Robert Malone on ivermectin: what the evidence says · JRE #2454
SUBJECT: IVERMECTIN
The short answer
Malone invokes ivermectin's Nobel Prize pedigree to frame it as a poorly-understood 'miracle drug' being suppressed for COVID because it's off-patent, rather than because trials found it ineffective. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura for discovering avermectin/ivermectin as a therapy against parasitic roundworm diseases such as river blindness and lymphatic filariasis; it recognized a well-characterized antiparasitic mechanism, not an antiviral one, and had no connection to COVID-19.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
The only two threads that I can pull on at all is that Ivermectin is a miracle drug. I mean, Nobel Prize, right? We don't understand completely how it works.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura for discovering avermectin/ivermectin as a therapy against parasitic roundworm diseases such as river blindness and lymphatic filariasis; it recognized a well-characterized antiparasitic mechanism, not an antiviral one, and had no connection to COVID-19. Ivermectin's mode of action against these parasites is well understood, so framing it as a mysterious 'miracle drug' misstates the basis for the award. Large randomized, placebo-controlled trials found no significant COVID-19 benefit: the TOGETHER trial (679 ivermectin vs. 679 placebo outpatients) found no reduction in hospitalization or clinical worsening (relative risk 0.90, 95% credible interval 0.70-1.16), and a separate two-trial study of inpatients and outpatients (609 and 549 participants respectively) similarly found no improvement in clinical recovery, ICU admission, ventilation need, or death. Major health bodies including the WHO, CDC, NIH, and FDA recommend against ivermectin for COVID-19 outside clinical trials. The evidence therefore contradicts the framing of ivermectin as an effective, mechanistically mysterious 'miracle drug' for COVID-19; its Nobel recognition was for an unrelated antiparasitic use.