Category: quackery

Bret Weinstein denies that AIDS is caused by HIV

March 11, 2024 • 9:30 am

A high-up worker in the pharma industry sent me a video from last month  showing biologist Bret Weinstein apparently denying to Joe Rogan that AIDS is cause by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). (That claim starts about three minutes in, but watch the whole video below.)

Apparently Weinstein subscribes to Rogan’s “competing hypothesis” that AIDS is simply group of symptoms caused not by a virus, but by taking “party drugs” (3:53). Weinstein finds that explanation “surprisingly compelling.”  He also suggests darkly that Nobel laureate Kary Mullis—also an HIV denialist—died “strangely” (there were conspiracy theories about Mullis’s death).  Then the video stops, but you can hear the whole 3½-hour episode here.

The first several minutes of the video below, which you’ll have to scroll back to see, show Weinstein expressing doubt that a virus also causes Covid-19.

You may remember that Weinstein and his partner, biologist Heather Heying, touted the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment and preventive for the “syndrome” known as Covid-19, even though there was no evidence that the drug was effective (see also here).  In other words, Weinstein seems fond of heterodox and discredited causes of and treatments for diseases: he’s a medical conspiracy theorist.

The pharma guy who wrote me said this:

I don’t mean to obsess about BW, but after the Evergreen debacle and getting a modicum of credibility, he went crazy about COVID and the efficacy of ivermectin so much so that Sam Harris ripped him for conspiratorial thinking and now they’re enemies.  I was livid because people like him were giving horrible medical advice to the public as a biologist-who-claims-to-be-an-authority and may have really harmed people who were listening to his claptrap.  3 weeks ago, he was on Joe Rogan’s show (which I don’t watch but saw a link) wherein he’s now giving airtime to the ‘AIDS is not caused by HIV’ conspiracy theory.

As a member of Pharma industry who watched colleagues like myself craft thousands of molecules to become specific drugs tailored to fit and inhibit the active sites of HIV protease, reverse transcriptase, integrase, and to antagonize HIV binding to the chemokine receptor CCR5 that the virus uses to enter T-cells, I know for a fact that these drugs prevent AIDS by stopping HIV viral replication and entry.  All were approved in Phase 3 with data and are used in various combinations to make drugs like the Quad pill that have suppressed HIV to undetectable levels, allowing HIV-infected individuals to lead pretty normal lives.  Ergo, AIDS IS caused by HIV!  QED.

There were then some words not suitable for a family-friendly site, but among them were the claims that Weinstein is “a conspicuous troll who is hurting people.”

VICE News has a summary of Weinstein’s appearance on Rogan and on their shared and bogus theory of AIDS. An excerpt:

Weinstein’s “evidence,” he made clear, is partially drawn from reading about this theory as outlined by Robert F. Kennedy in his book The Real Anthony Fauci, published in 2021. (One review of the book noted that Kennedy managed to misrepresent numerous scientific studies he cites, which does not make a strong case for its scientific rigor; nor does the fact that it was written by Robert F. Kennedy.)

“I came to understand later, after I looked at what Luke Montagnier had said and I read Bobby Kennedy’s book on Fauci, was that actually the argument against HIV being causal was a lot higher quality than I had understood, right?” Weinstein told Rogan. “That it being a real virus, a fellow traveler of a disease that was chemically triggered, that is at least a highly plausible hypothesis. And with Anthony Fauci playing his role, that was inconvenient for what he was trying to accomplish.”

. . .The conversation generated substantial outcry from scientists and public health researchers on Twitter; David Gorski, an oncologist who frequently writes about the anti-vaccine world and pseudoscience, identified the conversation as an example of “crank magnetism,” writing, “Once you go down the rabbit hole of pseudoscience, quackery, and conspiracy theories in one area (e.g., #COVID19), it is nearly inevitable that you will embrace fractal wrongness in the form of multiple kinds of pseudoscience (e.g., antivax, AIDS denial, etc.).”

And this is, of course, indisputably part of a larger pattern. Rogan and Weinstein regularly repeat discredited scientific ideas, mainly around their promotion of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID and Rogan’s constant promotion of anti-vaccine ideas. The AIDS conversation makes clear that COVID denialists are branching out, using their forms of pseudo-inquiry to draw other bad ideas back into the public discussion.

And from Wikipedia:

Appearing on a Joe Rogan podcast in February 2024, Weinstein erroneously stated that some people with AIDS were not infected with HIV and that he found the idea that AIDS was caused by a gay lifestyle, rather than the HIV virus, “surprisingly compelling”. The American Foundation for AIDS Research reacted to the podcast, saying “It is disappointing to see platforms being used to spout old, baseless theories about HIV. … The fact is that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), untreated, causes AIDS. … Mr. Rogan and Mr. Weinstein do their listeners a disservice in disseminating false information …”.

As for Weinstein’s implication that Karry Mullis’s death may have involved his “maverick” view that HIV didn’t cause AIDs (shades of Karen Silkwood!), Michael Shermer responded on February 16 with a tweet:

I’m especially distressed by this kind of quackery, which in the end can cost lives, by a man who started out in my own field, evolutionary biology.  Now, having left Evergreen State far behind him, Weinstein appears to be trying to make a name for himself by being medically heterodox. It’s fine to question untested theories, but the evidence is now very, very strong that HIV causes AIDs and that Covid-19 is caused by a coronavirus.

People often say that “pseudoscience” isn’t that harmful. After all, what’s the danger in reading the astrology column or tarot cards? But that’s just the thin edge of the wedge that opens up medical pseudoscience like that given above. And that can kill people.

