SIO309: A Veterinarian Answers our Ivermectin Questions

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm Thomas. That's Dr. Lindsey Osterman. How you doing, Lindsey?

0:00:17 Lindsey: Oh, fantastic, how are you?

0:00:19 Thomas: I am also fantastic. I am so excited because we have a special guest. You know, there's been so much talk and news of ivermectin that I thought we should hear it right from the horse's mouth. So, we have horse on the line. No, we a horse doctor. We have a vet on the lines. Therese Chan. Thanks so much, Therse, for joining us.

0:00:38 Therese: Hello. It's great to be here. I'm glad to join you guys. I should clarify, I am a small animal veterinarian. I don't do horses and pigs and cows, but I learned about them in vet school, so I

0:00:49 Thomas: Gotcha, my Uh, nobody should take anything I say seriously. I usually just make jokes, so I wasn't actually saying you're a horse doctor, But uh, yeah, good to know, and so I thought it would be interesting to hear from an actual veterinarian's perspective what might be going on, some of your observations of what's happening with people taking what seems to be a horse drug, or like a, you know, multi-animal drug, um, does anyone, tell you what, Lindsay, do you remember, when's the first you heard about, I was going to say the horse people. Now it's not the horse people. It's the, what's

0:00:49 Lindsey: Dark

0:00:55 Therese: Know.

0:01:19 Lindsey: Horse,

0:01:20 Thomas: Dark Horse. Do you think there's any, do YOU tie in there? Like maybe the horse drug appealed to the Dark Horse podcast people? I don't know.

0:01:20 Lindsey: Yeah, Dark Horse podcast.

0:01:29 Thomas: Mind blown?

0:01:27 Lindsey: Wow, okay, yeah. This could be something that the conspiracy folks could run with, I think, yeah that could be. That was the first time that I heard of ivermectin. I hadn't heard anything about it until I saw that Brett and Heather episode.

0:01:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, for those of us who don't, Listen uh. To every episode or watch every episode of the dark horse horse pace show, um, catch us up on what they've been doing with ivermectin.

0:01:39 Therese: Boy.

0:01:48 Lindsey: They have been on a prophylactic regimen of ivernmectine for a while now. I haven't checked in with them for the last few episodes, but last time I checked they were, they were still on that and uh, you know they

0:02:00 Thomas: Well, you said they were taking it on air, right?

0:02:03 Lindsey: So yeah, Brett made a whole production out of the first dose that he took, um, he's like, brought out the ivermectin that he had and then was like, "Look, now just me taking this on air isn't like a recommendation to anyone that they do this, but uh, yeah here's me taking ivermectin on air to prevent uh COVID-19 so yeah Yeah.

0:02:15 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. And so are they, is that the claim that it prevents it or that it treats it or both?

0:02:28 Therese: I think it's a little of both.

0:02:29 Lindsey: Yeah. Oh

0:02:31 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. It's hard. It is hard to keep track with the, with the theory. So Therese, why don't you talk about your experience? How did you when did you first hear about people using this for COVID?

0:02:40 Therese: I actually heard about this, oh, God, I think it's been a year um probably It's a while, yeah. So because the the original studies that were trying, they were citing to try to say that this had potential or worked, um, actually date back to uh, like the spring and summer of last year. And I know a person who is a veterinarian, like me, who should know better, who has been touting this over on Twitter for the better part of a year so that was that was my original kind of introduction to it um And it's just for whatever, for reasons unknown, it's just blown up into what it's become in the last couple of months, you know, it hit the various news outlets, and people have just run with it, but it's definitely been going on longer than that.

0:02:44 Thomas: Oh, geez, really? Yeah,

0:03:08 Lindsey: God.

0:03:28 Thomas: I don't know when is the is the right time to have this component of the conversation. But that's what I wonder is kind of the why. Like, isn't it weird? What is the and maybe we could all just pontificate about this for a minute. Like, what is the worldview that leads to this? You know, because at first we know that there's COVID denial. We know that There's, you know, it's not so bad. But that's not really compatible with this, right? And not that they check their internal consistency, but what is the theory? Is it that COVID is actually a big deal, but there's this secret medication that will fix it that also the scientists don't want you to know about, but they do want you to take the, you know, the vaccine that I guess doesn't work. Like I, it's just so hard to even unravel how they get there.

0:04:14 Thomas: And also what's funny is there also was the hydroxychloroquine. So this, this isn't the first drug that people just decide works. And I just wonder what, what do you think, what do both think? Maybe we'll start with Lindsay, since you've observed these dark horse people and others, what Do you think is like the worldview that's leading to not just that like, okay, COVID is real, but also there's a drug that they don't want you to know about that'll fix it. What, what is that?

0:04:41 Lindsey: I mean, Brett and Heather talked about that explicitly on Dark Horse. They, they think that, I think that their, their narrative was that if they, if there was an effective treatment out there for COVID-19, then they wouldn't be able to get the emergency approval for the vaccine. And the, the companies that are producing the vaccine stand to lose something, you know, if they can't get the emergency approval. And I saw that debunked somewhere, I didn't have a lot of time to look into that piece of it, but I think that that's the idea, right? This is big pharma trying to make money, and if ivermectin works, you know, it's it's not something they can make as much money from as these vaccines. That was my understanding.

