“Americans should be able to count on receiving care that meets their needs and is based on the best scientific knowledge. Yet there is strong evidence that this frequently is not the case” Crossing the Quality Chasm
“Perhaps the most substantial threat to expertise is that members of the public are coming to believe that facts don’t exist — that all facts are political and therefore a matter of opinion.” April 13, 2023 New England Journal of Medicine
This site is all about scientific medicine and especially optimal medical therapy for cardiovascular and related diseases. I don’t have any conflicts of interest and I don’t accept advertising so that you can be sure that I am writing about facts, data, and evidence to the best of my ability. I have steadfastly avoided politics because politics has no place in science, but this topic must be addressed. Politics is inserting itself into medicine, That is an existential threat to our efforts to improve health and lower costs.
I wrote about this in the post before last based on this article from the New England Journal. There was an exchange in the comments in my linked article that are worth your time. There are millions of Americans who share the views of this reader. The problem is real!
Reader: Nope. Not in my families experience. My brother and his wife caught COVID and were very sick. Doctor denied any treatment. We got them on ivermectin and less then 24 hours later they were 90% better.
Answer: That is not the way science works. That is an anecdote, a narrative, a story--an individual experience. That can happen by chance. Billions of dollars are wasted every year on treatments that don't work but make sense. For example, people who have chest pain due to heart artery disease often have heart artery blockages. Doctors found out that opening the artery relieved the pain. They thought that meant that opening the artery would prevent heart attack and sudden death. Later studies showed that heart attacks occur when a cholesterol deposit in an unblocked part of the artery ruptures and starts a clot that blocks the artery. They learned that people on best medical therapy had one fourth as many heart attacks. They studied thousands of people who were on best medical treatment with and without a stent. The stent did nothing to keep them from having a heart attack. The ONLY way to know if ivermectin works in COVID is to take hundreds of people with COVID, give half of them Ivermectin and half of them a sugar pill that looks just like the real thing. The pills are randomly assigned so that the doctors and patients don't know who gets what. Then, weeks later, they break the code so that they can interpret the effect of Ivermectin in COVID. That is how science works. That study has been done for Ivermectin.
"CONCLUSIONS
Treatment with ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of Covid-19."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869
That is the difference between belief and knowledge. We owe it to patients to be certain that treatment is based on knowledge.
Reader: That study was incorrectly done. They did not use the same health, age, demographics of people in the study.
Answer: There are fifteen studies of ivermectin use in COVID in thousands of patients. See the link below.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2801828
These fifteen studies have proven Ivermectin does not help in COVID. It is settled science.
Reader: I’ve seen ivermectin work fantastically first hand.
And I no longer trust the science or most medical communities and journals.
The highly regarded doctors have been censored so there is no discussion to get to honest answers and actual data and facts from the other side. I feel this says a lot. I appreciate you not censoring my opinions.
I sure wish people would open their eyes and see the truth.
I respect your viewpoints but in my little part of the USA, I have not lost one family member, friend or acquaintance from the COVID disease. However, since 2021, 8 personal friends of mine have been injured by death or a life altering disease- after getting the experimental COVID shot. Eight personal friends of mine are not here or the same anymore because of the “reliable scientific data”.
In my opinion, I think your data is incorrect.
Answer: Again, you make my point. We cannot design healthcare around opinion. We must design it around science and facts. That is the key difference. Opinion vs proven facts.
As your can see, this reader and millions like her are sincerely convinced that their observations and opinions are just as valid as a hundred years of research, facts, data, and evidence. There can be no doubt that this opinion vs science idea is a threat to scientific medicine. It is a threat to the the scientific and technical edge that makes America competitive compared with other countries. It has occurred because many Americans are upset because our institutions, including scientific medicine, don't serve them. They are correct. Institutions are not serving them.
The answer is to make the institutions better, but opportunistic politicians discredit science and facts so they can substitute alternative facts. They have succeeded with too many people. When politicians spread disinformation about scientific medical topics, they are not acting in your interest. They are acting in their own interest. Facts are not political. Some politicians have chosen to make them political. Join us in moving to a medical system that serves the American people better. If we don’t, the lack of trust will only increase and we will have only ourselves to blame. More than scientific medicine is at stake. Facts exist and the truth about them is the foundation of trust.
Thank you for shining the light
Bill: Such an interesting post and conversation. I wonder what this person, and persons like her, are really saying when they discredit science and approve of ivermectin. It may be something like “I’m a disappointed person. Life has failed me and not met my expectations in so many areas that I no longer trust anyone or anything that represents the mainstream. Why should I trust doctors and scientists?” Disappointment and anger are dangerous drugs, capable of making theri users vulnerable to con men, cults, and authoritarian politicians. But I do understand and empathize with people who were over-promised about the benefits of science, technology and, yes, medicine. One has only to watch the commercials on TV and social media for the current crop of wonder drugs for treating cancer, growing hair, and ridding one of bad odors to realize these impossible-to-realize promises are still being made, all to sell some product or service.