Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Don't Steal Your Dog's Worm Medicine to Treat COVID-19

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Ivermectin is a fantastic, incredible miraculous drug that has recently been touted by some as a potent treatment for COVID-19, despite not having the research yet to back up the claims. This week, we'll help you avoid stealing your dog's worm medication in the hopes of fending off coronavirus.Pre-order The Sawbones Book paperback!Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, of Miss Guided Medicine. for the mouth. Wow. Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones, a marital tour of Miss Guided Medicine.

I am your co-host Justin McAroy. You didn't see it, but I just did the little hand wave, like, indubitably. I'm Sydney McAroy. I did not do the hand wave. I just said that. Well, she's still getting out with two hands. Oh, I'm not.

I'm not. You can't do the Malady hand wave with two hands? I'm not doing that. I mean, anything. Hey, this is. Oh, I'm not. I'm not. Did you kiddin' the malady hand wave with two hands? I'm not doing that. Does it mean anything? Hey, this is, hey, finally, things are turning around on planet Earth. I think we got some really good news yesterday. Yes. The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was, well, it was recommended for emergency use authorization.

I don't think it has at the time of recording has officially like started shipping out, but it was recommended that we do so. So there's a vaccine. Yay! And then vaccines. But now we know. Look underneath your share listener. There's one right there. Everybody's getting COVID vaccines. That's right. So I think we have made it very clear on the show. Whatever vaccine we can get. We made it very clear on our human bodies. We jab one in. Maybe have already gotten. I don't know. Plusybo versus real thing. One way or another, we will be vaccinated as well. Everybody that we have the power to make meeting our two children eventually. Yeah. If we can catch them, although we can sometimes make our two children eventually. Yeah, if we can catch them.

Although we can sometimes make our parents do things. It is, yeah, it is hit or miss. Yeah. But hey, that's good news. Yes, very, very exciting, very, very big day. You guys have first good news since... Anyway, moving on. Just because this vaccine is on the horizon, or is it here, and other vaccines are on the horizon,

just because that has happened. Doesn't mean that doctors have stopped looking for other treatments for COVID, because people are still going to be getting this virus and then coming down with the disease COVID-19 that you can follow and some people will be getting very sick. Yeah. Even as the vaccine is rolled out to everyone. And it is imperative that we continue to look for new treatments that might help people either prevent or survive the disease. And sometimes we find things that work and sometimes we don't.

A science. One that I've gotten a few emails about and that also I have been following closely and reading a lot about that is interested me is a drug called Ivermectin. Now Justin before I told you we were going to do a show on Ivermectin, had you heard that word? I had never heard Ivermectin. I would say a lot of people haven't, aren't familiar with it, depending on where you live in the world. Unless you have, now I mean, some people with animals may know what I'm talking about.

They may be going, do you mean the thing that I gave to my dog or like if you have horses, do you mean the thing that was in your arm thing? Oh, is it a hurricane or horses? Yeah. Okay. You know, now that you say that maybe long ago, we gave it to Nessie or our Scottish area, perhaps. So some, some people have heard of it in a veterinary context and don't realize

that it is, it is also a drug that human beings do take. And it, the history, I want to talk about the history of Ivermectin. And I will at the end kind of cover what we, what people are thinking, why people are talking about it in terms of COVID, I will go ahead and say at the top that I am not going to the end of this podcast is not. And now there's a surprise COVID cure. Yeah. And this one doesn't twist it on you. It's pretty much

head where you think it's going. No, I, you know, I think I think that this we may be on another hydroxychloroquine story here. No, man. But, uh, but I will, I will go through the data at the end of what we know so far and, and where things are going and why people are even interested in it. But I want to talk about Ivermectin's story because it is an amazing, life-saving drug. It is a hugely important drug on a global scale

that maybe you aren't familiar with. And it has nothing to do with COVID, why it is so important. There's lots of good stuff that doesn't cure COVID. Yes. Putting. Putting was the example you came up with. Most hold steady records. There's a couple I'm not crazy about, but most of the hold-stay stuff holds up.

I was going to say like penicillin. The laughter of children. I mean, anything can be medicines in any, if we've proven any. No, no, no, that's not medicine. Just like a nice thing that brings you joy. How about that? Okay. But that's not medicine. Just like a nice thing that brings you joy. How about that? But that's not medicine. The story, though, that I want to talk about with Ivermectin starts with a doctor Satoshi Omura. Dr. Omura is an expert in bio-organic chemistry. He has degrees in pharmaceutical science and chemistry, but his fascination, and he's still alive today, you can read the things he's written and the papers he's published, many.