0:05:16 Therese: Okay, so on that subject, I don't know the answer to the question, Thomas, I really wish that I did. But on that particular subject regarding the because these are the type of people who a lot of them are, you know, anti-big pharma, and they'll go on about how terrible pharmaceutical companies are, but here's the kicker, and this is a little further in my notes that I have here, but in, that's okay, February of this year, Merck Pharmaceuticals, who is a major manufacturer of ivermectin, put out a statement that said, quote, no meaningful, there is no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or efficacy against COVID-19. They did not recommend using it. They came out very strongly against it. So if you think that the pharmaceutical companies are the bad guys, wouldn't Merck stand to make about a gazillion dollars off of this if it actually worked, and yet they said, no, don't do this? So that's the part that blows my mind above everything else.

0:05:17 Lindsey: Yeah yeah yeah

0:05:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:06:16 Thomas: That's what I, yeah. Yeah. What kind of, I made that joke, Lindsay, last episode, wasn't I? Where I was like, who's making the ivermectin? Like, it's all the same. I mean, I guess you could come up with some twisted theory. They're like, like, well, it's not as big a profit margin, but like Merck is Merck profiting off of vaccines. Like that seems like it under the theory.

0:06:34 Therese: I don't think so.

0:06:35 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Like under the theory that these companies are just, you know, out to kill us with whatever and don't care about all the safety and they just want to make money. You would think Merck would be, you know, pumping out fake research or something or saying like, yeah, you just use this vaccines kill like all that. Wouldn't you think?

0:06:35 Therese: So, right.

0:06:51 Lindsey: He

0:06:51 Therese: I would think so. And I mean, I guess they actually have some morals and ethics where they're not going to just turn around and say, hey, yeah, go use it and see what happens.

0:06:55 Thomas: Yeah. So weird.

0:07:02 Therese: It's very frustrating. Well,

0:07:04 Thomas: So, uh, where did you want to start us off, Therese, about, uh, ivermectin, awesome.

0:07:09 Therese: I was just kind of kind of explain a little bit about what this drug is and kind of what it does and what the formulas are and side effects and that sort of thing. Just do a quick little rundown on that, so um, uh, I've and and I've done a lot of reading, and I, I should preface this by saying I am not a pharmacologist, um, so I don't have, you know, any kind of specialty in this, and again, I don't—I have used this drug in small animals years ago, there are better things now for the things that we use it for, um, so I don't see it in small animal hospitals nowadays, but it is definitely a great cheap option in the, on the large animal livestock side of things. So, um, but ivermectin was actually discovered back in the mid seventies and put, uh, into use in the early eighties.

0:07:55 Therese: It works. Um, and it was, it was basically called, uh- it actually won a Nobel prize of some sort, I think at some point, because it made such a huge difference for parasitic diseases in the developing world.

0:08:09 Thomas: Wow, was it like a horse Nobel Prize though? Like there's an all horse council there

0:08:12 Therese: Yeah, yes, absolutely. It works by interfering with the nerve and muscle functions in worms and insects, so parasites basically, and causes paralysis and death in them. So that's how it works. It's used for internal and external parasites in animals. It's used against certain intestinal worms, lice, heartworms, black flies, mites, et cetera. In humans, yeah.

0:08:16 Thomas: Oh my God, I have a question while we have you on the line. So wait, heartworms are actual worms? I think I've never thought about that and I always hoped that was some sort of like, I don't know what, you know, like I thought that was good idea but I'm not if that's there's actual worms.

0:08:47 Therese: Yeah. Yeah. You No. Yes.

0:08:58 Thomas: Oh, God.

0:08:59 Lindsey: I thought it was like gremlins

0:08:59 Thomas: This is horrifying.

0:09:00 Lindsey: Oh

0:09:00 Therese: Yeah. No. Google it. The pictures will disturb you. They are.

0:09:04 Lindsey: Yeah

0:09:03 Thomas: I will not. I will take your word for that. Gosh, that's, oh, and

0:09:06 Lindsey: No mm-hmm

0:09:06 Therese: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely a thing. But again, there's other drugs that are used. I don't really treat heartworms because we don't have it out where I am. So

0:09:16 Thomas: That was like, like an earworm or whatever. Isn't that a, isn't that a thing where it's like the things that's catchy stick in your head? Earworm? Yeah. I was, I was hoping it was more of an expression, not a literal worm that's in an animal's heart. That's wow. That's awful.

0:09:16 Therese: Yeah, yeah, it's a little different. No, it is an actual thing. No,

0:09:30 Thomas: Okay.

0:09:23 Lindsey: Yeah yeah or ring ringworm that's not really a worm apparently so

0:09:32 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:09:34 Therese: That's a fungus.

0:09:34 Thomas: See, it's not that that silly for me to hope that maybe it's not actual worms in an animal's heart? I

0:09:33 Lindsey: Yeah oh

0:09:35 Therese: Then on the human side, as you mentioned, river blindness is is, um, uh, one thing that it's used for in people that is, if you think about blindness and worms, I'll let you use your imagination. Don't Google that because it's really gross. Um, it's, it actually is a parasite that, um...

0:09:53 Lindsey: God

0:09:55 Thomas: Won't. But actually, what is river blindness exactly? Oh, gosh.

0:10:00 Therese: And I'm not a human doctor, but it is actually a parasite that's seen in, I think, parts of Africa and, um you know, third world countries that does actually get into the eye and causes actual blindness. So it's... really gross, uh... more so on the human side in my Opinion, but anyway, well, um, but it also treats, um, they also use it for, um, they've used it for head lice, um, there's a cream that they use for rosacea, which I thought was really interesting, um, but, and so there are some FDA, FDA approved doses for people, and those are considered to be safe formulas, it comes for in human are just tablets and topical creams, um, in animals, and this is where people are going and buying stuff that's not meant for people, it can, it comes in in tablets, an oral liquid, an injectable form, a paste that's in a syringe, and that's where you hear about the horse paste, that the syringe is meant for, like, a 1,200-pound horse, so,

0:10:07 Thomas: Yikes. Is everything in your line of work disgusting? OK.

