Ivermectin works – just not for Big Pharma

Plus, a beautiful gift from Professor Satoshi Ōmura, who discovered ivermectin

I’d like to extend a warm, heartfelt invitation to everyone to join me in celebrating World Ivermectin Day this Saturday. In truth, I feel that every day should be an ivermectin day – but this extraordinary medicine has been so maligned, few people are even aware of its healing properties, let alone have access to it.

Most of you know ivermectin’s story already: how it emerged as an effective treatment for Covid-19, and was then roundly dismissed by public health authorities, including the FDA, who described this Nobel Prize-winning medicine as just a horse dewormer.

You can view a summary of the ivermectin story on the World Ivermectin Day website, which I warmly encourage you to visit. In brief, every strange twist and turn in the Covid-19 crisis has played out in the battle over ivermectin. This is a tale of big pharma cartels, captured media, scientific corruption, compromised scientific journals, lives lost for want of early treatment, and lives saved because of this wonder drug.

Since our first World Ivermectin Day last year, more research has emerged confirming ivermectin’s efficacy in treating Covid-19. One new research paper is particularly exciting, and I’m delighted to be welcoming its author to a special World Ivermectin Day Tess Talks this week.

Sabine Hazan is a gastroenterologist, scientist and expert in the microbiome. Last year, on World Ivermectin Day she spoke about her research on ivermectin for Covid. This month, she published an important paper proposing the hypothesis that ivermectin may help to repopulate the microbiome. This is an exciting development, and here’s why.

As Sabine explains in our conversation, people susceptible to Covid-19 such as the elderly or obese, are observed to have decreased Bifidobacteria in their gut. Bifidobacteria is a key component of healthy gut flora and plays an important role in immunity. Sabine’s theory – based on her extensive research – is that ivermectin may act as a kind of prebiotic and increase Bifidobacteria in the gut. This in turn may help boost natural immunity to Covid-19.

More research is needed, but her hypothesis is very promising. Ivermectin is a by-product of Streptomyces fermentation – and Streptomyces happens to share the same phylum, or family, as Bifidobacteria. It is quite possible then, that ivermectin is able to feed Bifidobacteria.

Sabine’s hypothesis delights me and confirms yet again what an extraordinary gift from Mother Nature ivermectin is, and how we must redouble our efforts to get it approved for use in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19. It has already saved so many lives, it can save countless more – and it can ease the suffering of many.

Ivermectin is for everyone: for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, for those suffering from Covid, and those suffering from vaccine injury. It has even been found to have anti-cancer properties. Given the explosion of long Covid, vaccine harms and cancers, the world needs access to ivermectin, now more than ever before. It is the medicine for our times.

I know that it’s not always easy to put our heads up over the parapet and speak out. But this World Ivermectin Day is a golden opportunity to do so. We need to challenge the nonsensical narrative that ivermectin doesn’t work. We need to raise awareness of its healing properties and celebrate it together. The World Ivermectin Day website offers many suggestions for how to do this. You could share your own ivermectin story on the website, create your own ivermectin meme, hand out flyers or hold an ivermectin party and invite your friends. Or, why not celebrate our favourite ‘horse dewormer’ with some horse riding on the day? If you plan to hold an event, let us know and we will add it to our events map.

Very recently, I received a very special gift from Professor Satoshi Ōmura, who first discovered the bacterium Streptomyces avermectinius, from which he isolated the compound avermectin (ivermectin is a derivative of avermectin):

Can you guess what it is? I will leave you to ponder – and the answer will be in my Tess Talks with Sabine Hazan, this coming Sunday.  In the meantime, I wish you a wonderful and very happy World Ivermectin Day this Saturday.