King Charles, cancer, and homeopathy

February 6, 2024 • 11:00 am

This morning I received an email from a colleague that said this about the New York Times‘s article on King Charles’s cancer diagnosis:

In the NY Times report there is one sentence mentioning that he is using homeopathy as part of his suite of treatments.

UPDATE: My colleague, who is reliable, swears he saw this in the NYT yesterday, and is baffled that the sentence is gone today.  Readers with a bent for sleuthing might try finding the original article at an archived site.

Well, I can’t find that sentence in the NYT article this morning, nor in the archived version posted right after midnight. Yet we know the King is an advocate of homeopathy. The Guardian of December 17 last year noted that the King had appointed an advocated of woo, including homeopathy, as head of the “royal medical household”:

Yet last week we heard that the head of the royal medical household is an advocate of homeopathy. Dr Michael Dixon has championed such things as “thought field therapy”, “Christian healing” and an Indian herbal cure “ultra-diluted” with alcohol, which claims to kill breast cancer cells. Methods like these might be “unfashionable”, he once wrote in an article submitted to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, but they should not be ignored.

The link above goes to an earlier Guardian article, noting that the head of the royal medical household is not the same thing as thje king’s doctor:

Dr Michael Dixon, who has championed faith healing and herbalism in his work as a GP, has quietly held the senior position for the last year, the Sunday Times reported.

While Dixon, 71, is head of the royal medical household, for the first time the role is not combined with being the monarch’s physician. Duties include having overall responsibility for the health of the king and the wider royal family – and even representing them in talks with government.

There are a lot of people online who are somewhat gleeful about this diagnosis, saying that they’re hoping that King Charles puts the rubber to the road and uses alternative therapies, like homeopathy, but the Daily Fail and other sites note that even Dixon doesn’t think that homeopathy can cure cancer:

[Dixon]  thrown his support behind offering treatments such as aromatherapy and reflexology on the NHS.

In one paper he authored, he referenced an experiment suggesting Indian herbal remedies which had been ‘ultra-diluted’ with alcohol might be able to cure cancer, although Buckingham Palace has staunchly denied Dr Dixon himself believes this can work.

A statement from the palace at the time of his appointment read: ‘Dr Dixon does not believe homeopathy can cure cancer.

‘His position is that complementary therapies can sit alongside conventional treatments, provided they are safe, appropriate and evidence based.’

Dr Dixon, who has reportedly prescribed plants to patients such as devil’s claw and horny goat weed, has also written papers suggesting Christian healers may be able to help people who are chronically ill.

He has a kindred spirit and staunch supporter in the shape of King Charles, who has himself been outspoken on how he believes alternative medicine can help people with illnesses, and was appointed patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy in 2017.

As for me, I have no beef with King Charles, and my first thought when I heard he had cancer was that it was a shame, as he’d waited so long to become King and if he died from this, it would have been a long wait for a short reign. I hope he gets well. What kind of person would want the King to die because he advocates medical woo?

But he should never have promoted that woo, and I’m sure he won’t be using it in his new course of treatment.

A Burmese dinner in Davis

January 19, 2024 • 8:45 am

Last night I took my host out for Burmese food, since there’s a fairly new Burmese restaurant in Davis called “My Burma“. And of course since neither of us had had Burmese food (there isn’t a single Burmese restaurant in Chicago, though there’s one in the suburbs), we had to go.

It turns out that Burmese food resembles a hybrid between Indian and southeast Asian food, with some unique items like tea leaf salad. We had a largish meal, and I’ll show it below. (The menu is here.). It’s a modest restaurant but the food is excellent. Here’s the interior:

The appetizer: Platha and coconut chicken curry dip, described as “handmade multilayered bread served with coconut chicken curry.” With a couple of good beers, this was an excellent start.  You can either dip the bread into the chicken curry or pour the curry over the bread and eat it with a fork. I oped to use my hands.

The restaurant’s most famous dish is the tea leaf salad, described as “fermented tea leaf dressing, lettuce or cabbage, peanut, fried garlic, tomato, sunflower seeds, fried yellow chickpeas, jalapenos, sesame seed, and lemon.  They bring it to the table looking like this, with the green tea leaves on top (picture from the website)

. . . and then mix it thoroughly until it looks like what’s below (I would have preferred to sample it unmixed).  Our version seemed to lack the tomatoes and jalapenos.

It was very good, with a melange of flavors, but the flavor of the tea leaves wasn’t evident, which was disappointing.

Then two main dishes, the first being chili lamb, described as “diced lamb tossed with chili sauce, garlic, onion, basil, jalapenos, and chili flakes.” The server asked us how hot we wanted it on a scale of 1 (mild) to 5 (fiery), and I said “3.2”.  It turned out to be a tasty dish but not very hot, with the scale probably ratcheted down for the American palate:

Second main: Burmese eggplant curry, described as “Burmese curry made with garlic, onion, tomato, and tender eggplant.” It was very good, and yes, the eggplant, while keeping its form, was tender and delicious, in a lovely sauce.

With it I ordered Basmati rice. Rice should really come with the meal rather than requiring a separate order, and I eat a LOT of rice with a dinner like this. Sadly, we got only a small dish that was grossly insufficient. It was good rice, but I needed a HUGE bowl of white rice to sop up all the sauce.

All in all, it’s a good restaurant, especially considering that Davis, for a college town, has a dearth of decent places to eat. If you go, see if you can get a huge portion of white rice, and eat Chinese style, putting the ingredients atop a bowl of the rice. (They don’t use chopsticks, and I guess they don’t in Burma, but I would have preferred them.)