0:10:55 Lindsey: I've

0:10:56 Thomas: Look,

0:10:56 Therese: Yeah,

0:10:57 Thomas: If I were not an atheist, there are certain like symmetries and weirdnesses about everything that has happened. I mean, really, like for one, you got the whole joke about Trump was that he was like a horse in a hospital, and then it ends up with Trump supporters taking horse paste for like just weird things. And the fact that when this pandemic started up, we were all playing Codenames online, like my family and I, and the website that we found to play Codenames, the game Codenames Online, because we're all stuck home with this pandemic, was called horsepaste.com. That was literally the website. Site, it's still, we still like, what I'm starting to think, we're in a simulation, like this is the universe is trying to get me to realize like this, this all a joke, like, you, come on, it's not real horse paste yeah and people are taking horse paste. Unbelievable. I don't understand. I'll

0:11:41 Lindsey: Been there for a minute yeah oh

0:11:31 Therese: Geez, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it also comes in a topical pour-on and a spray. I have no idea if people are, like, trying to drink that, but, again, gross.

0:11:53 Lindsey: Good okay

0:11:53 Thomas: Check if horsespray.com is like another board game

0:11:54 Therese: Yes, go look for that. The other interesting thing here is I looked up in my drug formulary, because for livestock, anything that's going to be for human consumption, there are what are called withdrawal times. So you give a drug, you have to stop at a certain point before you can take that animal to slaughter for it to be processed. And the withdrawal times, depending on the formulation and the animal, range anywhere from 11 to 56 days. Or for some, it says not for use in animals intended for human consumption. So, I mean, that should tell you something also about maybe not taking these things as a person.

0:11:55 Thomas: Yeah hmm oh So you're saying ivermectin is on that list of don't.

0:12:33 Therese: But this is the information for withdrawal times for ivermectin in food animals. Yeah. Yeah, so, and I mean we definitely all use things off label. Label. That is a thing and it's legitimate, especially in veterinary medicine, because all of the lengthy studies may not have been done. So we do use things off label, but there's generally some sort of a consensus that this works and this is the dose and that sort of thing. And we definitely use drugs for things that maybe weren't their original intent or that you might might not think work. The one example, a couple of examples of that, one is there was a large study done a number of years ago, I believe in Europe somewhere, that showed that an antibiotic called azithromycin may be helpful for a papillomavirus, which is a wart. It causes oral warts in puppies, which makes no sense because it's a virus and an antibiotic shouldn't do anything for that. But for whatever reason, they found some effectiveness. So that's something on occasion I'll say, hey we can try this there's no downside um no

0:12:37 Thomas: Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Mm hmm. Mm hm. Yeah right.

0:12:37 Lindsey: Wow

0:13:37 Thomas: Plus, I'm pretty sure, like, I take one of my little like anxiety things. I think there's a lot like that was one where I think it's like blood pressure, but then it's Like, oh, it also works for this. And they found it works for this like so it's not uncommon, but the doctor is like, yeah, it Also works for this and their studies, you know, it's Not as though it's definitely a difference there between just using whatever for whatever in

0:13:39 Therese: Yeah right exactly exactly yeah Exactly, so, um, and and and when we get into side effects on these, on this particular, uh, medication, um, the list for people is, uh, uh, the list of people is long, um, vomiting, diarrhea, low blood pressure, or difficulty walking, seizures, et cetera? Well, there is, can be, yeah, absolutely.

0:14:19 Thomas: Yeah, in fairness though, isn't this every drug? I mean, like, yeah. Yeah

0:14:24 Therese: But yeah, in

0:14:25 Thomas: So how in your experience like how do you have a basis of comparison for like

0:14:30 Therese: Animals, we tend to find that it's very safe. My one case that I recall was a very long, this was probably 20 years ago. I saw a cat that had ear mites, little, there are little mites that live in the ears and especially in like outdoor feral kitties. And back then we didn't have, we had limited options. Now we have better treatment options for that. And we did sometimes use diluted ivermectin in the ears. I think somehow, and I don't remember the details on it, this cat ended up getting an injection of ivermectin that was way too much and ended up in a coma and was going to need like days or weeks of intensive care to try to recover. So that cat did not make it. So I don't have, have, you know, I've just know what I've read in stories of, you know, an anecdotal stuff from on the people side, with all of this going on, which, you Know, the stories of psychosis, the stories of people going in to the hospital with episodes of blindness, that sort of thing.

0:14:30 Thomas: Oh Geez. Mm-hmm. Gosh

0:15:33 Lindsey: Which

0:15:34 Thomas: All I can think of is like, can't everything just live in its own place, can't we. At the animal kingdom, it's everything you've described, whether it's parasite mites in the ears, worms in the heart. Just like, can we, this is why I'm an atheist, honestly. Like, you would never make all these things be killing things by living. They would all have their own little areas of life, you know? Like, what's going on? This sounds brutal.

0:15:45 Therese: Yeah, yeah,

0:15:57 Thomas: Jeez. Anyway.

0:15:56 Therese: That would be lovely.

0:15:59 Thomas: Yeah, it would be nice, wouldn't it?

