect was withdrawn from its publishers due to accusations of plagiarism and bogus data. Nevertheless, the advocates have continued to press their case — without necessarily observing accepted standards of scientific discourse. During the symposium, Mills complained that serious researchers looking into claims for COVID treatments have faced unprecedented abuse from advocates.

"I've had enough abuse and so have the other clinical trialists doing Ivermectin," he said. "Others working in this area have been threatened, their families have been threatened, they've been defamed," he said...

Asked whether he expected further criticism from Ivermectin advocates, he said it was all but inevitable. "The advocacy groups have set themselves up to be able to critique any clinical trial. They've already determined that any valid, well-designed critical trial was set up to fail."

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'No Effect Whatsoever' Found for Ivermectin in Major Study

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  • by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @09:38AM (#61691623)
    On the one hand, people who made tons of YouTube videos and Facebook posts were sure it was effective. On the other hand doctors and scientists who have studied this for years expressed skepticism. I wonder who I should believe . . .
    • by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @10:19AM (#61691733)
      These eggheads don't know what they are talking about. My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with a girl who works for WebMD that ivermectin has been saving lots of hoax patients. I guess it's pretty serious.
    • by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @11:13AM (#61691901) Journal

      The Murdoch empire is behind it too. Google News keeps showing me a Wall Street Journal headline something like "Why does the FDA keep attacking a safe, effective drug?".

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        I'v been getting that too. What the ignoramuses who wrote that article don't realize is safe for parasitic infections doesn't automatically mean safe for treating COVID. That's because the dose you need to achieve an antiviral effect seen in a Petri disk might be far higher than the dose needed to treat a parasitic infection.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      I wonder who I should believe . . .

      Didn't you get the memo? Truth is a bitch; she demands everything from you then gives zero concessions in return. People are done with her. What you do is, pick a side and drink the Kool-Aid.

    • Well, Dr. John Campbell was in the Ivermectin camp a few months ago, referencing some of the earlier studies and having interview partners advocating it too. I havenâ(TM)t followed up if heâ(TM)s changed his view since.

    • You know whom you should believe? No one.

      You know *what* you should believe? Data. Not just data, but data and associated meta data that spans the problem space as fully and uniformly as possible.

      In the absense of such data, which almost always only comes from purpose-designed scientific trials, hunches and correlations aren't a bad thing to entertain.

      Regardless of who comes up with them or latches onto them as the new black dress.

      Ivermectin never seemed plausible.

      HCQ or HCQ/zinc did seem plausible based on

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, you can be with stupid, which will at least be emotionally comforting, or you can be with Science. The latter has a tendency to result in uncomfortable insights, but long-term survival as well.

  • Us vs them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @09:39AM (#61691625) Journal

    Asked whether he expected further criticism from Ivermectin advocates, he said it was all but inevitable. "The advocacy groups have set themselves up to be able to critique any clinical trial. They've already determined that any valid, well-designed critical trial was set up to fail."

    Confirmation bias is strong in that group. I'm a victim is too.

  • Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @09:43AM (#61691641)

    Did they subject it to Vitamin D + Zinc + garlic + only stir the mixture clockwise + inject it only during a full moon? I mean everyone knows if you don't do all of those the mixture doesn't work. This is another useless study paid for by big pharma to entrench the ruling class and keep us from life saving medication!

    Disclaimer: Since this is 2021 on Slashdot I feel the need to point out that this post is in fact sarcastic and aimed directly at the anti-vaxxing morons who unfortunately also exist on this site.

    • by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @09:58AM (#61691677) Homepage

      But I fear that people would use it sarcastically...

    • Re: Yes but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by klipclop ( 6724090 )
      The anti vaxxers are stupid right wing hippies. It actually blows my mind that people who are probably chronically sick and taking various medication and injecting insulin like the candy they gorged on would draw the line at just one more pharmaceutical intervention.
      • That's probably not too far from the truth, several of the admittedly small number of antivaxxers I know will happily ingest eye of newt unguent they got from a bum they ran into in the supermarket lavatory, but refuse to be vaccinated because of the unknown risk of the vaccine. My GF is a psychologist and usually has a theory about everything involving human behaviour, but even she's stumped at why people behave like this.
        • That's probably not too far from the truth, several of the admittedly small number of antivaxxers I know will happily ingest eye of newt unguent they got from a bum they ran into in the supermarket lavatory, but refuse to be vaccinated because of the unknown risk of the vaccine. My GF is a psychologist and usually has a theory about everything involving human behaviour, but even she's stumped at why people behave like this.

          Never discount the stupidity of solipsism and politics in the minds of people with cognitive issues.

      • Re: Yes but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @12:23PM (#61692151)

        The anti vaxxers are stupid right wing hippies.

        Some of them are. Most are right wing MAGA Trump loyalists and many of those don't even doubt the vaccine effectiveness as much as they don't want to hand Joe Biden a "win."

        In other words, they would rather the country go down in flames to increase the chance of their candidate winning the next election because the Democratic incumbent is not "effective" at protecting us.

      • Err.. the majority of US people who donâ(TM)t want to get vaccinated are Blacks and Hispanics, who are usually left wing Democrat voters.
    • everyone knows the way you cure covid is by putting some in water and diluting it to less than 1 part per quadrillion (water has memory [youtube.com] after all)*



      *this is what homeopaths actually believe, and every few years they kill a bunch of babies because they don't dilute out all the literal poison in their "medicine".
      • I remember a time when people's sick fetishes involved drinking each other's pee, I don't understand why homeopaths insist on drinking diluted dinosaur pee instead. That's next level shit there. Incidentally that water also probably remembers animals shitting in it too.