Tweed at him, let him know that he's popping off on Sovins. I think he already knows, well, I'll just go ahead and say, he gets a Nobel Prize in this story. So I think he already knows that he's done some good stuff. He's already been awarded, like. Sydney being featured on America's number one, the number one medical podcast on the planet,

that's recognition, baby. His fascination and he talks about this very eloquently, I think, it was always with the idea that the natural world holds these answers, these medical answers. You just have to find them. You have to look for them and eventually with time and skill and knowledge, you can locate these answers. You see a call of power. It looks like a brain. That's nature's way of telling you. It helps

your brain. No, not like that. See, this is where we've talked about on the show, like to have that sort of open mind, to ask that question is incredibly important for science. But then what follows that question has to be a rigorous set of protocols in order to answer it correctly and not just answer it in a way that makes you happy. And that is what distinguishes. Amur does and did is look to the natural world for answers and then go through a rigorous scientific method to see if he has in fact found them. His particular area of interest became studying soil samples for substances that were made by made by bacteria, but could be useful to humans in some sort of or to anyone could be useful in a pharmaceutical sense. Substances made by bacteria seems like a real long way of saying bacteria poopy. Not necessarily poop. Oh, well honey, don't you make a lot of substances that aren't

these things? When they make these substances do they need them or do they disperse them into the environment? Well again, there are a lot of substances you could disperse into the environment. Yeah, but let's not. But they don't have noses and ears. They're bacteria sitting. You know this. You did organic chemistry. That's just poopy. Anyway, no. Let's go back to the early 1970s. Okay. Okay.

Well, but I know. Excuse me. I guess this guy. No, that's the song that instantly transforms you into this 60s. What song is taking the 70s? No, no, that's the that's the song that instantly transports you to this 60s. What which what oh wait? What song is taking the 70s probably People all over the world everybody

John has started a love train I thought you just played the forest gump soundtrack. Yeah, that's that feels more 60s me funky town It's probably a universal transports you back to the 70s is probably a universal transports you back to the 70s. Anyway, in the... Super fly. In the early 70s, he was working in this area by basically going all over Japan. I think in my mind when I hear this story,

I imagine him personally traveling all over Japan and collecting these soil samples himself. I don't know that he's... Taisley, he worked in a lab with other people. So I don't know if he was the one who actually went out into the world to like dig up some dirt and put it in a cup and bring it back. This seems like some of the U outsource, right?

I don't know. I don't know. I like to imagine him doing that part too. He seems like the kind of guy who would do the whole thing, like just hands on part of the whole process. Anyway, so he was looking for substances that might be bioactive and at his lab at Tokyo's Kitasako Institute,

he had this agreement with mercury search labs in New Jersey that basically he would go around, get these samples, scan them to look for something that might be useful, isolated bacteria that might have some sort of property that could be useful in a pharmaceutical sense. And when he found stuff, he would then ship it to New Jersey to the Merkle lab to further investigate, refine, and test against different whatever to see if it worked, right? Right. They were very specifically looking for a new anti-parasitic drug, an anti-helmeth, anti-helmethic

drug, which means kills warms. They were looking for a drug that would kill parasitic worms, more or less. Because at the time, there weren't really any good ones. I mean, there were drugs that worked, but there were always issues with toxicity and how many different worms they could cover. There weren't like broad spectrum. They were actually kind of just looking for a brand new,

say it wasn't building on previous compounds that they knew had this sort of activity. It was like, let's just go out into the world and see if there's something. Let's get these worms. That we haven't found yet. So they, and at this point, they were mainly looking for like veterinary use.

That was very much the idea that, you know, parasitic worms were devastating for both like farm animals, animals that were meant for like, you know, consumer production type facilities and pets, like animals at large, they needed a good anti-parasitic for. So Dr. Amura found in a sample of soil that was taken from a golf course that was somewhere southwest of Tokyo. In this sample, he found an interesting substance

and he cultured the bacteria that he found in it. He saw that it had some potential. He shipped it to Dr. William Campbell and his all of his research, you know, technicians, assistants, whatever. And in New Jersey. You see the back guy? No. He's like, he's gonna be the back guy who steals everything. No, these two work together. For now. They work together. We'll see. I mean, they seem, I've read both of their accounts of this, and it seems pretty similar.

