"The doctors stepped way out of line…” (Except they didn’t. They stepped UP.)
Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
COVID crashes on American shores in March of 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) becomes apoplectic over the prospect that doctors, in their desperation to save lives, might resort to using steroids for out-of-control lung inflammation. So they sound the alarm (loudly) warning doctors not to do that—ever, ever, ever.
But wait. There’s a mutiny afoot.
A small group of renowned, highly respected critical care physicians from around the country convened at the same time—meeting to try to determine how best to save lives. Based on their deep scientific knowledge, medical acumen and clinical experience, they quickly determined what critically ill COVID patients needed to survive. Yep. Steroids.
COVID pneumonia, they posited, was a steroid responsive disease…and these doctors figured it out —fast, fast, fast.
So these doctors, whose group soon became the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), began using steroids on critically ill COVID patients —with beautiful, lifesaving, astounding results—as part of what became their MATH+ Protocol.
Though the doctors urgently appealed to the WHO to swiftly recommend steroids for COVID pneumonia, the world’s “health” organization refused to budge.
So over the next few months, the FLCCC doctors (and many around the world who’d learned of MATH+) were saving the lives of an overwhelming majority of their critically ill patients. (4-8% mortality for MATH+ doctors vs. 18-80% mortality for non-MATH+ treatments.)
Bottom line: People were dying unnecessarily.
At the end of June, 2020, Oxford University released a study that demonstrated the stunning efficacy of steroids for COVID. (In fact, the study had to be terminated early because the patients in the control group were dying.) Tragically, it took the WHO until September of 2020 to finally recommend steroids to save COVID patients.
I tell you this story because it proves a point that must be made in this moment as the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) sent down from on high its decision to rescind the ABIM board certification of Drs. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik—two of the founding members of the FLCCC’s critical care team that gave the world the MATH+ Protocol.
ABIM will now report that Drs. Marik and Kory are no longer board-certified in internal medicine.
Why on earth would they do that? WHY?
Dr. Pierre Kory & Dr. Paul Marik
Because, says ABIM, the doctors “stepped way out of line” and spread what they called “misinformation” about COVID by recommending ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 disease.
Oh really? That is simply untrue. (The “misinformation” part.) Let’s discuss.
You see, in July of 2020, Dr. Marik began following emerging studies from around the world on the use of ivermectin for COVID. In October, 2020, he became the first physician in the world to recognize the strong data signal for ivermectin’s efficacy. The ivermectin studies then were as incontrovertible as they are now. The FLCCC, led by Drs. Marik and Kory, were joined by current FLCCC President Dr. Joseph Varon at a press conference in Houston, Texas on December 4, 2020. They announced that an inexpensive, safe, globally available, already FDA-approved drug— ivermectin— had the capacity to end the pandemic.
Wait…not so fast doctors. Hold your horses. (No ivermectin pun intended.)
It is true that the FLCCC had robust medical evidence on ivermectin’s ability to subdue the pandemic. Why would anyone object to mounting a global effort to get ivermectin into the hands of every public health organization in the world…especially given that the Nobel Prize winning ivermectin was super-cheap and proven to be safer than as aspirin? (It is also listed as one of the world’s “most essential medicines” by the WHO.)
As it turns out, the FLCCC’s timing could not have been worse. Even Dr. Kory’s impassioned plea for the adoption of ivermectin therapy to the U.S. Senate committee a few days after the press conference failed to move authorities who had already erected an impenetrable stone wall against ivermectin that doomed the lives of millions. That barrier was meant to ensure the compliance of the masses for the COVID vaccine rollout…set for the end of December, 2020.
Ivermectin—and those who championed the drug—needed to be squashed. They were clearly out of line.
This is the history that is at the root of the ABIM’s unconscionable action to revoke the board certifications of two of the most highly published, brilliant clinicians in America. The lives that were saved by ivermectin administration programs in countries around the world be damned. The lives that would be lost for the failure to adopt ivermectin by public health agencies be damned. The vaccines that (unsurprisingly) turned out to be toxic and injurious to millions were king. There were trillions of dollars to be made from the vaccines for Big Pharma and government agencies around the world, and nothing was going to stop that. Nothing.
