https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/public-health/2022/08/the-suppression-of-useful-covid-19-treatments/
The author is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School. He is a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s COVID-19 Expert Database
Eighteen months ago, the first in a series of articles on the management of COVID-19 was published in Quadrant. The constant in these articles was that optimal management combined spaced vaccine administration with effective early drug treatment to cover breakthrough infections. This article compares two groups of drugs promoted as effective in the early treatment of COVID-19: recycled anti-viral drugs that target specific replication and re-purposed drugs of biological origin that render target cells hostile to viral infection.
Background: Those who have followed this series and perhaps others, will recognise how a “vaccine narrative” and its ideology, promoted by the pharmaceutical industry, led to the cancellation of non-patented drugs. These re-purposed drugs had an extensive data base supporting prevention and early treatment of COVID-19. Opposition to their use was unprecedented, denying both science and the established practise of the doctor-patient relationship. This opposition threatened use of “off-label” drugs regularly prescribed with benefit by most doctors. Governments also banned the use of these drugs for treatment of COVID-19, threatening and enacting the deregistration of doctors who opposed the narrative and prescribed ivermectin (IVM) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for early treatment of COVID-19 infection. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the Australian licensing body, succumbed to pressure by banning use of IVM for treatment of COVID-19, not because it was ineffective but because “it may interfere with vaccine uptake; it may deprive indigenous patients use for scabies; and there may be confusion re appropriate dosage regimen”. This win for Big Pharma was a loss for thousands of Australians who would benefit, including many at risk of developing serious disease.