All right. All right. And he tested it against some parasitic worms and found that it was very effective. The early test, it was like, we found something new, something that nobody had discovered before, and it seems to work. And this is all very exciting. The bacteria was then named streptomyces avarmitylis, avarmitylis. Let me say that right. Streptomyces avarmitylis.

I would have gone with warm X because it's just really easy. Well, they kind of did. A, vermicthalous, vermus is Latin for worm. Like a, a vermus, a worm. Like verma, like vermicombosing. Yeah. Got worms in it. Yeah, verma, that is, that means worm.

So yes, exactly. And the substance that they found in it that had the biological effect, because just because, like, if you have a bacteria that seems to do something, it's usually not like the entire bacteria that does it, right? There's one substance from it. There's one compound that you can use.

The cilia, the Golgi bodies. Well, not an organ, not an organelle, but like an actual chemical. This is where you get, not an organ, not an organelle, but like an actual like chemical. This is where you get, this is why, or this is why it's not just biology or chemistry. It's both together because you have these organic thing, you have this bacteria, which is like in the biology realm, but it's making these chemicals in the chemistry realm. And you have to understand both to know what is it from, we don't wanna necessarily infect animals

with this bacteria so that we kill the worms, why don't we just find the thing that kills the worms and give that? That's like at the heart of discovering these natural pharmaceuticals. Makes sense. Is that concept? So anyway, they find that the substance

that actually does this is avaramectin. And they did some refinement on it to make it to like, just find the compounds in the avaramectin that were most effective to make them less toxic, to make them most potent. And they dubbed what resulted from all that, Ivermectin. And that is how they made the drug, Ivermectin.

So Ivermectin, all the times you drug, Ivermectin. So all the times you've heard Ivermectin the name, you're like, that's a great name, but where did it come from? Now you know in detail how they got to Ivermectin. From the outset, all these people involved in this were so excited about Ivermectin. I know you're not yet. I know you're thinking like,

Are you kidding me? Can you not see me? I'm waving my arms and jumping up down the air. There are people out there in the in the bacteria biology world who like totally get why this would have been. I mean, this was huge. There was no need to search it out me, but go on. Well, I'm just saying like they didn't usually if you're looking for a new compound that does something you just build on. Well, we know that things with this sort of form tend to work. So let's just keep looking for things like that.

They just serendipitously found this whole new substance from this golf course in Tokyo that kills worms. That kills worms. And they were very excited about it because it seemed to work on a wide variety of worms. It worked all throughout the gut, like worms found in different levels of the gut, and a lot of different animals. And this is an interesting point that I was reading when Dr. Campbell was describing the discovery. He said one of the most important things was not just what it did kill, but what it didn't kill. The way he put it was if you wanted a new

didn't kill. The way he put it was if you wanted a new anti-helmance to not work on something, it was the dog heartworm. And the reason for that is that if a dog has a heartworm and you don't know about it, the worm in their heart, and you give them something that will kill that to, like you're trying to treat something else, but it also kills this heart worm. Then that worm can actually cause a pulmonary embolus, like a blood clot in the lung when it after it dies. And then that could result in you losing the dog. So you don't want to accidentally, you want to know if that's there, you want to treat it very intentionally, you wouldn't want to give a dog a medication that would accidentally

treat that. Do you understand? Yeah, that makes sense. So, it didn't do that. So, this was an amazing drug because it did what you wanted it to do. It didn't do the stuff you didn't want it to do. It was all very exciting. And in addition, they started to test it against some insects too, so not just parasites inside the body, but ectoparasites.

Parasites that can live outside your body, certain kind of mites or beetles or lice and that kind of thing. And they found that it was useful to get some of those two. And that was the first time that they'd found a substance that was both toxic to endoparasites, parasites that live in your body and ectoparasites, parasites that live outside the body. So it was an inducticide. This was the beginning of the class of inducticides. Again, very. Here we are. I mean, I feel like I'm standing in Abbey Road, studios right now. This is electric.