According to the ABIM in its decision, “[We] are furthering the professional integrity of medicine by encouraging evidence-based debate. In fact, [Drs. Marik and Kory are] doing the opposite by eschewing evidence-based medicine.”
That is a bald-faced lie of monumental proportions.
These doctors are by-the-book scholars of the science and art of evaluating medical evidence. (THAT is how they knew—before anyone else— that COVID was a steroid-responsive disease in March of 2020.)
Isn’t it rich that these holier-than-thou officials of ABIM can use their power to level these scurrilous accusations against Marik and Kory when it is crystal clear it is ABIM who has eschewed evidence-based medicine? It appears that their decision to revoke their certifications was a done deal before their committee ever met to consider their “decision” of these hero physicians. They were bought and paid for by the same cabal that captured the media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, corporate interests and government official$ from the beginning.
It didn’t help that Drs. Marik and Kory exposed the dangers of the COVID vaccines—because they considered the robust medical evidence before them.
It should come as no surprise that the media is now piling on. The Washington Post (whose reporting on the FLCCC and Drs. Marik and Kory should cause them to hang their heads in shame) wrote the following this week:
“The American Board of Internal Medicine revoked the certifications of Pierre Kory and Paul Marik, two physicians known for continuing to promote ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication, as a treatment for covid long after the medical community found it to be ineffective.
“The [ABIM] Board is trying to…help the public differentiate between doctors who follow medical consensus and those spreading misinformation.”
Medical consensus? Are they serious???
I spoke yesterday with Dr. Marik, who offered this on the absurd and dangerous notion of medical consensus:
“Science is dynamic, growing and moving. It is the height of arrogance to have a single view of a therapy. One must consider the totality of evidence. Many medical reversals have been based on science,” he said. “We no longer practice bloodletting. Ablative chemotherapy for breast cancer disappeared in the 1970s. Statins have fallen out of favor to inhibit atherosclerosis. Beta blockers for hypertension have been shown not to be as beneficial as once believed. Hormone replacement for women, once all the rage, fell out of favor due to its harmful effects. And, of course, steroids for COVID…which, according to a UK analysis, saved over one million lives in the country between September 2020 and January 2021. So you see, by issuing this ruling, and by discounting the mountains of evidence we submitted on ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and COVID vaccines, the ABIM decapitated science.”
Indeed, Dr. Marik. Indeed.
Consider this from the New York Times:
“Of more than 3,000 studies published from 2003 through 2017 in JAMA and the Lancet, and from 2011 through 2017 in the New England Journal of Medicine, more than one of 10 amounted to a “medical reversal”: A conclusion opposite of what had been conventional wisdom among doctors.”
The ideas of “medical consensus” or even “standard of care” present real dangers to human health, causing practitioners to look inward or even close their eyes to surfacing medical evidence —including morbidity and mortality data— that does not comport with “medical consensus.”
Said the ABIM in its decision document: “Dr. Marik’s statements about the purported ineffectiveness and dangers of COVID-19 vaccines are false and inaccurate because they are unsupported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information.”
You know, for decades, the “medical consensus” was that stomach ulcers were caused by stress, spicy food or excess stomach acid. So in the 1980s, when two Australian doctors found that their patients’ stomachs were swarming with an unknown microorganism (which they later named Helicobacter pylori) they tried antibiotic therapy—successfully.
When Barry Marshall—one of those doctors— presented a paper on the new therapy at a medical conference, he was mocked and criticized; and his therapy was roundly rejected. It took a decade for the therapy to be accepted, but because the doctors knew their science and remained undeterred, hundreds of thousands are living ulcer-free and discomfort-free.
Oh, and by the way, the doctors —Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren—won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery.
Dr. Marik and Dr. Kory, you are both on the right side of medical history. That is becoming more and more evident with each passing moment— even as I write this. You and the FLCCC have saved millions of lives around the world. And no revocation of a board certification can ever diminish that which is the highest, most honorable achievement known to mankind.
The ABIM caved to the cabal…bringing upon itself deep, unredeemable shame.
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Joyce Kamen is the VP of public information at the Frontline Covid19 Critical Care Alliance (flccc.net). She is an Emmy award-winning writer, publicist, journalist, columnist, and producer of documentary films.
