Erica Elliott, M.D.: Excellent interview, Richard.
Paul Christie: This was in interesting interview. I really felt for Meryl and her predicament, as she seemed only to have her patients’ best interests in mind.
While I don’t agree with all of her views, I don’t think our health care professionals should be treated so poorly. I feel that a lot of the problems she was confronting during the pandemic were driven by fear of the unknown.
In recent years, my psychotherapist, a lovely man and I think a very good therapist, was ejected from his practice - I am still to this day not sure why. He was 70 years old, had type 1 diabetes, and was coming to the end of his career. The stress of his de-registration caused him to become quite ill. He spent the last few years of his life trying to re-establish his reputation, but sadly died last year.
Thanks for the interesting work you do.
Sid Schwab, M.D.: I'll not comment on the propriety of the punishment Dr Nass received, but I'll say this: Among the important things we learn in medical school -- or that we ought to learn -- is to understand the scientific method; and to be able to recognize whether a reported study is, on that basis, credible. There has NEVER been a credible study showing effectiveness of either ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for treating Covid-19 or its variants. One of the earliest that purported to show effectiveness of the latter was widely criticized at the time and has, finally, been officially withdrawn. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/12/17/hydroxychloroquine-study-covid-19-retracted-trump/77051671007/ On the Republican side, Congress has a number of MDs who seem to have slept through school. Neither they nor Dr Nass seem to understand that politics have no place in deciding what constitutes proper healthcare. As she said, it's not illegal to prescribe drugs for "off-label" uses. However, when it's done, it ought to have science behind it. That cannot be said about Dr Nass' use of those drugs. I don't doubt her sincerity in thinking she was doing right by her patients. I do doubt her ability to separate science fact from science fiction. Nor do I doubt that most, if not all of your readers will see me as a typical "establishment" physician, dedicated to keeping people sick so I can keep charging them; or that I'm in the pocket of big pharma. I am, in fact, retired, and have been for years. I have no dog in the fight. If I did, I wouldn't give it ivermectin unless it had particular parasites.
Me to Meryl, attaching Sid’s comments: Sid is an interesting case. He has been both a friend and a gadfly since Freshman year of Amherst when he lived down the hall from me. On my very first day of college, he and his roommate Al Powers befriended me, and they are both still friends (going back to 1962). I had a single because of my mother, so I had no immediate friends otherwise. When I was locked in my room and it was set on fire by bullies on our dorm floor, an event I have described in all three of my memoir books, Sid and Al rescued me and lashed out at the guys doing it. After Freshman year we remained loosely friends. He dated a girl in Laura Scales at Smith where Lindy also lived. He knew he was going to go to medical school because his father whom he never met (died in WW II I think) was a doctor, but the father who adopted him and gave him his last name was a judge. Yet he used the time at Amherst to do lots of theater and star in plays. He is very tall and beefy. He enlisted during Vietnam and was a medic in combat. He became a surgeon near his hometown of Portland, Oregon (Al was from Springfield, now lives in Westport, Mass., was and is a poet and became an English professor, and I published his book on bird languages at North Atlantic where it didn’t sell virtually at all and at Inner Traditions where it has gone through numerous print runs).
I never lost touch with Sid, but we didn’t really re-connect until he retired from a career as a prominent surgeon and he sent me his memoir of medical school and I published it. It was called Cutting Remarks and had the memorable epigraph, “A surgeon can kill you, and you’ll sleep right through it.” Since then he has been a foil much in the manner of his comment on your interview. He and I have had so much interaction along similar lines to it that I based an entire chapter in Bottoming Out the Universe on it. The chapter is called “Worshipping the Algorithm.”
I don’t know if you want to respond to him. If you do, I will post it in my own version which people can access separate of substack. I won’t post his comments without your response. I know you don’t want to waste time responding to every critique, but I’d like it if you did, a good deal of the reason being my long association with Sid and his own sincerity. I have never broken through on his belief system. When we have discussed spiritual matters, he has wanted to believe but can’t without “proof.” I can’t answer him on what he raises in his own terms but you can.
Meryl back to me: I am glad you have a long friendship and that he may have saved your life.
But his command of the facts is so poor, I have no interest in engaging with him. As you know, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.
Meryl
Sent from my iPhone
Me to Meryl: Do you have one example of his poor command of facts that I can cite back to him? R (Not saved my life, just broke up some ugly hazing)
Meryl to me: He is both ignorant and arrogant, a bad combo that pushes my buttons. In other words, he missed over 300 studies that show benefit.
Here is a compilation of every study of HCQ and IVM, about 75% of them show benefit for covid. {Image did not reproduce.}
HCQ reduces COVID-19 risk: real-time meta analysis of 419 studies
If he reads my book chapter in either Robert Malone’s first book or my chapter in the Canary in a COVID mine #2 he will find references to the CDC and NIH studies that show both chloroquine drugs killed SARS-1 and MERS in tissue culture.
Me to Sid (accompanying Meryl’s email): Sometimes there is no way to reconcile views, so I’ll let this go beyond forwarding this. I hope you are managing okay otherwise. Best wishes, Richard
Sid to me: Best wishes to you, too, Richard.