And it seemed to have very little risk of toxicity too. It seemed to be like, well, once you've refined it to the Ivermectin and you give it, there's very little risk to the animal you're giving it to and a lot of risk to the parasites you want to kill. And the success was overwhelming. It became the leading index to side worldwide. It was a mainstay for vets. I mean, it really just as soon as it hit the veterinary world, it just overtook pretty much anything else they had for the most part because it was so safe

and effective and had such a broad spectrum of activity. One thing that it was found to be useful for was a specific kind of parasitic worm, a nematode, that horses got, and it was called Anco-Circa-Servicalis. And that name is going to lead us to the next chapter and why this drug is so important worldwide. Folks, there's a lot more layers of this onion to peel, but I predict that my wife is going to leave me into spints about Uncle Chara's cervicalis and its connection to this case.

First, we're going to go to the building department. Let's go. I can't wait. The medicines that I skilled at my God for the mouth. Our bills are paid city. You got to tell me what those two weird Latin words mean. Okay. Along some fast-moving rivers. Okay. Just stick with me.

I'm with you. You gave me. You will find certain types of blackflies. Okay. Of the simulium species, various subspecies of black fly. These flies can carry little teeny larvae or microfilaria larvae, little teeny larvae of it. You had it on the first one, but you did have to circle back to say that you knew the word and I could respect that. Of the parasitic nematode, Onko-circa, volvulus, and they're good. So are you following me? There are.

Yeah, I am. But for the listeners, that has warm larvae inside them. Flies with warm larvae inside them. Okay. These warm larvae, the word is microphyllaria, but we're gonna, should we stick with warm larvae, the word is microphylairier, but we're gonna, should we stick with warm larva? Maybe just stick with warm larvae for them. Well, eventually penetrate the stomach wall, they'll migrate to the head in proboscis of the fly, the part that bites you. And there, when that black fly does bite someone,

they can enter human skin. Okay. These little warm larva can then go from the black fly into the human. Bugs, still the worst, moon on. They will then travel through the subcutaneous tissue, all over the body. They will set up shop and little nodules in the skin.

You can see these from the outside. That's not what's in your hand. You're freaking out now about what's in your hand. That's not, that's a gang of ounces. You're fine, that's not what this is. hand. You're freaking out now about what's in your hand. That's not that's a ganglion. Just you're fine That's not what this is Um, thanks for making that public knowledge to looking forward to a thorough discussion of that on Twitter Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had a nose private. I thank you Anyway, so they they'll set up shop in these little nodules around the body where they will mature into adult

worms and mate and produce more little worm larva. That will then continue to migrate throughout the body. Okay. And by the way, in case you want to finish out this life cycle, at some point, this human that now has these little microfilery or warm larvae living in in their skin could get bitten by another black fly who will suck up some of those little larva and carry them on to another human, just to complete the life cycle in case you're curious.

Yeah, thank you. Anybody who has ever studied parasitology knows these life, you got to know these life cycles. You got to know, you know the pictures. Anyway, so importantly, these little larvae when they go all over the human body are just kind of there until they die. When they die different places in the human body is when they really start to cause trouble. Wherever they die, they will cause inflammation, irritation, you can get itching, you can get skin lesions from this. And some of these will actually make it to your eye. And this is where they cause the real problem.

Because if these little larvae make it to your eye and then die there. The inflammation and everything that can result from that can cause visual loss or blindness. This is why these things are so important because of that. Ancho-circuitis is also known kind of colloquially as river blindness because the black flies live near these rivers and that's why all that is important. Is the second leading infectious cause of blindness in the world? Now about 99% of these cases occur in 31 African nations and then the rest in Yemen, Venezuela, and Brazil. And as of 2017, there were 20.9 million infections worldwide. 14.6 million of the people infected had the skin disease and 1.15

million had vision loss. So this is a big problem. Yeah, okay. So I want to set that up that this is and as you may notice this worm that causes this big problem is oncosirca volvulus and you may remember the horse named Matode was called oncosirca cervicalis. So something's in common there, right? Yeah. This dawned on some researchers because up until 1981, the only drugs available to treat Oncocercias were not great. They had really high toxicity to their dangerous to the humans that they were treating as well as the worms that had, you know, that were inside. You needed a lot of doses, which could be cumbersome depending on what part of the world

you were in and who you were trying to reach. And they had a high rate of something called the mizotti reaction, which is basically, it's a constellation of symptoms that happens after you're treated for one of these filarial diseases. And you can get like fever and itching and your heart can race, your blood pressure can drop, you can get pretty sick. The thought is that it's like an inflammatory reaction from the death of all these larvae for your body.