    • It didn't work because they wore the wrong crystal and forgot to include colloidal silver.
  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @09:50AM (#61691661)

    Combine it with bleach you ninnies! Bleach kills the virus!!@!!@!one!12!! And don't forget, Zinc too .. Zinc opens up your cell's pores to let ivermectin, azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine, bleach, and whatever else into your cells. I learned on Fox News University Med School, from a Donald Trump endorsed MD, PhD, GED that eating Zinc is like your cells just elected AOC to open up the borders to allow the bleach and ivermectin to come in and dissolve the virus.

    • Don't forget to shine UVB light up your ass!

      • Don't forget to shine UVB light up your ass!

        That's from the same people who've spent several years blowing smoke up it.

    • > Zinc or vitamin D deficiencies are not rare, and may contribute to poor immune function. Therefore, even without specific evidence linking supplement use with improvement among people with COVID-19, these supplements may be appropriate for people in whom deficiency is suspected or confirmed.

      https://www.health.harvard.edu... [harvard.edu]

  • Contagion from 2011 seems to have been pretty accurate in a lot of what it predicted.

    • by sphealey ( 2855 )

      - - - - - Contagion from 2011 seems to have been pretty accurate in a lot of what it predicted. - - - - -

      Generally speaking yes; those writers really "did their research". Except who could have foreseen people (well, USians anyway) fighting to the death not to receive the lifesaving, pandemic ending vaccine?!?

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @10:07AM (#61691689)

    My wife knows someone whose just-turned 9 year-old grandson has been fighting a losing battle with cancer and at this point has just days or weeks to go (they’re at one of the best pediatric oncology centers in the US, so they’ve been getting great care, but the kid has an extremely aggressive form of cancer). A few months back a family member of ours asked for an update on the kid after my wife had mentioned the situation, so my wife forwarded a link to the blog the kid’s parents have been maintaining.

    Apparently our family member then shared the blog link in her circle of friends, so a few days later we were forwarded an email from a busybody antivaxer “friend” of hers who “couldn’t believe” that the parents hadn’t tried $ludicrous_diet that would have fixed the kid’s cancer (the fact that there’s no scientific basis for that claim didn’t put this “friend” off, of course) and was “so sad to see them letting their child die” when there are so many essential oils that could help. To say the least, we did not share that information with the family of the kid.

    A few weeks later when the blog mentioned another child from the pediatric oncology ward who had a family member with COVID, this “friend” forwarded another email to us via our family member, suggesting we should pass along info about Ivermectin and how effective it’s been proven to be. Somehow we dropped the ball and forgot to pass that info along too. Oops.

    So yeah...this news of its ineffectiveness doesn’t exactly come as a surprise to me.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @10:25AM (#61691761)

    Since when did facts affect the anti-vax crowd?

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday August 14, 2021 @11:02AM (#61691867)
    there *are* treatments. Why don't they talk about the actual treatments?

    I suppose it's because none of them are miracle cures, and at the end of the day if you get sick enough to be seeking those treatments you're still gonna be on oxygen for a month and have long term damage (if you're lucky) and a ventilator if you're not...

    Still, they could talk about the real, actual treatments. Another guess, maybe if people google the real treatments they'll find how marginal they are...
  • People who are taking this need to double the dose. Remember, this is for horses so it's a small dose. For people, you need to double it.

    If that fails, there are a multitude of other treatments being suppressed by Big Pharma one could try. However, whatever you do, do not under any circumstance take anything which is known to inhibit or prevent the catching of covid such as the four different vaccines on the market. You would be crazy to do something like that.

  • It's reminiscent of the time when Andrew Wakefield said MMR caused autism and it had to be shown as false through study. Not because science wanted that question to be answered but because one unethical asshole trying to line his own pockets convinced so many people of a link that science had to prove that there was none.

    Not that antivaxxers will change their minds because a study says different. These idiots still assert vaccines cause autism and invoke all kinds of shadowy big pharma conspiracy to handw

  • With the number of daily covid deaths in this country now twice what they were just a week and a half ago, we need to keep things in perspective [imgur.com].

    At least we can say one thing about Florida and its soaring covid deaths. It's not requiring a military medical ship [nola.com] be parked offshore because there are no more beds in hospitals to treat the sick and dying.

  • Most reasonable thing to do with any health related thing is Talk to your Doctor (the one you see for checkups and have a professional relationship with) they will know what is best as far as vaccination after all they know your health issues and can recommend the safest choices for you. Secondly if you get the virus trust the doctors who are treating you and follow what they prescribe. While health is a science you have reedy access to a scientist to help you make smart choices.
    • That's good advice in theory except for the doctors who themselves are anti-vax and won't even get the shots themselves let alone recommend it to their patients. How do you get any traction on this subject with the general public when even healthcare professionals aren't all on the same page with it?
    • Talk to your DOCTOR about these questions? Are you crazy? My doctor hasn’t made even one YouTube video! Why should I trust his medical advice?

  • Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD): these are the tools of the trolls of the world.
    Trolls, in this case, who are trying to wreck our civilization, trying to wreck our entire species.

    Don't believe me? Try this little experiment:
    Are you at least six feet tall? Try proving that on the internet.
    "Oh, LOL, no, you're lying, you're a MANLET, you're probably about five foot seven"
    Then you post a pic next to a tape measure. See? I'm 6'4" tall!
    "LOL you're standing on a box or something, manlet!"
    Post a full

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

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