Far as I could figure out, there are no links to the actual studies, by which one might evaluate their methods and credibility. It’s an impressive list, though, if lacking any data.
Also, killing viruses or, for that matter, any organism in tissue culture, especially in amounts not achievable or studied in humans, means next to nothing. But I guess it’s my arrogance that makes me say that.
Aram Alcalay: That interview with Meryl Nass is excellent plus it is fascinating; my father has already heard of her, your interview is the first time I heard of her.
My father and me are both strongly anti-vaccine (we're big fans of R.F.K. Jr.), my father was about to quit his job over the vaccine mandate, however he got an 11th hour exemption.
It is a powerful interview and inspiring to hear how she stood up against the covid technocratic inquisition, and major props to you Richard for conducting that interview and posting it for the benefit of the public, it's really excellent and important for people to hear.
Linda Shannon: “Among the important things we learn in medical school -- or that we ought to learn -- is to understand the scientific method; and to be able to recognize whether a reported study is, on that basis, credible.” Was there a study done for any of the Covid vaccines? A double blind study with peer review?
Speedy 2222 (ostensibly to Meryl): You are a liar. There has NEVER been a credible study showing effectiveness of either ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for treating Covid-19 or its variants.
Michael Janket (to Speedy 2222): Remdesivir was officially recommended for Covid treatment. What research papers showed efficacy and safety regarding this drug? Forget that many people were treated with it and became very sick, it was OK'd? Was ivermectin safe?, let's forget about efficacity for the moment. Were patients damaged by it? I see massive amounts of politics interjected into this issue even now. Are all participants in this issue on the level, honest, wishing for the best for their patients?
How about studies showing positive benefits to the vaccines? Can you quote a few so I can try to find the truth of the matter.
Debra Nolasco: Attorney Ralph Lorigo filed (80) lawsuits on behalf of hospitalized patients with covid & their families, in regard to ivermectin. Of the (40) patients where the judge sided with the patients & their families, & were given ivermectin, (38) survived. Of the (40) where the judge sided with the hospitals & the patients were denied ivermectin, (2) survived. Good enough for me. Ivermectin is now also providing great results for treating cancer of all types. I'll take a stack of anecdotes over a Big Pharm-funded & manipulated study any day of the week.
Seeing.Truth: Agree that Dr Nass is a national treasure, and with all that she's accomplished and continues to, adding on that she's a world-wide treasure.
Frank Thiboutot: It’s of very minor importance to the overall discussion but Trump’s alleged affairs were not while he was in office as [was the case] with many presidents and other political hacks.
Michael Janket: I am unaware of any research papers that show actual solid benefits from taking the vaccines. Yet there are literally a few thousand showing the dangers of the same vaccines. Physicians were threatened to bite their tongues and come out in favor of giving the vaccines to their patients and were even given bonuses to give the shots. Hospitals were paid off for treating Covid cases, even a non-suspicious person can surmise that something is VERY rotten in Denmark regarding these peculiar vaccine using regimes. Can we expect medicine to submit these peculiarities to critical evaluation and possible lawsuits or do we just go mum and let the issue drift into oblivion?
Cynthia Ford: You might read The War on Ivermectin by Dr. Pierre Kory, or read Cancer Care by Dr. Paul Marik, who has an h-index of 130, and was subjected to some of the same persecution Dr. Nass was, if you are not just like those geologists that Thomas Kuhn describes, who so could not cope with the plate tectonics paradigm shift, that they went out every summer at their own expense, trying to prove plate tectonics wasn't real. Paradigms and cognitive dissonance are powerful things and we all are cognitively susceptible to them, including me.
Larry Kiehl: Sid Schwab, you say, "Among the important things we learn in medical school -- or that we ought to learn -- is to understand the scientific method; and to be able to recognize whether a reported study is, on that basis, credible." Perhaps you'd be so kind as to show us how the Covid 19 "vaccine" (i.e., gene therapy injections) studies followed the scientific method. As you must know (or you're ignorant of the facts), EUA-issued drugs are *not* required to produce valid and reliable studies, i.e., following the scientific method, for their approval by the FDA. Also, the Brook Jackson (research director of Pfizer Covid-19 study) lawsuit against FDA/Pfizer revealed that those drugs were not required to do so since the DoD contracted those drugs to be produced as "military countermeasures," not as conventional vaccines, and therefor only needed to satisfy the condition of "may be effective" and not have to show safety and efficacy as with conventional vaccines...https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/360bbb-3; see (c)(2)(A). On a side but relevant note, it's interesting that the FDA/CDC/Fauci/etc. vehemently insisted that that the SARS-Cov-2 was zoonotic in origin, not from a lab. If zoonotic, how could the DoD justify contracting with pharma labs to produce the SARS-Cov-2 vaccines as *military countermeasures* instead of as vaccines (which require safety/efficacy studies)? How is an animal origin worthy of the DoD stepping in claiming it's a military offensive from China?! I can understand your defense of the medical industry since you identified with it most of your life (and apparently still do), and that its continued existence (e.g., AMA, ABIM) depends on keeping the truths behind the pandemic and the injections hidden from us (e.g., https://x.com/Restitutor_/status/1701994591728066983). Good luck with your much-needed soul searching.
Sid Schwab: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37236995/ For one among many. You can search them, too.