After dinner we went to the David Food Coop, a hippie-ish grocery store that’s been going her since 1972. Like Austin, Davis is an island of Sixties-ness surrounded by a desert of agriculture, and many old hippies are still to be found shambling along the streets of town. (There are also a fair number of homeless people, something I haven’t seen here before.)

And in this cool town, heavily invested in recycling and other green efforts, the Food Coop is the epicenter. It has pretty much everything you want, from loose grains to Dr. Bronner’s soaps, although prices are high because most stuff is organic, and the coolness surely exacts a surcharge.  Here are three characteristic items.

In a place like the Food Coop, sugar is demonized. When I did my postdoc here and my parents came to visit (this was probably about 1980), I took them for brunch to a hippy-ish organic restaurant, now defunct, called the Blue Mango. My father ordered coffee with cream, and noticed that there was no sugar on the table. He asked for some. The waiter looked at him with a stinkeye and said, in all seriousness, “Sorry, we don’t have White Death. But we might be able to dig up some honey in the kitchen.” My father, an old-school Army guy, took a pass on the honey.

At the food coop, the Satanic nature of sugar is clear. All items in bins have a four-number numerical code, but it used to be just three numbers. At that time, white sugar was given the Devil’s Number: 666. Now that they have to use four numbers, they simply expanded it, keeping its Satanic qualities:

And they also had this. WTF? What was it recycled from?

One thing that’s always bothered me about the food coop, which prides itself on selling healthy and organic food, is that it also has a whole aisle of homeopathic products, which of course is pure quackery: high-priced water containing not a molecule of the “curative” substance. They should stop selling this useless stuff. Here, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, is a big scam:

But we took a pass on the fraudulent cures because we were there for dessert, and bought bean-curd-filled mochi covered with sesame seeds. They were great (no photo attached).

Intercessionary prayer fails again, this time with covid recovery

December 5, 2023 • 11:30 am

This is the third study I know of in which intercessory prayer (prayer by strangers for the afflicted) has failed to show results.  The first two papers, whose titles are below (click to read) showed that such prayer failed to help patients with heart disease.  I’ve discussed these before, and you can see for yourself that if God exists, listens to prayer, and sometimes responds, He clearly was not listening in these two experiments.

I give the conclusions of each of the first two studies below. Notice that the second study was funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, which clearly hoped for a positive result!

First, a study from 22 years ago:

Conclusion: The study found no evidence of an effect of intercessory prayer on the primary outcome of mortality or on the secondary outcomes of hospitalization time, ICU time, and mechanical ventilation time.

Second, a study from 17 years ago:

Sadly, no gods with any power to respond to prayer did anything. Note as well that, in fact, intercessory prayer increased (nonsignificantly) the percentage of  bad outcomes (bolding is mine). Perhaps god doesn’t like intercessory prayer!

Results: In the 2 groups uncertain about receiving intercessory prayer, complications occurred in 52% (315/604) of patients who received intercessory prayer versus 51% (304/597) of those who did not (relative risk 1.02, 95% CI 0.92-1.15). Complications occurred in 59% (352/601) of patients certain of receiving intercessory prayer compared with the 52% (315/604) of those uncertain of receiving intercessory prayer (relative risk 1.14, 95% CI 1.02-1.28). Major events and 30-day mortality were similar across the 3 groups.

Conclusions: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

And look at the acknowledgements:

This study was supported by the John Templeton Foundation. The Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation supported the Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation site only.

And here’s the latest study, published in a weird journal, but one that is peer-reviewed: Heliyon. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

Heliyon is a monthly peer-reviewed mega journal covering research in all areas of science, the social sciences and humanities, and the arts. It was established in 2015 and is published by Cell Press. The journal is divided into numerous sections, each with its own editorial team.

Click the title to read, or you might find it more convenient to download the entire pdf here. The reference is at the bottom of the page.

The experiment was done in Brazil, and I don’t think I need to reprise the methods and results since the summary below gives all the essential information. I’ve highlighted the lack of positive results by bolding part of this summary:

Between September 2020 and December 2020, a total of 199 participants (out of 244 that were screened) were randomly assigned to either the Intervention group (n = 100) or the control group (n = 99, Fig. 1). Baseline characteristics, presented in Table 1, were well balanced between the two groups. The study population consisted of 34 % women, with a mean age of 61 years. Additionally, 44 % of participants had hypertension, and 6 % had obesity. At the end of the study, no significant difference in the primary outcome of mortality was observed between the intervention and control groups. Among the 99 subjects in the control group, there were 8 deaths, and the same number of deaths [8] occurred in the intervention group (HR 0.86, 95 % CI 0.32 to 2.31; p = 0.76). Similarly, there were no statistically significant differences in the secondary outcomes between the two groups. The need for ICU admission (p = 0.471), length of stay in the ICU (mean difference 􀀀 0.77, 95 % CI -4.13 to 3.20; p = 0.70), need for mechanical ventilation (p = 0.457), duration of mechanical ventilation (mean difference 3.89 days, 95 % CI -7.09 to 14.71; p = 0.54), and length of hospital stay (mean difference 1.96, 95 % CI -2.78 to 7.85; p = 0.45) were all similar between the two groups, as shown in Table 2. Due to the necessary change in participant identification during the study, we also evaluated the outcomes among participants who were identified by initials and received direct prayers (Table 3) and among participants who were identified by the number of the hospital beds (Table 4). Similarly, we did not observe any changes in the primary or secondary outcome. 