That's kind of like the basic idea behind it. And the treatment could be just as likely to cause vision loss as the disease itself, because you take the treatment, you have these little larvae in your eyes, as they die, there's all this inflammation. And they have, it's a bad, bad, bad acidity. So they didn't have great treatments for oncoster chisous. So seeing how successful Ivermectin was against this horse nematode,

some of the researchers, specifically Dr. Campbell takes a lot of the credit for this thought. That's right, sorry, what did you say? Dr. Campbell takes a lot of the credit for this. I think he did. He was the one who first thought of it. I think he was. There is a little heel term for Dr. Campbell.

I see that. And you delivered. No, that is not the case. You just didn't want to ruin your surprise, too early. There is no headbutting between any of these researchers that I am aware of. I'm sorry, I know that I got together. But anyway, he was the one who said, I think maybe, you know, if it works against this one uncle, sir, could it work against this one, oh, I'm gonna cook it,

could it work against this other one? And maybe we should call it Campbell Mall, just a thought, I thought I would just now. So, and so they started testing it out, doing all the things you do to a drug to see like, okay, could it, could it, is it safe in a human? They started those sort of lab trials and then eventually in 1981, clinical trials,

to test the theory. And by 1988, it was the main stay of treatment because it did in fact work and was not toxic to humans. So it was a much better treatment than the ones that had existed previously. In order to get it to all the communities that needed it most, the parts of the world that needed it most, the Kitsado Institute actually agreed to forego any royalties. And along with Merck, they made it free for the treatment of Ancho Sirkaisis

for as long as that is needed. And as far as I know, that is still the case. It is interesting, Ivermactin actually doesn't kill the adult worms. It just doesn't. It doesn't do that. So those can continue to mate and reproduce. So it's sort of like a suppressive maintenance kind of therapy.

We don't have any other way to kill the adult worms right now. But if you take it with some, and by regularly, I mean like a couple times a year, so not that regularly, then you won't have any of the little worm larvae and you're fine. You won't get the disease. Great. So the worm might be there, but it's not going to harm you. In addition, what grew from this was this concept of community-based treatment, which is really essential with these kinds of, they're not communicable human to human, but they're

passed through the flies, right, within a community. So instead of you think about like each dose is administered from a one-on-one interaction between a physician and a patient, which could have, I mean, you could do it that way, but also you would give doses to a community to distribute as needed. And what they found is that they were actually able to lower transmission as well by doing this. So this is a huge public health thing to not only be able to treat individual patients with it, but to be able to treat a whole community and you're going to reduce cases this way. By, do you go what I'm saying? If there's fewer people with it, there's fewer flies infected with it and then they pass

it to fewer people and so on and so forth. So all of this work has resulted in a huge decrease in the global burden of oncosurcheisis. Four countries have been declared free of it so far, and there are others that are moving towards that element. The goal is global elimination of this disease. That is the goal. And it's one of those we've talked about before like neglected tropical diseases that places like the Carter Institute are very focused on. This is one of those that you know we have a treatment for, it is effective, it takes a lot of work but you could eradicate it if we keep moving forward.

Ivermectin was also found over time to be useful for some other things. Lymphatic philoreusis, which you may know is like elephantisis, heard that, where the little different philaria, different little larvae can clog lymphatic channels and things in your body and can cause swelling and that sort of thing. It's useful for that as well, Strangeloides, which is another worm infection, some kinds of license kBs it can be used for. So it has other uses in humans. And there are also even some interesting projects

that have looked at things like mosquitoes that bite humans who have taken Ivermectin, have shorter life spans. So the thought was, even though Ivermectin doesn't treat malaria, if patients, or if people in areas of the world that have a high burden of malaria are treated with Ivermectin.

Maybe we can wipe out these mosquitoes. Can we wipe out some of the mosquito? Yes. I mean, so there's it's a really it's an amazing life-saving drug that has been you know has had huge global impact. And in 2015 Dr. Amira and Dr. Campbell won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this discovery. It is one of the World Health Organization's essential medication. And it's, I mean, it's safe, tons of lives and sight. And I mean, it's, it's a huge. So I've been acting as a hugely important medicine both in the veterinary world and in the human world for reasons that have nothing to do with COVID.