0:15:59 Therese: Yeah. The other thing on the human side, I found is that they, there's also concern with drug interactions. So if people are on blood thinners, statins, certain heart medications, etc. They're going and taking this drug, it can, um, you know, it can, you can have problems because the drugs don't play nicely together. Yeah.

0:16:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:18 Lindsey: I'm guessing is actually a lot of, you know, the American population, you know, statins and heart heart medications are common, I think.

0:16:22 Therese: Right yeah yeah absolutely

0:16:25 Thomas: Do we have information about, you know, any, I don't know, deaths, uh, any complicated, like, we, there was, uh, that viral headline about like ivermectin overdoses and gunshot victims, whatever, and then I just saw that that turned out to be bs and got debunked so that's that's not real, the Oklahoma thing, but uh, it was very believable. I don't know if there's anything like that that's actually real.

0:16:26 Therese: Yeah oh oh yeah yeah I don't know. I mean, I just, I've heard probably the same stories you have regarding, um, you no, increase in, um, increase in potential increase in hospitalization or people plugging up hospitals. But, you know, I don't have any specific data on that. The data I did find from the CDC was regarding the increase in poison control calls and prescriptions for ivermectin, and these were pretty dramatic. As of July of this year, poison control calls related to ivermectin nationwide have increased fivefold from pre-pandemic levels. Levels.

0:17:21 Lindsey: Wow.

0:17:22 Therese: And then regarding prescriptions, because again, this is a legitimate drug for some people, for some human conditions. Pre-pandemic, about 3,600 prescriptions nationwide were written per week. As of January of this year, that had jumped to 39,000. And in July, it had jumped to 88,000. And what I want to know is who's writing these.

0:17:40 Lindsey: Whoa.

0:17:47 Thomas: Yeah who's like, the Dr. Robert, like the Beatles song, but like for Dr. Horse Paste, like, you know, like you Dr. Horseface. Yeah, is this all based on—we didn't really get to it. This is all based on, wasn't it, like one study? Wasn't it sort of like, honestly, the vaccines and autism thing, where it's like one study and then it gets retracted, but people just decide that never happened or something. Is that what the basis of this all was?

0:17:53 Therese: Yeah, seems like there's been a few studies. I don't know what Lindsay has found, but I've got notes on a few different ones that all kind of trace back to the people pushing this are these, this group called America's Frontline Doctors. You'll find them over on Twitter under Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Care Alliance. And they are very vocal. Got a little bit more information about them we can talk about. And then I've got some information on the studies that I have written down that we can go through if you want to do that.

0:18:12 Thomas: OK. Sure. Yeah.

0:18:40 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:18:40 Therese: So yeah, first one I have is back in the spring of last year, there was a study going on in Australia that was published in June.

0:18:50 Therese: And journal that was or what place it was published in, um, but what they were, they were doing research on possible antiviral properties with ivermectin, but what they were doing was what's called in vitro, uh, in vitre research. And so when you look at in vitra versus in vivo, so in vitriol is used to describe work that's performed outside a living organism, whereas in vivo is in the body basically. So this is, these they use cell cultures.

And I think in this one, it was, what did they say, this was monkey kidney cell cultures that they were using. And it's legitimate because they, this is apparently how the early phases of drug research happen, recognizing that the majority of those fail because, you know, there's a ton of drugs out there that people are trying to come up with and make, but they, a lot of them don't work. Work. So it's a legitimate thing to be doing. And they did apparently find some antiviral effects against a certain class of virus, which included like West Nile and dengue fever and COVID-19 and a couple of others. The problem was that, and I found this referenced in several places, that they were using doses that were much higher than the maximum approved amount amount from the FDA and at levels that were not, it wasn't going to be safely achievable for use in humans to try to get that antiviral or anti-inflammatory potentially effect. That's not good research. It's not something that should have gained a foothold, but yet here we are. So

0:20:09 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:29 Lindsey: Or it's or it's not practical. Yeah right.

0:20:29 Thomas: Oh, well, it's so not good. Yeah, like

0:20:31 Lindsey: It's it's like that doesn't give us anything practical to do. Yeah what

0:20:33 Thomas: It's not a good result. Yeah yeah

0:20:29 Therese: Yeah, sorry, I just shouldn't say it's not good research. They did the research but it didn't have the outcome that they wanted it to and well

0:20:36 Thomas: Right well, because as you said nothing wrong with trying like okay let's study This let's see, maybe this, some such drug would have been a miracle cure, that would be nice, but it seems like they tried it and no go.

0:20:44 Therese: Right Yeah.

0:20:54 Therese: Exactly, um, there was another, um, couple of papers I found from, also from June of last year, there were a couple of papers published in the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, which are very well respected medical journals, um, those papers got retracted after the company running the trials, I think they were based out of Chicago, refused to make their data available for independent audit.

0:21:19 Lindsey: What does that mean?

0:21:21 Therese: Well, there's a whole detail in there's, Los Angeles Time articles that goes into a lot more detail on, I don't have that really written down in my notes right now, but I know that the one of those papers also included hydroxychloroquine, so they were, you know, they were trying a few different things, um, but, um, you know, if you're not gonna allow somebody to your work, you know so To speak, then I can understand why a respected medical journal would say, yeah, no, we're, we're pulling this, so and then the other one that I found was, um, out of the American Journal of Therapeutics, which was actually this year, man, the May June issue, and this is where those America Frontline Doctors, um, come in a little bit more, and maybe this is what kind of spurned this to really blow up this, this, uh, this summer, um, so there's uh, guy, for Pierre Corey, I think is his name, K-O-R-Y, and, and these people are all, they are medical doctors, um, so yet again, reasonable to be doing the studies and trying things, um, this one looks like it involved a, let's see, 13 randomized controlled trials, I believe this was global, and they had a subsea, a, a meta-analysis done, um,

0:21:44 Lindsey: Yeah. I

0:21:44 Thomas: Yeah I

0:22:39 Therese: Uh, by the Cochrane Library and the Cochrane Review, I don't know, Lindsay is familiar with them.