Other aspects of the study worth knowing about include the fact that subjects were admitted to intensive care or clinical inpatient facilities with a PCR-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. All patients were older than 18, and were used regardless of their religion or lack thereof. The study was double blind with a control group of patients; patients didn’t know whether they were being prayed for (half were; half were not) and the pray-ers didn’t know the names of the patients, who were identified and prayed for only by their initials and, later, by the number of their hospital bed (God presumably knows all this stuff).

The pray-ers were “Protestant religious leaders” who were able to pray daily for one of the patients. And the prayer devoted to each patient was INTENSIVE, as detailed below:

Each intercessor prayed from their own homes or workplaces, dedicating a total of 240 min per day, divided into three shifts of 80 min each (morning, afternoon, and night). The content of each prayer was not specifically assigned, but it was required to include the following topics: 1) preservation of the patient’s life, 2) avoidance of orotracheal intubation or mechanical ventilation for those not yet intubated, 3) shorter duration of intubation and mechanical ventilation for those already in that state, 4) reduced length of stay in the ICU, and 5) reduced total length of hospital stay.

Now that is what I call prayer. Nevertheless, there was no difference in the outcomes of the experimental (prayed-for) and the control (not-prayed-for) group). The authors do give some caveats, including the small sample size and the fact that the method of identifying patients changed mid-study from initials to hospital bed number (Brazilian law was invoked), but if there is an omniscient God, He should know these things.

This is three out of three studies that haven’t worked.  The possible explanations include these:

1.) There is no God to hear the prayers.

2.) There.is a God, but he can’t hear the prayers.

3.) There is a God who hears the prayers, but he pays no attention to them.

4.) God doesn’t want to be tested, and so ignored the whole experiment. But note that God was effectively tested in a Bible passage (1 Kings 18) in which sacrifices were offered to a false god versus the real God simultaneously, and only the sacrifices to Yahweh worked. This was a controlled experiment!

5.) Protestant prayers are less effective than prayers of other denominations.

Inventive readers can think of other explanations.

Of course as an atheist I think that #1 is the right answer. As the late Victor Stenger said, “The absence of evidence [for God] is indeed evidence of absence if the evidence should be there.”

Naturally this study won’t make a dent in the belief of the godly, for they will simply discount it on one ground or another—probably #4 above.  All we can say is that three sincere attempts to see if prayers work showed that they don’t.

And did I mention that although Lourdes is full of discarded crutches and wheelchairs, there are no false eyeballs or prosthetic limbs on display? Apparently God can cure lots of stuff, but is impotent before blindness and amputation.

________________

Soubihe Junior NV, Bersch-Ferreira ÂC, Tokunaga SM, Lopes LA, Cavalcanti AB, Bernadez-Pereira S. 2023. The remote intercessory prayer, during the clinical evolution of patients with COVID -19, randomized double-blind clinical trial. Heliyon. 2023 Nov 17;9(11):e22411.

doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e22411. PMID: 38045114; PMCID: PMC10689938.

 

The World Health Organization buys into woo

October 23, 2023 • 12:40 pm

Or, if you want a rhyme, “WHO goes woo.”  This article comes from Jonathan Jarry, a science communicator at McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.  I was surprised to learn that the WHO, a highly respected organization run by the United Nations, has, on the sly, bought into a lot of woo, including homeopathy, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicine, and naturopathy, as well as other dubious remedies. Apparently the motivation for this is that WHO, whose goal is to ensure that everyone in the world has medical care, realized that this is not possible if by “medical care” you mean “modern science-based medicine.” Many people just can’t get it, or perhaps don’t trust it.  Thus WHO buys into woo so that people without access to that care can use the local nostrums. Presto: they get medical help!

Click to read:

You can see the document from 2013, “Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023“, laying out how “traditional and complementary medicine” (“T&CM”) are to be used.  Here’s the rationale from the pamphlet. Look at the quackery that WHO wants to promulgate! (Bolding is mine.)

It is increasingly recognised that safe and effective T&CM could contribute to the health of our populations. One of the most significant questions raised about T&CM in recent years is how it might contribute to universal health coverage by improving service delivery in the health system, particularly PHC: patient accessibility to health services, and greater awareness of health promotion and disease prevention are key issues here. Insurance coverage of T&CM products, practices and practitioners varies widely from full inclusion within insurance plans to total exclusion, with consumers having to pay for all T&CM out of pocket. Simultaneously, there is emerging evidence that T&CM, when included in UHC plans, may reduce pressure on the system and diminish costs. This shows why it is important for Member States to consider how to integrate T&CM into their health systems and UHC plans more comprehensively/

Many countries have their own traditional or indigenous forms of healing which are firmly rooted in their culture and history. Some forms of TM such as Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine and Unani medicine are popular nationally, as well as being used worldwide. At the same time, some forms of CM such as anthroposophic medicine, chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy and osteopathy are also in extensive use. Health systems around the world are experiencing increased levels of chronic illness and escalating health care costs. Patients and health care providers alike are demanding that health care services be revitalized, with a stronger emphasis on individualized, person-centred care (9). This includes expanding access to T&CM products, practices and practitioners. Over 100 million Europeans are currently T&CM users, with one fifth regularly using T&CM and the same number preferring health care which includes T&CM (10). There are many more T&CM users in Africa, Asia, Australia and North America (11).