Well, there you have it folks. Thanks so much for listening to our podcast, what a great story and it's not gonna be perverted at all by anybody and there's no bad part of it. This is what, this is where I think unfortunately science is inherently political. I think it always has been, we can say it is now, but I mean, I think it always has been. We can say it is now, but I mean,

I think it's unfair to say that it hasn't always been to some degree. Yeah, Galileo would like to. I think for a lot of us, we would make the case that in this pandemic with COVID, it didn't have to be as political as it is, but here we are. And so I think when you have something that is like this unproven

treatment for COVID that gets touted, there's a lot of skepticism now. And fairly so, because we have been led down the Primrose path several times. Why would anybody think that this anti-worm medication works for COVID? What was the thought? Well, it wasn't a wild thought. Ivermectin has a unique, it took us a while to figure out the mechanism of action. I'm not going to get into all that because I think that can get tedious. But it was interesting, it was unique.

Why not try it against other things? Obviously, we have in the parasitic world, it jumped from animals to humans and then to other parasites and humans. Why don't we try it against viruses? There have been some in vitro studies about things like the Zika virus that showed some promise and other viruses. So maybe it does work against viruses, right? People had that question. And like I said, I think asking the question, could this work against viruses is a totally

valid question. And then when you put it in a petri dish and see that it does seem to work somewhat against viruses, to continue to ask more questions is always valid. I don't ever think that should be those questions should be discouraged. Because of that, it was tried in vitro against COVID, against coronavirus, I should say,

the virus that causes COVID. And it showed some effect in a lab, right? In vials, they put some Ivermectin in and it killed some viruses. And they said, woohoo. Yeah. Now, here's the catch. When they looked at how they were able to treat this coronavirus in these cells in a dish with Ivermectin, the levels of Ivermectin of continuous, like high plasma levels of Ivermectin that you would have to

achieve in order to replicate this lab-resolved in a human body are beyond anything we've ever achieved in a human. They're like 35 times what the plasma level is. It's a very large pill. It would be a very large pill. It's questionable, even toxicity aside, because like the one question would be, could you give that much eye remect into a human and they live? I mean, it's a really safe drug. It has a pretty, I mean, it has a very good profile, but most things have their limits. I mean, you can drink too much water, so everything has a limit. But even if toxicity aside, just to like achieve those plasma levels continuously, I don't know that you could do it.

Like the question has been, could it even physically be done to replicate the success they had in the lab? No, could it even physically be done to replicate the success they had in the lab? No, is the general consensus. Now, people have tried it anyway. There have been, I mean, relatively speaking few, there have been a handful of studies throughout the world. There are ongoing trials in the US and India, in South America, different countries. There have been, you know, different trials and like retrospective studies looking back at patients that were in the

hospital. There was one that was done on hospitals in Florida looking at cases in Florida. That have shown maybe it helps some because it was early on, it was added to a lot of protocols or just thrown at patients randomly. In the low levels that we're used to, right? Not these wild levels. No, exactly. And yes, in normal dosing, in normal dosing. The question though is that,

you know, we're in the midst of the pandemic, we're not going to get a ton of good data that quickly, we just can't. There haven't been the good multi-center double-blind randomized control tiles that you expect to show you if a drug works or not. The small studies sometimes show some effects, sometimes don't. There are a lot of studies sometimes show some effects, sometimes don't. There are a lot of co- like confounding things that aren't controlled for. There are a lot of flaws, some are still pre-prints. There's not enough data that any sort of medical body has said, this is a good idea right now, you know, the the the the World Health Organization, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, all of these sorts of organizations in different countries around the world, all advice against. It's use at this time outside of clinical trials. If you want to, you know, design a study and get approval and do a clinical

trial, you can do that with it, but don't just give it to patients. In South America, it was adopted like really dramatically. There was, it was added to a lot of hospital protocols. Some of that has been pulled back because a lot of, a lot of the early adoption was based on a pre-print that was issued and then retracted, showing a lot of effectiveness of Ibermectin that used that surgesphere data. We've talked about surgesphere on this show before.

Remember the surgesphere? Yeah, remind me. Which was just like this fake data collection, maybe based on nothing, kind of, anyway. So because of that, that's been retracted. And so now there are some places that are like, well, we kind of thought that was kind of what we based our decision on. Maybe this is a right idea.

