The Bird Group Team writes to Alex Berenson pointing out that some of his writings have appeared to have suffered from selectivity and missing the complete picture.
24th February 2022
Dear Alex Berenson,
The British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group International (BiRD International, www.bird-group.org) is a grassroots crowd funded initiative that brings together clinicians, health researchers and patient advocates with the aim of getting ivermectin and other early treatments approved for Covid-19.
On behalf of our international partners, members, and supporters, we would like to state that we are generally in alignment with your critical observations in relation to the Covid-19 public health measures. However, based on your recent published contributions on ivermectin, we are concerned about the negative bias demonstrated against the evidence on ivermectin for Covid-19, to which we would like to respond.
In citing a single study[1], you conclude that ivermectin is of no benefit in the treatment of Covid-19. This is surprising, given that, as an experienced science-writer, you will be aware that to justify a particular treatment or course of action, one cannot pick-and-choose studies but must look at the entirety of the evidence-base. This newly published study has several limitations, among these are that it was conducted only among high-risk patients with co-morbidities, was open-label and provides no funding statement. A journalist with your level of scientific expertise will surely agree that the design of the study was such that any anti-viral would have failed, as patients were enrolled too late in the disease process, and the primary endpoint was triggered before the treatment was complete.
There is now a huge body of evidence on the use of ivermectin for Covid-19, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses, country case studies, and most importantly, qualitative data on doctor and patient experiences.
We find it strange that some journalists have taken it upon themselves to step between the public and independent doctors by giving their opinions on the evidence. Whilst scorn continues to be poured on scientists, doctors and the public who use ivermectin along with other safe medicines to treat and prevent Covid-19, we see the same journalists lapping up whatever Big Pharma says works to prevent and treat covid-19 without question.
Is it possible for you to consider a different perspective for a moment? We agree that historically RCT’s have been considered the “gold standard”, however, RCTs are easily corrupted, particularly when conducted by pharmaceutical companies that control the design, data and reporting, and that have billions of profits depending on the results of the trial.
We must ask ourselves why so much negative attention has been given to little ivermectin, the cheap and essential Nobel prize-winning medicine – indeed, why do high impact journals such as JAMA only publish the negative studies on ivermectin – when Big Pharma drugs are ushered in with fanfare and no independent critical evaluation – without even a whisper of concern from the media. What has happened that journalists like yourself have been silent on the novel and expensive Big Pharma drugs unleashed upon the public with little to no safety data and no independent trials showing efficacy?
We want to emphasise that your work generally finds support amongst our members, and we appreciate that you have been dealing with issues around censorship and the devastating absence of open scientific debate.
In this spirit, we would like to encourage you to engage in constructive discussions with expert clinicians and scientists who have been up against extreme censorship for suggesting we give this safe, established medicine a try, given the dire situation in which we find ourselves as Humanity.
Lastly, you may want to find out about the World Council for Health (www.worldcouncilforhealth.org) – a crowd funded coalition of over 130 international health-focused organisations who support the use of ivermectin-based combination therapy for Covid and post-vaccine injury.
Yours sincerely
The BiRD Group Team
[1] Lim SCL, Hor CP, Tay KH, et al. Efficacy of Ivermectin Treatment on Disease Progression Among Adults With Mild to Moderate COVID-19 and Comorbidities: The I-TECH Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Intern Med. Published online February 18, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.0189
EbMCsquared, Northgate House, Upper Borough Walls, Bath BA1 1RG