From Jarry’s article:

What the WHO sees in T&CM—interventions that include Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and naturopathy—is an easy way to fulfill a goal. Training enough medical doctors and building enough hospitals to cover the globe seems like an impossible task. Instead, let’s acknowledge the presence of healers of various stripes, with little attention given to the kind of care they provide.

The WHO wants the integration of these prescientific healing practices into national health systems as a way to contribute to universal health coverage, and the arguments it musters for this integration are sloppy and predictable. T&CM is affordable, we are told. This is debatable, as practices like chiropractic and acupuncture commonly depend on regular “maintenance” treatments for life, and affordability is of course no gauge of effectiveness. T&CM is popular, the WHO argues, which is a faulty argument. Bloodletting was widespread for centuries, not because it worked well but because there was little else to do. The WHO also carves out a niche for T&CM in addressing chronic health issues and providing individualized, holistic care, which is a copy-and-paste job from reams of marketing material aimed at glorifying so-called alternative medicine.

The WHO’s poorly argued strategy to convince Member States to integrate prescientific practices into their healthcare system has led them down a worrisome road paved with good intentions. After all, how do you distinguish a traditional healer using “best practices” (whatever that means) from a charlatan? The WHO’s answer has been to release benchmarks for training in the various T&CM interventions it supports.

More from Jarry:

The WHO’s Traditional Medicine Strategy is peppered with allusions to testing these interventions for their effectiveness. Indeed, the number one difficulty their Member States note regarding the regulation of T&CM is the lack of research data. These healing practices must be supported by evidence, the WHO agrees, but what kind of evidence? “While there is much to be learned from controlled clinical trials,” they note, “other evaluation methods are also valuable,” including “patterns of use.” This is a worrying way to promote popularity as an indication of validity.

“Patterns of use”? That means that the effectiveness of treatments can be judged by how widely they’re used?? Like bloodletting used to be, and ayurvedic medicine and chiropractic is now? I don’t even have to tell you how bogus that means of assessment is (see p. 27 of the pamphlet for verification). But according to Jarry, “Orac” (David Gorski), who runs the site Science-Based Medicine, has already been bashing WHO for this.

Dr. David Gorski, an oncologist and science blogger, has covered the WHO’s embrace of quackery many times in the past, pointing out how interesting it is that the people arguing for medical integration make no mention of European humoral therapy and our need to integrate it into common practice. While anthroposophy’s four classical elements and acupuncture’s rivers of qi are seen as conducive to good healthcare, the debunked idea that phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile determine our health has been ignored by the WHO. They are all antiquated notions, but the ones we buried are not being resurrected by the WHO. Strange.

Read the document for yourself to see the abnegation of WHO’s mission. You don’t get people well by using these species of quackery.

Once again: Ivermectin doesn’t work

February 20, 2022 • 10:00 am

The paper at issue today reports the most thorough and well controlled study of the effect of ivermectin on Covid-19 around, and it was just published in JAMA Internal Medicine. What it supports, contra the claims of Joe Rogan, Bret and Heather Weinstein, and a whole slew of Republican loons, is that the drug ivermectin—as already asserted by the FDA—neither prevents nor cures covid-19. Or rather, this study shows that once adults over 50 who get the virus and are hospitalized with comorbidities, Ivermectin doesn’t help them get better. (An earlier study published in BMC Infectious Diseases, both randomized and double-blinded, and including a placebo, showed that taking ivermectin had no significant effect on keeping people out of the hospital.)

The upshot is that every well controlled study shows that ivermectin is useless in helping you once you get the virus. Another meta-analysis of reasonably well done studies that included prevention concluded that there was no good evidence that the drug even prevented infection.  The only studies that may show value of ivermectin are those in which many participants have high loads of worms as comorbidities. In such studies (which don’t apply in the US or UK), the drug may, by helping you get rid of worms (see below), make recovery from covid more likely. But even in that case there’s no excuse not to get vaccinated.  And of course you wouldn’t take ivermectin unless there was evidence you had worms.

Ivermectin is used in humans to cure parasitic worms and head lice, but can be dangerous if taken in doses high enough to kill viruses in vitro. Nevertheless, in this age of conspiracy theories and general lunacy, even credentialed scientists like the Weinsteins have recommended ivermectin and criticized vaccines, even though it’s beyond doubt that the vaccines prevent severe illness and hospitalization. You’d have to be crazy or paranoid to pass up vaccination in favor of ivermectin But thousands do it, so there you are.

With luck, you should be able to get the new study by clicking on the screenshot below, especially if you have the legal Unpaywall app. There’s also a link to the pdf, and if all else fails, make a judicious inquiry.

First, the background: the authors summarize what’s know about Ivermectin in studies to date. As I and others have mentioned before

Although some early clinical studies suggested the potential efficacy of ivermectin in the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, these studies had methodologic weaknesses. In 2021, 2 randomized clinical trials from Colombia and Argentina found no significant effect of ivermectin on symptom resolution and hospitalization rates for patients with COVID-19. A Cochrane meta-analysis also found insufficient evidence to support the use of ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19. [JAC: The meta-analysis is linked above.]

The new study was done in Malaysia (other studies are ongoing, I believe), and iswasrandomized with respect to patient condition and age, but there was no placebo control. That is, half the infected patients were given “standard of care” (none were vaccinated) and the other half were given “standard of care” plus Ivermectin. The outcomes were followed over time.  The result: not only did Ivermectin not work, but there was a slightly higher, though nonsignificant, risk of the ivermectin treated patients progressing to the phase that required supplemental oxygen. That is exactly the opposite of what you would expect if some patients were taking placebos, for you might expect that if there’s a placebo effect, then placebo-ingesting patients would do better than those not taking placebos (i.e., the patients in this study). But despite the absence of placebos, there was still no effect of ivermectin in this study using any measure of “disease progression”.

