This article is reprinted from the Desert Review’s original publication of June 21, 2021. It stands as a testament to the safety and effectiveness of Ivermectin. It also serves as a reminder that profits and morality need not be mutually exclusive. Dr. Roy Vagelos considered himself, first and foremost, a physician, who was bound by a sacred duty to serve humanity.
His lower priority was to Merck, the corporation he led. In the tradition of founder George Merck, Vagelos put profits second when he announced the Mectizan Program in 1987, which financially committed Merck to decades of donations of this miracle drug, Ivermectin, to billions of impoverished Sub-Saharan Africans.
The astute reader will find no mention of harm or toxicity of the drug as used in Mectizan despite 4.4 billion doses administered over the past four decades. Indeed, the evidence shows Ivermectin is many times safer than over-the-counter Tylenol. As of this writing the program remains active, continuing to donate this sight-saving and safe drug.
The best way to convey the incredible safety of Ivermectin is to share the results of the Mectizan Program.
George W. Merck set the standard for his company when he announced,
"We try to never forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we remembered that, they have never failed to appear."
When Dr. Roy Vagelos led Merck decades later, he embodied that culture. A child of Greek Immigrants, Dr. Vagelos considered himself a physician first, a scientist second, and a corporate businessman third. Roy learned about a drug that could eradicate a disease that was blinding millions of Africans. River Blindness was ranked the second most common cause of blindness in the world in 1987.
The tell-tale signs of an afflicted area were small groups of adults led by a rope or stick held by a child. These blind adults were dependent on their children anytime they needed to fetch water, use the bathroom, or prepare dinner. Children as young as two could be seen guiding adults with sticks.
“River Blindness occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa among the poorest of the poor. I will tell you, many of these people, whom my wife and I visited, live in mud huts, and have never left their village in their entire life. These people were being attacked by a parasitic worm. They crawl through the skin and get into the eyes and cause the eyes to become blind – and we had a drug that prevented that completely.”
When he learned that Ivermectin, a drug previously used to treat parasites in animals, could be effective in humans to treat River Blindness, he was more than intrigued. Moreover, only a single pill per year was necessary, and this drug cost mere pennies. The problem was that the poor African villagers could not even afford pennies. Nor could their impoverished governments.
Dr. Vagelos visited President Reagan's White House. He met with Don Reagan, Chief of Staff, and later with John Whitehead, Secretary of State, and asked the US government to fund the humanitarian effort. "While we would like to do this program, we can't afford it," as Dr. Vagelos wrote in his book, Medicine, Science and Merck.
As a physician, first and foremost, Dr. Vagelos did the unthinkable. He offered to treat every person who required the Ivermectin for free - for as long as they needed it - all courtesy of the Merck Corporation.
Now in 2021, decades later, the Mectizan (Ivermectin) Program has expanded and blossomed, with participation by other sponsors, including The WHO and Gates Foundation. Thanks to Dr. Vagelos, the disease has been eradicated in Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala. Merck has now donated more than one billion doses of Ivermectin and saved the sight of tens of millions of people.
Although George Merck passed away in 1957, he would have smiled upon Dr. Roy Vagelos for his bold and spectacular decision.
A UNESCO report from 2005 states,
"The progress that has been made in combating the disease (river blindness) represents one of the most triumphant public health campaigns ever waged in the developing world.”
Dr. Vagelos has continued giving. He bestowed 250 million dollars to Columbia University's Medical School to help fund students' medical educations. In addition, he contributed 15 million dollars to the University of Pennsylvania to create the Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories, and he founded the Vagelos Scholars Program in Molecular Life Sciences.
A tireless worker, the good doctor has served as the Chairman of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals since 1995, and he has nurtured the same moral compass there as he did at Merck. Regeneron's monoclonal antibody cocktail successfully treated President Donald Trump and received Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA in November of 2020.
The cocktail has been praised and utilized by Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. George Fareed, pioneers in repurposed drugs to treat COVID-19.
Dr. Roy Vagelos, a chemistry major and Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, obtained his MD degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. The author of more than 100 scientific papers, he was given the NAS Award for Chemistry in Service to Society in 1995.
“(While) the DNA-based vaccines have worked at least 25 years, the RNA-based vaccine approach...have not worked so far. Could they work? Yes, it could work, but they haven't yet. So if you're a betting person, you want to bet where something has succeeded." See the 12:16 mark.
Dr. Vagelos was then asked about the potential use of a rushed vaccine - one developed without the full (usually two-year) clinical safety trial process.
He answered,
"There are major downsides. The ones I worry about are the side effects - the side effects (in vaccines) are terrible.” See the 35:45 mark. “The side effects in vaccines can be late and be devastating, so you have to have long-term safety.” See the 37:21 mark.