0:22:46 Lindsey: Don't think so.

0:22:47 Therese: I—another veterinarian said they were considered to be the gold standard, um, for Meta analysis and review, um, they are a database of systematic reviews and meta analysis which summarize and interpret the results of medical research, and the, I, I, the goal, is my understanding of meta-analysis is that it's supposed to pull out the biased and the poorly designed studies. Well, they pulled out a whole lot out of those 13. They got excluded because they, for example, had, like what you were saying with Joe Rogan before, multiple drugs were being given. So which one's making a difference?

Poor study design, insufficient data. But there was one in particular that I thought was really interesting that was actually found to be fraudulent, um, they managed to, um, number of people, there were supposedly 1400 people in this study, they managed to finish it supposedly in weeks and had no apparent funding source, um, I'm pulling some, some of this information, I'm pulling from a veterinarian discussion, another veterinarian who also has a master's degree in epidemiology and is super duper smart. So I did a lot of reading on from the things that he had said. But this, anyway, this fraudulent study he was using, or they were using ivermectin, and don't ask me what this means, inhaled seaweed.

0:22:50 Lindsey: Oh yeah

0:23:54 Thomas: Wouldn't

0:24:09 Therese: And suppose Those one would think not. And the kicker was that it found 100% efficacy, which has to be BS.

0:24:09 Thomas: Really want to inhale seaweed.

0:24:19 Thomas: How do you come up with those two things together is what I want to know, like, iver— yeah, ivermectin and like a half a cup of olive oil, you know, just like a random inhaled sea of all the things in the world yeah like there's... there's a lot of substances on earth you know what how'd you land on those two

0:24:21 Therese: Right. I don't know.

0:24:35 Lindsey: Yeah. Oh

0:24:30 Therese: Just, yeah. Kitchen sink. Yeah. And I, yeah, exactly. I, I don't know where these people's brains are going. I really don'T. And I wish I could have found the name of the journal, but the claim was that this was also published in what they characterized as a predatory journal that had a $2,000 fee to publish your study and promise peer review in less than 48 hours.

0:25:02 Lindsey: Man.

0:25:04 Therese: I'm just, I think I'm

0:24:43 Thomas: Wow Oh geez I suspect we'll find a seaweed uh yeah seaweed merchant is behind that. I'm gonna I'm going to sell so much seaweed inhalers. People laughed when I made seaweed inhalers, and then, now who's laughing. Yeah.

0:25:08 Therese: Making Lindsay twitchy with this, but, yep.

0:25:19 Therese: Yep. And then, you know, this guy, Corey, he has stated that he wanted this to be used by doctors and not people going out and getting the animal forms. He blames the FDA for all of this hysteria because they didn't approve the human product for use. But then they continue, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to push this drug. And they refuse to take a real pro-vaccine stance. In fact, they had one guy from this American Frontline Doctors who actually left. And I think this might have been out of that same Los Angeles Times article. But he left the group because he's like, you know, when we get a vaccine, maybe we can, you let's move to that. And that didn't happen. And he's like, I'm out.

0:26:03 Lindsey: I'm sorry if already said that is like, what do we know about this organization, the, yeah,

0:26:08 Therese: To be actual medical doctors. What I don't understand is why they are so hardcore going against what is the overwhelming medical consensus. I don't know if it's a consensus but you know, the, the, the rest of the, the majority of human doctors are not, don't, they, they, they recognize that there's no evidence that this works. Yeah.

0:26:22 Lindsey: Right

0:26:23 Thomas: Yeah

0:26:32 Lindsey: Yeah that's very strange

0:26:34 Thomas: It you know I think it should no longer surprise us that you can find anybody even in the field that in question, you know, like it used to be that was, that was more, it felt like anyway, where it was like, OK, sure, people think that evolution isn't real, but not any biologist or something. Now it's like, I don't know, you probably could find that everybody within, if there seems to be enough people on the planet, and and also our worldviews are enough shaped by politics now, and like our political grudges, I guess, that you can find any, even doctors, willing to say that horse paste is the way to go. Oh, and it's just like, it's really disturbing. I wish it weren't that way.

0:26:35 Lindsey: Wow

0:27:12 Therese: I, I, I wish that it was too, and I wish I had, I mean they, they've got a whole, they've, they've a whole website and, um, my understanding is that they will do, they'll set you up for a fee for a telemedicine consult so that somebody, this is probably where those 88,000 prescriptions are coming from, um, and, um, somebody will do a telemedicine consult and prescribe this for you, so, you know, which kind of comes off as a little bit of a grift frankly yeah

0:27:36 Lindsey: Yeah huh

0:27:37 Thomas: Wow. Well, it sounds like we found our Dr. Horsepaste. That could be, maybe that's where a lot of those prescriptions are coming from. I wonder what the consequences of that could be if any.