I’m not going to summarize the results in detail, because the authors do a good job of that themselves.

There are three summaries of the results. First, the “TL/DR” version:

Note below that the 490 patients observed were all over 50 and had documented comorbidities—factors that make them more susceptible to complications and death.  Here is the protocol (indented, bolding is mine except in headers).

The Ivermectin Treatment Efficacy in COVID-19 High-Risk Patients (I-TECH) study was an open-label randomized clinical trial conducted at 20 public hospitals and a COVID-19 quarantine center in Malaysia between May 31 and October 25, 2021. Within the first week of patients’ symptom onset, the study enrolled patients 50 years and older with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, comorbidities, and mild to moderate disease.

Interventions  Patients were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive either oral ivermectin, 0.4 mg/kg body weight daily for 5 days, plus standard of care (n = 241) or standard of care alone (n = 249). The standard of care consisted of symptomatic therapy and monitoring for signs of early deterioration based on clinical findings, laboratory test results, and chest imaging.

Note again: no placebo pills were given. And here’s how they measured outcome:

Main Outcomes and Measures  The primary outcome was the proportion of patients who progressed to severe disease, defined as the hypoxic stage requiring supplemental oxygen to maintain pulse oximetry oxygen saturation of 95% or higher. Secondary outcomes of the trial included the rates of mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, 28-day in-hospital mortality, and adverse events.

The results are below. Note that slightly more patients in the ivermectin-dosed group (4% more) progressed to severe disease (i.e., requiring supplemental oxygen than those in the group treated the same but without ivermectin. Incorporating still other measures of “progression to severe disease,” there was again no significant difference, although there was slightly more deaths (nonsignificantly more) in the ivermectin versus control group. Finally, the most common side effect, diarrhea, was found more often in the ivermectin versus control group,but I can’t find the statistics for that difference.

Results  Among 490 patients included in the primary analysis (mean [SD] age, 62.5 [8.7] years; 267 women [54.5%]), 52 of 241 patients (21.6%) in the ivermectin group and 43 of 249 patients (17.3%) in the control group progressed to severe disease (relative risk [RR], 1.25; 95% CI, 0.87-1.80; P = .25). For all prespecified secondary outcomes, there were no significant differences between groups. Mechanical ventilation occurred in 4 (1.7%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.13-1.30; P = .17), intensive care unit admission in 6 (2.4%) vs 8 (3.2%) (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.27-2.20; P = .79), and 28-day in-hospital death in 3 (1.2%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.09-1.11; P = .09). The most common adverse event reported was diarrhea (14 [5.8%] in the ivermectin group and 4 [1.6%] in the control group).

And the upshot:

Conclusions and Relevance  In this randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, ivermectin treatment during early illness did not prevent progression to severe disease. The study findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with COVID-19.

Here’s the entirety of the discussion (bolding mine); note that the authors, as is proper, point out the limitations of the work.

Discussion

In this randomized clinical trial of early ivermectin treatment for adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 and comorbidities, we found no evidence that ivermectin was efficacious in reducing the risk of severe disease. Our findings are consistent with the results of the IVERCOR-COVID19 trial,17 which found that ivermectin was ineffective in reducing the risk of hospitalization.

Prior randomized clinical trials of ivermectin treatment for patients with COVID-19 and with 400 or more patients enrolled focused on outpatients.16,17 In contrast, the patients in our trial were hospitalized, which permitted the observed administration of ivermectin with a high adherence rate. Furthermore, we used clearly defined criteria for ascertaining progression to severe disease.

The pharmacokinetics of ivermectin for treating COVID-19 has been a contentious issue. The plasma inhibitory concentrations of ivermectin for SARS-CoV-2 are high; thus, establishing an effective ivermectin dose regimen without causing toxic effects in patients is difficult.27,28 The dose regimens that produced favorable results against COVID-19 ranged from a 0.2-mg/kg single dose to 0.6 mg/kg/d for 5 days29–32; a concentration-dependent antiviral effect was demonstrated by Krolewiecki et al.29 Pharmacokinetic studies have suggested that a single dose of up to 120 mg of ivermectin can be safe and well tolerated.33 Considering the peak of SARS-CoV-2 viral load during the first week of illness and its prolongation in severe disease,34 our trial used an ivermectin dose of 0.4 mg/kg of body weight daily for 5 days. The notably higher incidence of AEs  [“adverse effects”] in the ivermectin group raises concerns about the use of this drug outside of trial settings and without medical supervision.

Limitations

Our study has limitations. First, the open-label trial design might contribute to the underreporting of adverse events in the control group while overestimating the drug effects of ivermectin. Second, our study was not designed to assess the effects of ivermectin on mortality from COVID-19. Finally, the generalizability of our findings may be limited by the older study population, although younger and healthier individuals with low risk of severe disease are less likely to benefit from specific COVID-19 treatments.

Note as well the “limitatation” that placebos were not given. Another limitation is that this study didn’t assess the chance of getting infected in the first place when you take ivermectin, or of being hospitalized if you get infected, though other work (see above) has suggested no effect of ivermectin on either of these measures.

I was prepared to admit that my criticism of ivermectin was wrong had these properly-designed studies shown an effect, but of course because ivermectin is usually suggested as a substitute for getting vaccinated, the real thing you want to know is whether, compared to getting the jabs, you’re better off swallowing ivermectin.  Given the efficacy of the vaccines, which has now been conclusively demonstrated (and yes, the effects wane over time, so we may need a yearly booster), I was already pretty sure that those who touted ivermectin as a better substitute for vaccination were wrong.  But this study does nothing to convince me that I was wrong.

