Why knowing about Paul Marik matters

When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
― George R.R. Martin

In receiving some feedback after my last newsletter – an interview with Paul Marik – I realised that I didn’t explain clearly enough who he is and why it is that I went into raptures about him in my intro. While some people absolutely knew all about him, including a distant cousin of mine who sent me an irate note and promptly unsubscribed (more on that later), I suspect the majority had never heard of him. I also suspect that the accusatory and audacious claims in some of his answers perhaps indicated to the uninitiated that there was possibly something a little “unhinged” or “unstable” about the man.

Many of Marik’s answers were of the lashing-out variety. But what’s key to keep in mind is that to those for whom this was their first encounter with him, they were only seeing the lashing out. They were not privy to the appalling treatment he endured by the medical establishment that caused the lashing out, as well as the complete disillusionment with a system he had spent his decades-long career working within.

Lots of people would have heard anecdotal evidence from friends about how effective ivermectin was in treating covid. These sorts of anecdotes were told very much on the down-low as it was made enormously difficult for doctors to prescribe ivermectin during covid. Marik was one of the leaders in early treatment for covid: utilising ivermectin as one of the core medications with stunningly successful results. It’s because of doctors like him that there was any knowledge at all of ivermectin as a treatment for covid. 

It’s worth reiterating that ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning drug described by highly qualified professionals as one of the safest compounds ever produced, with vanishingly small side effects. It’s on the World Health Organization (WHO) Model List of Essential Medicines in the anti-infective category. This WHO list is updated every two years, most recently in 2023 and before that in 2021, and it’s on the list both times. As Pierre Kory, a highly published pulmonary and critical care physician and co-founder with Marik of the FLCCC, says: “It is, in my mind, the single greatest public health achievement in our history of infection control in the world.”

‘Ivermectin is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines: a list of the safest, most effective medicines in the entire world’ – From The War on Ivermectin

Ivermectin had been administered to humans (not horses) billions of times before covid and was demonstrated early on during covid by critical care experts – Marik and Kory, but not only them – to be highly effective in the early treatment of covid. By using available generic drugs in an off-label way, such as ivermectin for covid, these doctors were following a basic principle of public health and doing precisely what doctors are supposed to do: find ways to treat their patients. Covid turned that principle on its head.

The mainstream narrative was that there was no early treatment for covid. Doctors for the most part advised their patients to stay at home and if their symptoms became very bad, to go to hospital. In the hospital, in a worst case scenario, they would have been put on a ventilator. This had a very poor outcome for a significant proportion. If people had been allowed to follow Marik and Kory’s treatment protocols, it could potentially have resulted in covid being an easy to recover from illness for a lot of people; a veritable non-event. Instead, many of those people were hospitalised and many died. 

Rather than people being given the opportunity to follow the guidance of these world renowned critical care doctors who were experiencing great success using their early treatment protocols on their own patients, hospitals mandated doctors to treat their patients according to the dictates of Dr Anthony “I am the science” Fauci. A bureaucrat who had not spent one minute treating patients in the ICU during covid was playing a very prominent role in the straitjacketing and overruling of highly experienced and leading critical care specialists and undisputed experts in their field, such as Marik and Kory, in terms of how to treat patients in ICUs during covid. Even if ivermectin didn’t help some people, it’s highly unlikely to have hurt any of them. Replace “ivermectin” with “covid vaccines” in that sentence and one would need to consider carefully whether that’s still true.

Marik, Kory and ivermectin should have been household names during covid. Instead, the mainstream media conspired so that people didn’t know about the effectiveness of any early treatment medications that were cheap and easily available, and specialists including Kory, Marik and epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff were defamed and muzzled. If anyone in the world had earned the right to be listened to when it came to critical care treatment and how to handle the spread of a disease, it was them.

The powers that be were going to make sure their establishment method of treating covid, the vaccines, went into production on a massive scale, and that meant all the methods that could have been used in lieu of the vaccines had to be shut down, and proponents of those methods cancelled, as this 13-minute video powerfully demonstrates.

‘I think many scientists stayed silent because they were afraid that people like Francis Collins would destroy their careers if they opposed him.’

– Dr Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations, and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration

During covid, one might have been forgiven for thinking that “following the science” took its inspiration from that wonderful Alice in Wonderland line: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.” On that score, the distant cousin of mine who took umbrage to my interview is also South African, also a specialist doctor albeit in another branch of medicine, and has also worked for an American university for many years. She sent me this:

“I have to say that I’m shocked that you would give this man a platform to trumpet his conspiracy theories and non-science (aka nonsense). He may have been a respected physician in his former days but the dangerous rubbish he now spouts is an insult to those of us who follow and carefully parse the scientific literature. His ideas and fixations are also a hazard to those readers who don’t have a science background and are unable to evaluate his ludicrous notions.”