Anyway, the stuff that is indicative of anything is pretty weak. This may be another hydroxychloroquine. I have no data that tells me otherwise right now. I know that there are certain organizations that are very excited about it. Certain like critical care organizations that are pushing it really hard as like we need to be giving this to everybody. I know very high profile there was a doctor who pleaded before a Senate committee just a few days ago that we should be giving this to everybody. But a lot of this is based on anecdot. A lot of this is based on doctor saying I gave it to people and I know it worked. Yeah. And we don't do things like that. We just, right now, we would need a lot more actual clinical trials to show that this works.

Because I could pick apart the studies that are out there, but I mean, some of them don't have control groups. A lot of them don't tell us like when was it started in the course of the disease and don't control for like differences between the groups of patients and a lot of them are looking back and... I like that because you said I could pick apart the problems with the studies in the way that indicated you weren't gonna do that. And then you're like,

now you know what, I'm gonna circle back around and get them real quick. I cannot help it. I just think right now you have some things that go, huh, I wonder if there's something there. And from that you have some individuals who are going, there is definitely something there. And that's not how science works. Right.

Even though the story I just told you, they didn't immediately say, we should give Ivermect into humans because it killed a horseworm. They did years of study to make sure it was a good idea and that it worked before they gave it to humans. And that's how science works. You need some good trials. And also, please don't take veterinary meds. A lot of people as a result of this have started looking at their dog's heartworm medication and going,

mm-hmm. Well, could I maybe... Should I? Or like people who own horses. I've seen that on the internet. Like, why have tons of or like people who own horses, I've seen that on the internet, like why have tons of Ibermectin for the horses? Don't take veterinary meds, they're not made for you, please don't take them, they're not for humans.

The everything about them is different, the regulation of them is different, the dosing is different, please do not. The horse ones have a hay flavor and you don't want that. If you need Ibermectin for an actual medical reason, a doctor will prescribe it to you. Go talk to a doctor. Do not take veterinary medicines for anything.

This or anything. I just feel like that should be said. And it has been. This isn't the first thing. I know people out there are taking fish, penicillin. They've told me about it. Please don't do that. Stop it. Please stop. Stop taking veterinary medicines. Leave them

for the animals for which they are intended. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you've enjoyed yourself. We hope you have decided to let your dog keep taking their worm medicine and so you've stealing it up all for yourself. That's so rude. It's so rude. You dog don't want worms. Thanks to the taxpayers for these, there's some medicines as the intro and outro program. Hey, wait, don't go.

Don't click on in the next podcast or whatever. We have to tell you something really important to really important things. We are once, doing the annual canalite spectacular. This time it is a live streaming, one of the live streaming is a streaming event that we have filmed many, many, many segments for. It is going to be a wild thing. If you have seen Sydney in my home art movie,

a medicine called Christmas, and a medicine called Christmas too Then you will definitely want to tune in for this bit. I'll why for it's actually candlelights 2020 is the is the address is $5 okay, they're singing there's dancing there's podcasting there's five dollars plus a Dollar 25 feet to our our dollar plus a dollar 25 fee to our streaming partner. And that five dollars is going to go to Harmony House, which is a shelter in our area for people experiencing homelessness. So it's for charity. It is going to be full of wild stuff. There's special guests. There's music. There's dancing. There's kids. There's adults. There's Santa. There's everything. And it's just five dollars.

Okay. But if you can and you want to donate more Harmony House is a wonderful organization. There's kids, there's adults, there's Santa, there's everything. And it's just $5. But if you can and you want to donate more, Harmony House is a wonderful organization. I work with them to provide medical care and I can't say enough for these people who are really doing good, hard work that the community needs so much. Bit.au.

I forward slash can. I said 2020, one more address I want to give to you. Bit.au. I forward slash, saw bones, paperback.wiforts.com slash solbons. Paperback. That's right, the solbons books coming back with brand new content sort of inspired by the events of 2020 new illustrations

by Taylor Smurl, new words by us, and a new cover by Trees that's soft and not hard by the last one. Okay, all right. Bit.au.wiforts.com slash solbons. Paperback that comes out December 29th. Please, please, Okay, all right. Bit.aui-fort slash. Sobna's paperback that comes out December 29th. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. I'd love to do another book like this sometime,

but we don't get to do a bunch of people don't buy it. So please, bit.aui-fort slash. Sobna's paperback. That is gonna do for us for this week. So until next time, my name is just Mac Roy. I'm Sydney Mac Roy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Yeah! Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture

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