More studies will come out, and eventually we’ll have a pretty solid conclusion. And I’ll bet any reader $100 that it will show that ivermectin is no substitute for vaccination or the other new drugs that are being used to relieve symptoms and combat the virus.

The question now is whether people like Joe Rogan or, especially, Bret and Heather Weinstein will admit that ivermectin—at least in this study—has no effect. Ideally, scientists will admit when they’re wrong, and, as Richard Dawkins has emphasized, that is an admirable trait. Such admissions move science along faster than waiting for a generation wedded to an idea to die off and be replaced by those who have different ideas. Now I haven’t been wrong about ivermectin yet, but when I see a study showing it’s more efficacious than vaccines in keeping you out of the hospital, or alive, I’d like to think I’d say whose three words. Will the Weinsteins say them?

I predict no. We will see a lot of hemming and hawing frothe Quacksters, and perhaps qualifications like “well, the study showed X but didn’t show the real prediction, which is Y.” In fact, I don’t remember hearing anybody pushing quack remedies admit that they were wrong.

The reason I’m so dogged about this is because people who tout quack remedies when there are good ones can do harm. And it’s far worse if they push the quackery while wearing the mantle of science.

But listen up: STAY AWAY FROM THE DAMN IVERMECTIN!

 

h/t: Alex, Leslie

Harriet Hall debunks Mayim Bialik’s claims for Neuriva “brain supplement” and her status as “an actual neuroscientist”

November 28, 2021 • 9:30 am

Every evening or so in the ads on NBC News, I have to watch television star Mayim Bialik tout her “brain supplements”, which she claims she invented. They are of course untested nostrums (see below), but the icing on the cake is Bialik’s claim that she’s “a real neuroscientist.” (She does have a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and plays one on the t.v. show “The Big Bang Theory,” but that’s as far as it goes.)

Here are two of her commercials for Neuriva. Nothing she says in the first commercial about Neuriva is true, and she adds that she’s a genuine scientist, saying, “I really am; ask your phone.” Well, I asked my computer, and no dice.

Below is the short commercial I usually see, in which she advertises her snake oil and boasts, “I’m an actual neuroscientist.” She also says she “loves the science behind Neuriva Plus.”  Both the value of the product and her claim to be an actual scientist are dubious. As Harriet Hall notes below, there is no science behind Neuriva.

Over at Science-Based Medicine, Harriet Hall went after Bialik’s claims (both of them) and found them wanting. Neuriva’s efficacy is untested and doubtful, and as for the “actual neuroscientist” part, well, see below, as I did my own investigation.

Click on screenshot to read:

I hope Dr. Hall won’t mind if I reproduce her entire short piece:

I wrote about the brain supplement Neuriva over a year ago. I thought their claim to have proof from clinical studies was misleading. I won’t repeat here what I said there about the evidence: I urge you to click on the link and read what I wrote.

An article in Psychology Today reviewed the evidence and called it “Neuriva nonsense” and “just another snake oil.”

Now they are selling Neuriva Plus, which combines the ingredients in the original Neuriva with vitamins B6, B12, and folate. Do they have any evidence that adding these vitamins enhances the effectiveness of Neuriva? Of course not! Neither Neuriva nor Neuriva Plus has been clinically tested. They are relying on studies of individual ingredients, and those studies are questionable. The results have been mixed, and one study was in aged mice!

Now Mayim Bialik has embarked on a campaign as Neuriva’s science ambassador. You may have seen her commercials on TV where she says she “loves the science of Neuriva” and claims it supports six key indicators of brain health. You may remember her as Amy Farrah Fowler, Sheldon’s girlfriend in “The Big Bang” t.v. series.

Elsewhere she has said:

Neuriva Plus is backed by strong science — yes, I checked it myself — and it combines two clinically tested ingredients that help support six key indicators of brain health.

She holds a PhD in neuroscience, but I couldn’t find whether she ever actually worked as a neuroscientist. It’s obvious that her understanding of “strong science” doesn’t mean what she thinks it means. I doubt if she reads Science-Based Medicine or understands the principles we go by.

Conclusion: Bialik is a good actress. 

Does Neuriva Plus support brain health? Maybe. We have no way of knowing for sure until the product itself is clinically tested.

To check how “actual” Bialik’s claims to be a scientist are, I searched the Web of Science under the names Bialik M and Bialik MC to see if she had any publications (this is the way we find out someone’s record). As the screenshot below shows, she has zero publications. She is neither teaching in a university, working in a lab, or, as far as I can see, actually doing any science. (BTW, I no longer say “I’m a biologist” when someone asks me what I do. I say that I’m a “former biologist”, “superannuated biologist” or “retired biologist.”) The circling is mine:

Now Wikipedia does report on her training:

She returned to earn her Doctor of Philosophy degree in neuroscience from UCLA in 2007 under Dr. James McCracken.[25] Her dissertation was titled “Hypothalamic regulation in relation to maladaptive, obsessive-compulsive, affiliative and satiety behaviors in Prader–Willi syndrome“.[2][26][27]

But if you look at references 2, 21, 26, and 27, you find no peer-reviewed publications except her Ph.D. thesis. She has written no books on neuroscience, either. She’s written or coauthored four books, but none about neuroscience:

Bialik has written two books with pediatrician Jay Gordon and two by herself. Beyond the Sling[57][58] is about attachment parenting, while Mayim’s Vegan Table contains over 100 of Bialik’s vegan recipes.[59][60] Her third book, Girling Up, is about the struggles of and ways in which girls grow up, showing the scientific ways in which their bodies change. Its successor, Boying Up (2018) analyzes the science, anatomy and mentality of growing up as a boy, and the physical and mental changes and challenges boys face while transitioning from adolescence to adulthood.