0:27:43 Therese: Yeah so yeah I, I don't know, I mean, I guess if something were to actually happen and, like, blindness were to be permanent or whatever, that you know there could be lawsuits but But because you've got that wiggle room with the off label off label use Of drugs, you know, it's I'm I'm sure you you know they've got they got they have lawyers listed here on their website. I see two of them, so you know they're, they're trying to cover their, their, their butts, somehow. Well, my other notes had to do with this a new trial that's come out, and it's called the Together Trials. They also have a website, and what these people are, this is, I think, a large group of probably multi-center study globally that is, studying various therapies against COVID-19.

And just trying to say, okay, what works and what doesn't. And they actually pretty recently then, and the epidemiologist that I was talking about earlier, the veterinarian and epidemiologist, one of the things that he had said was that like three weeks ago or so, he might've said, maybe on the ivermectin, because we don't know yet. And Then they put this study out, um, uh, and I believe, let's see, 15, they put this out in mid-August, um, 1500 patients, from what I could tell, it seemed to be, you know, really properly run trials where they weren't, you know, using eight gazillion drugs. And, you know, they were, they, you know, really trying to run things properly with a, you know, double-blinded, um, studies and whatnot. Not. And their ultimate conclusion on what they just released is that there's no effect for ivermectin.

And that's where this guy said, you know, three weeks ago, I would have said maybe, maybe. And now it's like, there's a pretty big study of evidence that says, no, we're not finding anything that tells us that this works, you know, at least at what are considered standard ivermectin doses for a person with river blindness or whatever. Um, and the last thing was that

0:27:54 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:53 Therese: There was one other drug that they, uh, well, there's, I'm sure there's several other drugs that they're studying, but they men—he, they mentioned that there was one, uh, called fluvoxamine. I don't know this drug, it's a human antidepressant, um, but so far they were seeing that they were up to a 30 percent decrease in hospitalization risk with this drug, so that's something that could be promising. That might still be a little too early to really tell

0:30:15 Lindsey: Yeah that was the same trial okay

0:30:19 Therese: Yeah it's one of their trials the together trials I think is like everybody, people at various, uh, you know, hospital settings, um, who are working together under this umbrella to test this drug and that drug and the other drug and this therapy and, you know, try to to see what might work and what might not. And so the ivermectin was, I think, one component of that.

0:30:22 Lindsey: Oh interesting I mean that would that would be a weird thing if that if that turned out to be a reliable effect like what would be the mechanism of action there that's yeah that'S odd that'S

0:30:44 Therese: Right. Yeah. No idea.

0:30:50 Thomas: But here's the thing. I mean, I'm sure, I imagine the three of us agree, but like, I think the biggest difference in worldview here is just like, I trust that the same people trying to do this research also don't want to die of COVID or have their friends and family die of COVID. So they're probably trying to figure it out. And if they find something significant, we'll hear about it. Right. I mean. Isn't that pretty much, doesn't that cover it? Like, well, I'll wait and we'll we'll here about it if it works.

0:30:50 Therese: Yeah, yeah,

0:31:17 Lindsey: That's my feeling, I

0:31:20 Therese: No, I would completely agree with that. What I hate is that there are so many people out there, and I've seen it with people that I know, and I've tried to have conversations with them about this. And they, I mean, I, I grew up in Georgia. I don't live there anymore, but there's a lot of people in the South who are, seem to be all in on this. And I've tried to have those conversations and say, you know, don't, don't go taking stuff that's made for livestock and please get vaccinated. And I just keep running into the same, it's the same brick walls every time. And I don't know how to, I don't know how to get around that.

0:31:56 Lindsey: I actually, I, I did have one one question on on that point, um, so the, I was curious about whether the the danger in taking animal prep, or you know, preparations that are made from for non-human animals, is is the only issue there about dosage, or are there things about the preparations that are like, you specifically fine for certain species but would be dangerous to humans or, okay.

0:32:18 Therese: Yeah. And I don't, 'cause I don't do the livestock side of things. I don't, don't necessarily know the answer to that. I see, I feel like I have read somewhere that that is a potential concern, that there may be other ingredients in there that could be problematic, but I don't really know how they, how they make these formulations.

0:32:24 Lindsey: Yeah Okay, yeah, I was just curious about that, because I, it seems clear that if you're, if you're talking about doses that are made for for horse size animals, there Would be a big problem there, but yeah, I Was just, I was curious if there were other things people should be concerned about there too, before they start trying to, you know, con Their vets out of out of ivermectin, yeah.

0:32:50 Therese: Right.

0:32:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like, as you said before, there are human applications. Are people just using that or people also, it sounds like they're doing both. They're, they're maybe also trying to get these like horse versions or whatever, like livestock versions of it. And that, that could be possibly more dangerous than just taking whatever the river blindness one is. Right.

0:33:18 Therese: Yeah, well, I mean, the feed stores, you walk into any feed store, especially any rural area in this country, and I'm betting the ivermectin shelves are going to be empty, because they are, they are absolutely doing that.

0:33:27 Thomas: Yeah, I get posted. You got to show horse ID. Now you got to show horse passport yeah

0:33:32 Therese: Yeah yeah right right yeah, exactly, and I mean, I know of a veterinarian and a technician, veterinary technician, who are friends of mine, who have both been approached by friends or clients for, "Oh, can you get me some ivermectin?" For so many reasons, the answer is no, including that I cannot prescribe legally to a human.