While a typical safety trial lasts two full years, the current COVID-19 vaccines that were rushed were granted EUA with only two months of such data. Dr. Vagelos warned that vaccines could cause enhanced disease,
"They look like they are working upfront, but in the end, people do worse and even die…these have to be guarded against…so we need to have very careful studies of vaccine, because they’re prophylactic, they’re used broadly. They are not going into sick people, so there’s not much benefit up front." See the 37:45 mark.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a respected cardiologist and Vice-Chair of Internal Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, has warned of the significant danger signal related to the COVID-19 vaccines. With over 4,500 deaths and rising, Dr. McCullough, who has chaired numerous FDA Safety Panels, believes the vaccine program should have been halted long ago as too dangerous. He reports that studies have shown the spike protein itself to be toxic even in the absence of virus. See the 1:37:08 mark.
The current issue with the COVID-19 vaccines, beyond the toxicity and the deaths, is the variants. The emerging new variants of the virus have a competitive advantage over the previous versions. The original Wuhan strain that the vaccine was developed against is no longer around. It is extinct. Today the Indian Delta Variant accounts for 99% of the cases in the United Kingdom and will soon become the dominant strain in the United States. With each new version, the virus becomes more infectious and less vulnerable to the vaccines.
Dr. John Campbell reported that nearly 10% of new Delta Variant hospitalized cases in the UK occurred in vaccinated persons. See the 6:00 mark.
We do not wish to wait another few months to encounter newer variants that will be even more resistant. By contrast, the evidence suggests that Ivermectin is effective against all the variants.
Moreover, Dr. Vagelos reminds us from his talk in May of 2020 that no RNA vaccine has ever proven effective in the long run. Instead, he suggests we bet on something already proven.
Dr. Vagelos discussed the problem of virus resistance. His company solved this for AIDS when he used the combination approach – the idea of using three drugs in combination to prevent resistance from developing. This approach is remarkably similar to Dr. George Fareed’s and Dr. Peter McCullough’s multi-drug approach they have published and used so successfully to save almost all of their patients from COVID-19.
Unlike a narrowly tailored single vaccine to which RNA viruses can mutate and evolve resistance, the multi-drug cocktail prevents this. See the 8:12 mark.
“Ultimately, when you put a combination of three drugs together against a virus, the virus may become resistant to one, but it would be killed by one of the other two…If there are three drugs covering three important enzymes, the chances of that virus becoming resistant to all three is almost impossible…That’s what we’re looking at today, and the result that was achieved there is the result that I anticipate with the coronavirus.”
Ivermectin has proven itself to be safe throughout the Mectizan Donation Program. We know Ivermectin can effectively treat River Blindness. It has been almost completely eradicated worldwide, whereas it was once the second leading cause of blindness. See the 14:20 mark.
We know it is potent. One tiny pill is all that is required in one year for effective treatment for River Blindness. In COVID-19, we read that Attorney Ralph Lorigo's court-ordered Ivermectin cases usually came off the ventilator after a single dose of the drug.
In India's recent deadly second pandemic surge, Ivermectin obliterated their crisis. Within weeks after the ICMR and AIIMS adopted Ivermectin, the JHU CSSE database shows their cases to be down 86% [414,188 to 58,226]. Those states with more aggressive Ivermectin use were down more dramatically; Daily cases in Goa, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi were down 93%, 98%, 99.4%, and 99.6%, respectively.
Dr. Tess Lawrie, a highly regarded WHO consultant and the British Ivermectin Development Panel, published a meta-analysis this month that came to a similar conclusion.
Former Director of Intellectual Property at Gilead Pharmaceuticals, Harvard-educated attorney, Brian Remy, wrote this about the necessity of implementing Ivermectin,
"It is simple - use what works and is most effective - period. Ivermectin used in combination with other therapeutics is a no-brainer and should be the standard of care for COVID-19. Not only would this be good for business and help avoid the criticism and bad PR, and potential civil/criminal liability for censorship, scientific misconduct, etc. for misrepresentation of Ivermectin and other generics, but most importantly it would save countless lives and end the pandemic for good."
Dr. Vagelos was asked if Merck benefitted from its 200-million-dollar donation of Ivermectin for River Blindness. He answered,
"The benefit (to Merck) was that we could recruit anyone in any part of the company – for decades. People love to work for a corporation who was willing to contribute a sight-saving drug to millions and millions of patients." See the 52:10 mark.
His magnificent program was taught in business schools across the nation as an example of corporate philanthropy. What a fine example it would be if Merck today repeated and offered Ivermectin to end the COVID-19 Pandemic. Ivermectin and Merck could save the world.
As George W. Merck reminds us,
"We try to never forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we remembered that, they have never failed to appear."