To me this doesn’t give her present status as a neuroscientist, and she’d stand no chance of being hired by a university as one.  But I don’t mind that nearly as much as her using those credentials to sell untested “brain supplements” to a credulous public. People are spending actual money on Neuriva, and much of that must be based on Bialik’s claimed credentials and her status as a television celebrity. In this sense she is the female equivalent of Deepak Chopra, who can claim, “I’m an actual doctor” while selling his useless “longevity supplements.”

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying go unvaccinated for Covid, take and promote Ivermectin instead

September 16, 2021 • 9:30 am

Since Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying left Evergreen State under trying circumstances, they’ve made a living doing podcasts on YouTube, and have become somewhat notorious for their stand on Covid-19 and the dubious remedy Ivermectin.

The story below, from the Portland, Oregon news site Willamette Week, reports how both Weinstein and Heying not only remain unvaccinated against Covid, as they don’t trust the vaccine, but are also dosing themselves with Ivermectin, a drug used in humans for roundworm, lice, and skin conditions, but which has no effect on the coronavirus. (It’s also famous for de-worming horses.) The FDA has strongly warned humans not to dose themselves with this drug as a treatment or preventive for Covid.

Nevertheless, according to both the story below (click on screenshot) and the section on Weinstein and Covid on Wikipedia, the ex-professors have been relentlessly touting Ivermectin (read the Wikipedia section for documentation) and taking it themselves.

Here’s how two “progressive” biologists (not just one) have completely ignored science for reasons best known to themselves. What they have accomplished, instead, is to ruin their reputations except among the loons and some Trumpies.

From the paper:

Instead, the loudest voice [doubting vaccines] may be that of a Toyota-driving Bernie Bro who lives near Lewis & Clark College, an evolutionary biologist with a Ph.D. who studied and taught at two of the nation’s most liberal universities and participated in Occupy Wall Street.

His name is Bret Weinstein, and he makes his living preaching the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines while extolling ivermectin, the controversial drug often used to deworm horses.

Weinstein, 52, is one of the foremost proponents of ivermectin. He’s appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to flog the drug. He and his wife, Heather Heying, also a Ph.D. biologist, went on Real Time With Bill Maher in January, an appearance that boosted interest in their DarkHorse Podcast, which has 382,000 subscribers on YouTube alone.

Weinstein’s biggest fan is probably Joe Rogan, host of the most popular podcast in the U.S. Weinstein appeared with Rogan four times, including a June 2020 show that’s gotten almost 8 million views on YouTube. In June 2021, it turned into a lovefest.

. . .“Your podcast is one of my very favorites,” Rogan said. “I listen to it or watch it all the time. It’s an amazing source of rational thinking by educated people who talk about things they understand, which is exactly the opposite of what I do!”

LOL.

. . . Now, because of people like Weinstein, a drug meant for 1,000-pound animals is flying off the shelves in feed stores not just in red states, but even in Multnomah County, where the vaccination rate is approaching 80%.

. . . But unlike most of their fellow residents in Multnomah County, both say they are not vaccinated. Instead, they protect themselves from COVID by eating whole foods from farmers markets and by taking weekly doses of ivermectin, along with vitamins C and D, and zinc.

. . . Weinstein likes ivermectin, he says, because it has a stellar safety record (it does) and it’s cheap (it is, at about $5 a pill). Vaccines, meantime, are the opposite. They aren’t proven to be safe yet, Weinstein says, and they’re more expensive (for the governments who purchase them).

I won’t go on; you can check for yourself, but I will quote David Gorski, also known as Orac and an oracle on the Science-Based Medicine site:

“Bret Weinstein is one of the foremost purveyors of COVID-19 disinformation out there,” says Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist and professor at Wayne State University who also debunks quack remedies as managing editor at a website called Science-Based Medicine. “Weinstein can be ‘credited’ with playing a large role in popularizing the belief that ivermectin is a miracle cure or preventative for COVID-19, that the vaccines are dangerous, and that the disease itself is not. Why are Rogan and Maher attracted to his messages? Contrarians and conspiracy theorists tend to be attracted to each other.”

I am still baffled why Weinstein and Heying are pushing quackery after careers as biologists—ecologists and evolutionary biologists! I think most of us admired Bret for taking a stand against extremist anti-racism at Evergreen State, a stand for which they eventually had to leave teaching. But then Bret started broaching weird and convoluted theories of evolution, and now this—horse drugs!

All I can guess is that the pair are contrarians to the bone, and are acting it out with horse pills. It can’t really be the science, as all the data say that the vaccines are both effective and safe, while Ivermectin is of NO value in preventing or treating Covid-19. And, of course, it could be dangerous, especially if you buy the veterinary brand, as it’s designed for horses, who have much greater mass than humans, and the animal formula of Ivermectin is different from that used for other human ailments.

Bret and Heather, are you listening? Please stop this dangerous and antiscientific madness, as you could be hurting people rather than helping them.

They won’t listen to their critics, of course, and for that reason their reputation will be permanently marred in the community of rational thinkers.

Bret and Heather from the news site:

h/t: Marion