0:33:55 Thomas: I like what you have to say the word nay nay, like confirm your, it's like the robot box to check you're not a robot, you gotta check the box of your horse. What, um, so the other thing we saw, though, uh, well, first off, Joe Rogan as always is not helping, um, it's pretty ridiculous. There's... there's, I always have a tweet for every occasion, and there's some really funny one because he did video, he got COVID, if you haven't heard, you know, I haven't read the good news. He got COVID. And he did a video saying he immediately took monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, a Z-Pak, prednisone, a NAD drip, I don't even know what that is, and a vitamin drip. And he says he's feeling fine. And so there's a tweet that went kind of viral that was like, yeah, his kitchen caught on fire, he says, he immediately used a fire extinguisher, an aboriginal rain dance, prayers to Xenu, and a set of pistol squats. After 30 minutes, his kitchen, it's fine. It's like, yeah, the monoclonal antibodies is probably the thing, uh, it's

0:34:12 Therese: No. Yes. Exactly.

0:34:56 Thomas: Funny to be like, yeah, I did the thing that's actual medicine, and also every possible dumb, you know, thing that isn't proven, and therefore probably solved it. Um, it's kind of frustrating.

0:35:07 Therese: Well, yeah, exactly. But problem is that the people who listen to his show, and man, there's a lot of them, all they hear is, oh, well, I can go get this down at the feed store. Let me go do that. I can't get monoclonal antibodies. I cannot find them. I can't afford them. But I can find this. Let's go do this.

0:35:14 Thomas: Yeah that's a good Good point.

0:35:25 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:35:26 Therese: And and there's groups

0:35:26 Thomas: But it's not like it really, it's not like, it sticks it to the, to the left, does it? To use horse paste? Why does it, it's so weird. I don't understand the psychology of this. I guess it's just anything that the left and that science, which I guess now is the left too, after ever since climate change, maybe like anything that goes against that consensus is somehow owning the libs, it seems like. And it's such a dangerous thing. And I wonder like, you feel like it could only only go on for so long. Like eventually that's going to have enough negative consequences. You know, maybe ivermectin isn't quite deadly enough, but like someday there could be another thing where it's, it's harmful enough to these very people where it is going to start to make an impact or maybe never. I don't know.

0:35:27 Therese: Oh it is

0:35:44 Lindsey: I've

0:35:49 Therese: Yeah

0:36:09 Lindsey: Been thinking that about COVID itself for the last year, I mean, how much, how much more damaging does it have to get before, I don't know, a

0:36:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:36:19 Therese: I feel like these, I mean, even if you go to this Frontline Doctors uh website, I was like, the first thing in there is something about vaccines and children and nights, you know, scare tactics and whatever. Um, so these, these, a lot of these people seem to have that mindset that the, and are believing all, all of the misinformation and disinformation about the vaccines that's out there, and they don't want to take it, and they are looking for something else and like grasping on to whatever they can find. Yeah.

0:36:49 Thomas: Again, it's not like ivermectin is made by hand, with you some plants or something. Like it's still doctor, big pharma. It's still the same thing that would be making the ivermectin you're taking, right? It's the same as the vaccine. I don't, I don't understand this. So weird. Anyway. Um, speaking of potential side effects of ivermectin, uh, I had seen a tweet about ivermectin possibly having some negative side effects and, uh, Lindsay, I think you looked into that a little bit.

0:37:05 Therese: Only

0:37:17 Lindsey: Little bit, I mean, I, I would need to spend a little bit more time with this to to speak, you know, authoritatively on it, but um, yeah, so so the the thing that was being tweeted about was that maybe ivermectin was having like, uh, harmful effects on men's fertility, um, I know, there's there's like a a dark piece of me that's that kind of was like, oh, this would be, yeah.

0:37:35 Thomas: We can only hope we can only help. Yeah. Oh, hundred 100%. Look, this fulfills what I said, Lindsay, would be the actual conspiracy that goes on. You want the people like us, sheep that we are, to go take the vaccine. The big they, if they existed, would want us. But what they would do is they would put out that ivermectin. Everything I said in that last episode has come true. They put out the ivermetin and they would make it harmful secretly. So everybody who doesn't listen to them, who's not a sheep, if anything were a conspiracy that would make more sense to me is all I'm saying.

0:37:49 Lindsey: Right? Yep.

0:38:12 Lindsey: Yeah. Right. And especially, you know, there was some early sort of conspiratorial stuff going around about the vaccines having effects on female fertility, right? So it would be a little bit poetic if it turned out that ivermectin was having some effects here. But yeah, so this study, let's I don't know. Like I said, I'd want to spend a little bit more time with this, but it's a study of people who have this river blindness and they're being treated with ivermectin. And they make some very strong claims here about, you know, observing significant reductions in sperm motility and sperm counts. But from what I'm seeing in the methods and results, the results don't look as persuasive as I was thinking they might. So screened a total of 385 patients, all of whom were diagnosed with the river blindness. And out of those only 37, so that's less than 10% of these 385 patients were eligible to actually have further tests about this because that was, it was only this 37 patients that actually had normal sperm counts prior to receiving ivermectin. And so like, Like, I don't know. I think I.

0:38:28 Thomas: Wow.

0:39:23 Thomas: What's the base rate of normal? You say normal, I guess that means more than 37 out of whatever people would have normal sperm rates, counts?

0:39:34 Lindsey: Yeah, no, this seems very low. And so I'm wondering if there's something about this of this infection that's actually maybe if I don't know that for sure. I don't know anything about river blindness, but it just seemed like it was very odd that that few people had, you know, normal sperm counts to participate.

0:39:49 Therese: 10 that is weird yeah No.

0:39:51 Lindsey: Yeah, it's it's quite odd.

0:39:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So It's you're saying it might be a selection effect of that already?

