A large medical study of seniors, both Viagra users and non users (7.2 million seniors medical records were scanned for six years by the Cleveland Clinic) and they found that Viagra users were 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer disease. This was interesting. Did they find anything else? Less Cancer, less Parkinson’s disease?
Could there be something else that made a difference? Viagra itself was developed to be a blood pressure lowering drug by expanding the blood vessels. During the early trials they found that it had some unexpected side effects. For some, the side effects were desirable, so they repurposed the drug, and Pfizer racked up about 15 Billion dollars in sales until the patent expired in 2020. It is now generic under the name sildenafil. There is only one problem with this. To repurpose a drug, in this case against Alzheimer you have to have a control group that is not aware that they are given a placebo, which is not possible in this case. Plus it is now generic, so there is no interest in doing a double blind study for economic reasons, it no longer fits the medical industry’s business model.
Many years ago I saw a nicely framed plug for flossing in my dentist’s office. It said: People who floss every day live on average seven years longer. This may very well be true, but could it also be because people who floss take care of themselves in many other ways?
A long time ago there was a study that established a strong correlation between circumcision and prostate cancer. People who were not circumcised had a much higher incident of prostate cancer, case closed, get circumcised. There was only one problem with the study: It was taken mostly in Minnesota with a large Scandinavian population. Scandinavians do not get circumcised as a rule, and they are genetically much more prone to get prostate cancer than other people. When the genetic variations are taken out, there is no difference between circumcision, non circumcision and cancer.
Which brings me to COVID-19 and why more pigmented people are more likely to suffer, even die from COVID-19. The first excuse is that they get an inferior health care because we are a deeply racist society. There are a couple of other possibilities. An Indonesian study showed a strong correlation between Vitamin D levels and fatal outcome for older people with COVID-19. If the level was below 27 ng/ml the death rate was over 80%, if the level was over 31 ng/ml the death rate was less than 10%. See: https://lenbilen.com/2020/12/27/vitamin-d-as-covid-19-fighter-a-most-important-virus-fighter/
Another possibility is there are genetic differences between people of dark complexion and pale-skinned people. It is through genetic differences we determine our ancestry, it has become widely popular, so it is not in and of itself racist to look into one’s roots. It turns out that the rate of COVID-19 in equatorial Africa is much lower than in U.S. In Africa there was a debilitating illness called river blindness. The parasite killer Ivermectin, originally developed against parasites in horses and as heart worm killer in dogs proved effective against river blindness, and so it became widely distibuted in Central Africa. The countries that use Ivermectin have around one tenth of the cases than the countries of North and Southern Africa. It seems that Ivermectin had been inadvertently repurposed to fight COVID-19. See: https://lenbilen.com/2020/12/27/vitamin-d-as-covid-19-fighter-a-most-important-virus-fighter/
To test this hypothesis Indonesia, India and Japan did introduced Ivermectin as the primary early prophylactic and therapeutic COVID-19 fighter. The results are startling, Indonesia has seen new cases drop 99.5% and deahs drop 99.4% since the peak before introduction of Ivermectin. The corresponding numbers for India are 98% and 93.3%, but in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi the results are much better. In Japan the cases are down 99.5% and deaths are down 98.4%.
Can the U.S. achieve similar successes by repurpose Ivermectin to fight COVID-19? It is a strong virus killer, and it is more broadband than the mRNA vaccines. The vaccines work too as a Prophylactic Therapeutic for a season, but is what they call leaky insofar that they are more specific and make possible an occasional vaccine resistant mutation to develop, and so a vaccine booster variant has to be developed and distributed, thus satisfying the medical industry’s business model, first do not cure the patient, but maintain stable control and assure the patient of a long life of dependency.
The other buisness model advocared by the medical doctors and nurses is that they really want to cure the patient. Ivermectin will go a long way to achieve that goal. Just think, reducing COVID hospitalizations and deaths by a modest 90% in about seven weeks after Ivermectin is fully approved would change things.
What are we waiting for?
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 