Hey Dr. Baron, How Is This For "Consensus Driven Evidence?"

A grateful patient shared a photographic record of her lightning-fast recovery with ivermectin from the depths of her omicron/Delta hell back on December 31, 2021.

Dr. Richard Baron Cohen, CEO and “Misinformationist Czar” of the American Board of Internal Medicine

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As my readers now know, my 3 hard-earned (and very expensive) Board Certifications were revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine last week for the crime of not following a new, made-up, arbitrary standard of having to rely solely on something called “consensus driven evidence” when making decisions to treat patients.

Every time I write that term, my blood pressure rises, I start trembling, and then I look around for something inanimate that I san safely punch (I am not kidding, I swear I want to go out and buy a big stuffed Teddy Bear so my fist doesn’t suffer more damage). In my worst moments I dream of having ABIM CEO Richard Baron over for a “little chat.”

Never before in the history of medicine or science has there ever been such a standard. It should only be understood as “totalitarian” or even “fascist.” To apply this recent, Covid-invented “standard” to the practice of medicine means that doctors must ignore all data, experience, and knowledge that is not approved as having sufficiently agreed upon “quality” by ruling bodies of bureaucrats such as our health agencies and professional societies.

In the case of ivermectin, I can 100% swear to you that not one doctor-bureaucrat in any of those institutions has EVER treated any Covid patient with ivermectin. Which is kinda the point of this post - I want to contrast the knowledge I gained from “clinical experience” with that of “consensus-driven evidence.”

What “consensus driven evidence” really means in practice, and believe me I am not overstating this, is that doctors now must largely rely upon prospective, multi-center, double-blind, randomized controlled trials (PMCDBRCT) and professional society guidelines. Problem: both sources of data are almost always highly manipulated and influenced by big Pharma when the outcomes have financial implications for that industry. One great phrase I have heard describing these massively funded PMCDBRCT’s is “the only thing controlled about a randomized controlled trial is… the outcome.” Yup.

Gone are the days where doctors could rely upon observation, intuition, clinical experience, physiologic reasoning, knowledge of pharmacologic mechanisms of actions, the pitting of safety of the medicine vs severity of illness of the patient, patterns of recognition, and assessment of risks/benefits/alternatives as a patient falls ill in our care (as we have for centuries/millennia).

Nope, now you offer nothing unless there is “sufficient evidence” to treat. Recall the days of “stay at home until your lips turn blue” in early Covid (an abomination of medical practice which, every time I recall it, I start looking for the big stuffed Teddy Bear).

Now you know why I angrily (and stupidly) got my arm tattooed with an all-caps, “INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE” one day in 2021 when I was on vacation with my 16 year-old daughter (picture at end of post). We were in Puerto Rico and she had snuck away with her 17 year-old sister to get a small tattoo on the back of her arm which said “Angel” (my pet name for her). When she showed it to us, I had two emotions, the first was pride over her rebelliousness and the second was, “I want to get one!” Note that I was a 52 year-old un-tattooed physician at the time who was so angry at the world I decided to indelibly pencil that anger on my arm so everyone would stop reminding me about what I was relying on to make clinical decisions in Covid. Good times.

Anyway, now doctors will be reluctant to employ empiric trials of therapy as a patient is declining, an absurdity for an ICU doctor whose career was devoted to taking care of critically ill patients with high risks of dying. I would always try.. something to turn them around until all reasonable therapies had been tried and it was clear they were actively dying despite my efforts.

Know that this new behavior by doctors of trying nothing outside “standard hospital protocol” is what has driven the hundreds of lawsuits by families who watched their loved ones die after being refused a trial of ivermectin, one of the safest medicines in history. For those of you who read my (heavily censored) book, The War On Ivermectin, recall Chapter 36 called “A Legal Legend” where I recap Buffalo Attorney Ralph Lorigo’s efforts in 2021 where he took 80 cases to court on behalf of families begging hospitals to give their loved one ivermectin. How is this for consensus driven evidence:

• In the 40 cases where the judge ruled on behalf of the hospital to deny the patient ivermectin, only 2 people survived to discharge.

• In the 40 cases where the judge ruled on behalf of the patient/family and ordered the hospital to administer ivermectin, 38 people survived to discharge.

I wonder if the court ordering the hospital to give ivermectin had anything to do with these results? Dr. Baron, what are your thoughts? Note the difference in survival rates in this “low-quality, non-randomized, un-matched, observational” sample: 95% vs 5%. I am done here.

The below “clinical anecdote,” (which again, we apparently are no longer allowed to rely on for clinical decision making) is what I, in the future, should submit as my expert testimony when I am called to defend all the valiant physicians persecuted for violating “consensus-driven evidence.” Oh wait, I just realized that I am never going to be consulted again by lawyers for doctor defenses or malpractice case reviews (the former I do pro-bono but the latter was a not insignificant source of income to me). Why would this be, you ask? Because no lawyer wants to put an expert on the stand whose Board Certifications were revoked. The other side would destroy my credibility in front of a jury.

But who knows, maybe the below photographically documented case is all I need to defend doctors who used ivermectin. As you will see, the patient and her friend took serial, timed photos of her illness and recovery. I am putting this part (and my tattoo) behind a paywall - although the patient agreed to allow me to post the photos publicly, I want to limit her exposure somewhat as my readership is large).

For my free subscribers, basically, she got very visibly sick at 10 am on 12/30/21, took a photo of her thermometer showing a temp of 104.5, took ivermectin at 2pm, her friend took another picture at 5pm when she looked like death warmed over in her bed, and then she took another selfie of her in the car driving back from Florida the very next morning, afebrile, smiling, and happy…

Photo #1 - 10 a.m December 30th, 2021. My patient takes a selfie to send to her husband to show him how sick she is feeling (as you will see, she looks really sick and will get sicker in a later photo that day).