0:39:55 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and especially since design that they used was a repeated measures design. So all 37 of these people, they took sperm count data prior to ivermectin, then they gave all 37 ivermetin, and then they assessed the sperm count again and saw declines. So if it's true that there's something else going on with this infection that's actually affecting the sperm counts, it's possible that it was just like it hadn't showed up in these patients to the same extent yet or something like that, so I, I don't I don't know, it just the the data it

0:39:56 Thomas: Okay.

0:40:24 Thomas: Hmm. But it still sounds like it could be accurate, right? You're just not

0:40:26 Lindsey: It could it could be, we just don't know, and I was trying to find like some, some other papers that have looked at the same thing, you know, maybe built on this one, and I couldn't find anything. It looks so Therese

0:40:27 Thomas: Sure okay Okay. Yeah. Was this like a fresh study like just happened or?

0:40:38 Lindsey: This was Yeah, yeah.

0:40:39 Therese: It was like 2011.

0:40:41 Thomas: Oh, geez. Oh, okay. So not at all.

0:40:43 Lindsey: And right

0:40:42 Therese: The only one that the only other one I found, on and I was still, really quick search, um, was uh, there was a newer study from uh 2015, 15, 2017, something like that of in male rats that was potentially showing a decrease in or a changes in sperm. But I don't know how to extrapolate that.

0:41:00 Thomas: Let

0:41:03 Lindsey: Yeah, and and that, that was the other thing, is like I, I couldn't find a ton on with human trials, right? And then the the stuff that I was finding with non-human species, um, there seemed to be some inconsistent effects, like some, some species were showing reductions in fertility and other species weren't. So like, I, I just, I don't know what to make of this overall, it seems too

0:41:21 Thomas: Me ask you this question. Is the evidence that this is reduces male fertility better or worse than the evidence that ivermectin actually does anything for COVID?

0:41:35 Therese: Jury's out.

0:41:37 Thomas: I mean, my point being like, honestly, okay, maybe this study, maybe this connection to male fertility isn't rock solid, but strikes me as at least as good, if not better than the idea that ivermectin does anything for COVID. So if they're going to point to these studies, like if, if the, the Brett Weinsteins of the world are going to say like, "Oh no, there's a study that says ivermectin dah, dah, dah." Like, okay. Also there's one that says it's hopefully if the rest of us are lucky, it's reducing all these idiots and fertility, but that's just, that's good. That's just me. Sorry for that opinion. Yeah.

0:41:34 Lindsey: Soon to tell. Oh, yeah

0:42:13 Therese: That would be a unique Darwin Award.

0:42:15 Thomas: Yeah

0:42:13 Lindsey: I yeah no, I'm convinced at this point that that uh, that, yeah, we haven't found anything good about about ivermectin here as relates to COVID19, but yeah.

0:42:26 Thomas: So I mean honestly, like the evidence might be slightly better that it's like bad for your uh your sperm, for the old sperm count, you know, so I guess stick that in your smush pipe and smoke it, ivermectin. People

0:42:38 Therese: And I'm perfectly fine if they want to do, you know, more studies, but, you know. Get the vaccine. This is not hard. That's the thing that, you know scientifically has been shown to nearly eliminate your risk of landing in the hospital and um so and then yeah go ahead and keep studying whatever stuff you want to study but um let's do the thing that we know helps

0:42:38 Thomas: Yeah right yep

0:42:44 Lindsey: Yeah,

0:42:55 Thomas: Of course

0:43:04 Lindsey: Couldn't agree more, the evidence, that's the comparison that matters I think, right? The evidence for the vaccines is obviously better than both the sperm count thing and the also the ivermectin covid thing yeah

0:43:14 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:43:14 Therese: And And that's my, that's my other high level of frustration with this is that I just, I, I feel like there, we, we live now in an era where there is a death of belief in science and medicine and research. There's critical thinking has just gone the way of the dodo bird for some people. And I don't know how to right the ship, you know.

0:43:39 Thomas: It is is too bad. That kind of does it on my end. Therese, was there any thoughts or notes that you didn't get to that you want to make sure you can get to?

0:43:40 Lindsey: Oh

0:43:48 Therese: I think that kind of covered everything. So yeah, kind of blew through that quickly. But yeah, that's what I had.

0:43:51 Thomas: Wow. So how many hooves up do you give ivermectin?

0:43:57 Therese: Oh, well, hooves up means your horse is dead. So So, yeah.

0:43:59 Thomas: I guess two. That's true. So no hooves up. Four hooves down. Yeah.

0:44:08 Thomas: Well, I want to thank you again so much, Therise, for joining us. It really was a pleasure. I appreciate you putting in that research time to try to, as you say, right the ship, get some critical thinking going on here, because this is, boy, really feels like I'm taking crazy pills lately, the last, I don't know, five years. It's amazing that we can't trust the basics of science, but we got to do what we can to try and get a few minds if maybe they're on the margin. I don't know.

0:44:25 Therese: Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm. Well, I was happy to do it. I actually had a number of things that I kept meaning to read a little bit as I was trying to have conversations with people, and so this kind of gave me the opportunity to sit down and dig through all of this and get a better handle on it.

0:44:49 Thomas: Thank. All right. Well, thanks again. Thanks as always, Lindsay. Always you've got the Q&A thread on Patreon that I actually don't remember if posted yet, but I will definitely post after saying this sentence for any questions about this. Make sure to post that in the Q and A on Patreon. And share this with a friend, share this with a horse or someone who thinks that horse medicine works for humans all of the above, thanks so much for listening, we'll see you next time

0:44:50 Therese: Oh,