Changing an infrastructure that supports money over people

Despite a 98% survival success rate in confirmed Covid-19 in hospital study, using “tried-and-tested ingredients” reconfigured into a new methodology called MATH+ protocol, no one seems interested. Can you imagine the frustration it must be for the experienced critical care doctors who came up with it?

As complementary health care practitioners, we are used to this frustration, but it was a shock for me to read Dr. Pierre Kory’s plea to the House of Commons for lifesaving protocols to be implemented and shared while awaiting refinement through further studies.

“We are doctors, trained to diagnose and treat illness, we are experts in our field with decades of experience and hundreds of publications … We have clearly devised an effective treatment for use, prior to the publication of randomized controlled trials…We just want to save lives, and we know how to do it.”[1]

The video below describes the suggested protocol, which you can view at covid19criticalcare.com: [2]

Dr Pierre Kory has made many efforts, through interviews, as well as in print, to share the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group’s (FLCCC) successes with Covid-19, but to no avail. The protocol known as MATH+ protocol (3) has gone to the White House on four occasions, (4) according to the US Homeland Security Committee Round Table on Covid-19, yet not only have those protocols received no interest, there has been continual push back from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institute for Health (NIH).

According to the Alliance of Natural Health article (5) of May 14th, 2020, entitled “Why is success in critical care being ignored?” efforts by Dr. Pierre Kory to share the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group’s (6)  (FLCCC) successes with health care policy makers have so far been to no avail. This despite Kory’s credible qualifications: medical director at the Trauma & Life Support Center and a faculty member in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Kory, one of five doctors participating in the May 6, 2020, roundtable discussion on COVID-19 with ranking senate committee member Gary Peters (D-Mich), shares the following in his testimony:7

“I want to start by saying that I am part of a group of physicians which include several of the most highly published and well-known critical care experts in the country and world (Drs. Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, Joseph Varon and José Iglesias). In response to the COVID crisis we formed the Front-Line Critical Care Working group …

Members of our group have now treated in excess of 100 hospitalized patients with our treatment protocol. Nearly all survived. The two that died were in their 80s and had advanced chronic medical conditions.

None of the patients have had long stays on the ventilator nor become ventilator dependent. The patients generally have a short hospital stay and are discharged in good health …

Our protocol has been out over four weeks. It is not unique, in fact, we are not alone in what we propose or have been trying … In fact, we are seeing an increasing number of similar protocols with nearly identical therapeutics come out from various institutions and countries, including the Italian guidelines, Chinese guidelines, Yale protocol, Montefiore protocol and others.

We are doctors, trained to diagnose and treat illness, we are experts in our field with decades of experience and hundreds of publications … We have clearly devised an effective treatment for use, prior to the publication of randomized controlled trials.

Those trials are critical for sure, as they will help us further refine and/or perfect our treatment doses, durations, and indications, but waiting for the perfect is and will be the enemy of the good, which we are already achieving … We just want to save lives, and we know how to do it.”

I was dumbfounded when I was told that I could not refer to any preventative or treatment measures when it came to Covid-19 despite 30 years of experience as an ND treating contagious diseases, flu and other coronaviruses by supporting the immune system. Having talked to licensed health care practitioners who have been asked by our provinces or states to not share or claim any preventative or treatment measure that could save lives with regard to Covid-19, I started to have some questions.

Is our entire body of knowledge, our evidence based traditional, “tried–and–tested”, practices being shut out of the public health dialogue? I understand that hygiene measures and self-isolation when one is or might be sick are wise steps, especially when a novel virus surfaces. But nothing has ever demonstrated to me that having an integrative view to bolstering our immune system could cause damage. In recent weeks, thankfully, those without the gag order were able to share the benefits of vitamins D and C, fresh air, movement, and wholesome foods.

On top of that, emergency critical care doctors can’t share practices that are as well evidence based as they are lifesaving, such as corticosteroids, heparin and Ascorbic Acid, while health bureaucrats continue promoting case management through invasive ventilators with little success, all the while awaiting some sped through version of a retrovirus vaccine that, after 30 years of trial and error, has thus far failed.

Imagine if, instead of the tremendous fear generated by this coronavirus, or the fear generated by a rushed through vaccine, we would have access to health promoting measures we could take, knowing that unless we suffer from co-morbidities the likelihood of preventing fatality with this virus would be near 100%. Furthermore, we could start taking care of ourselves right away, and, should we be one of the small percentage of people who have the life-threatening symptoms, we could take a simple measure that would not cause hospital emergency overflow.

Many nurses, doctors and healthcare practitioners are suffering through their inability to help their patients. What if, information such as what has been shared above could easily reach them and actually get implemented?

I have always believed in informed choice and appreciate the many advances in medicine as well as the science which is helping traditional therapies gain their credibility beyond their application. The problem with conventional medicine has always been the infrastructure based on financial drivers, be it the pharmaceutical industry, private interests or other. Money has a way of guiding decision-making processes when the people who decide are administrators or technocrats and not the health care workers and scientists in the field. Let there be debate and discussion in the open so that treatments, theories, experiences are shared. True collaboration is essential here.

It is time that the actual experts in health that deal, day in and day out, with patients get a chance to receive this information and that the technocrats, administrators and politicians help spread available choices, rather than ban such information under the guise of “conspiracy or misinformation,” supressing it, making it nearly impossible to share.

One thing that has been made clear with this pandemic is pointing the finger to economic disparities, access to real foods, lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, heart disease- all conditions that require a systemic overhaul of the medico-political complex. Integrative and naturopathic physicians have a huge role to play in education and safe alternative treatments; homeopaths, Bowen Therapists and so many complimentary modalities in addressing the health problems and allowing the patients/clients to learn what it feels like to be vibrant and healthy; but our new normal requires making changes to an infrastructure that supports money over people.

Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND

Changing an infrastructure that supports money over people

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