She says, without irony, that Paul Marik’s views are “an insult to those of us who follow and carefully parse the scientific literature.” The “scientific literature”, apparently, only consists of the contributions of the doctors/scientists who endorse the establishment narrative. The research, practical experience and conclusions of doctors/scientists with alternative views is simply denigrated and disregarded.  

It matters not whether these doctors/scientists are highly qualified and accomplished, with vast and stellar track records earned over decades and hard-won knowledge of what works, gained from intensive experience at the coalface, treating patients. No, these doctors/scientists are but “conspiracy theorists” spouting “non-science” and “ludicrous notions”.

As we now know, “following the science” requires disparaging the credibility and agenda of the sizeable cohort of professionals who reported wonderful success utilising cheap, safe, off-patent medications, even though this approach offered no obvious financial benefits to those practitioners and was detrimental to their careers. 

Following the science also requires avoiding questioning the credibility and agenda of those who wish to resolutely ignore the above-mentioned treatment protocols, and instead offer and promote only expensive and lucrative new treatments without long-term safety data, for which the manufacturers have been provided with immunity from liability.

‘Francis Collins is the head of NIH, which is the biggest funder of medical research in the world by far. And Anthony Fauci is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH, and which is the biggest chunk of research money for infectious diseases. So of course, you take a huge risk professionally and personally, and for your family, by opposing them.’

– Dr Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations, and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration

Remarkably, people were told to trust the hastily developed vaccines with their lives (and many governments made it difficult for holdouts to continue to participate in society) but, at the same time, Big Pharma was not required to stand behind their products with their balance sheets. It’s worth repeating that, it’s so astonishing: pharmaceutical companies were given indemnity from any harms the vaccines caused – products made for profit, and lots of it. 

I responded to my cousin’s email that I’d be intrigued to hear what exactly she so vehemently disagreed with – what she deemed “non-science” and “nonsense” – and I’d also be happy to interview her, should she so wish, and hear her views on all of these topics and give them the same platform. Unlike her, I think it’s important that people hear a plethora of views from professionals across a wide spectrum, take or leave what resonates with them and make their own decisions. I imagine that’s what being a thinking adult in a free society is about. And regarding her “hazard to readers” comment, to think people who aren’t doctors aren’t capable of being exposed to a wide range of medical opinions and making their own assessments is rather patronising too. Suffice it to say, I’ve received no reply from her or uptake of my offer.

“If you don’t have the scientific facts on your side, it’s very difficult to debate somebody. If you can’t argue with the science and public health using the principles of public health, then the only thing left is either to silence or censor or to slander,” said Dr Martin Kulldorff in one of the interviews he’s given recently to discuss his firing both from Harvard University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), also as a result of his medical views not fitting the mainstream narrative being pushed during covid: being, among other things, for non-universal vaccine mandates and against society-wide lockdowns.

“Because that’s fundamental for science,” he continued, “that we discuss science with each other and sort of put different ideas and thoughts and theories against each other. And I think in terms of the public, it’s very hard for the public to know who to trust because scientists may say different things and that’s natural. But I think one criteria to use is a scientist who is not willing to debate their views with another scientist who is also credentialled in their field. If they don’t want to do that, it means they don’t have the arguments to actually do that discussion and then you shouldn’t trust them at all.”

Kulldorff, like Marik, is one of the world’s leading specialists in his medical field, not to mention that he had worked for more than twenty years as a professor of medicine for Harvard, one of the world’s top universities, and was a member of the Vaccine Safety Subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the CDC.

Kulldorff’s expertise is in the field that pertains to the study of an infectious disease exactly like covid. As a biostatistician and epidemiologist, his career has been in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations. “Steeped in public health”, as Stanford University epidemiologist, Dr Jay Bhattacharya, described Kulldorff. “You developed statistical and analytical methods that were used very widely in public health for vital public health functions and the work that you did saved lives,” Bhattacharya said to him in an interview.

In other words, Kulldorff, like Marik, was supremely qualified to have his opinions taken extremely seriously during the pandemic. But because his views were also alternative to the establishment narrative, he became persona non grata. When in society has this occurred before? That scientific experts have been prevented from putting their views forward because they clash with the establishment view? That access to information is shut down and members of the public are shut out as a result from being able to make their own choices?

“Academic freedom requires one thing,” said Kulldorff, “that people are not fired or cancelled for what they say or for the reasons they do. So that’s one half of it. But the other half is not to have bullying, because if you have bullying or slander, then people will not dare to speak up and they will self-censor.”

One of the hit pieces in which Paul Marik, right, and Pierre Kory featured during covid

The likes of Marik and Kory and Kulldorff kept saying publicly and frequently that there was another way to deal with this disease, and they were completely sidelined for doing so. They were among a number of other credentialled, highly regarded specialists labelled “fringe” doctors during covid. And unless one went searching through the alternative media one wouldn’t have known about them, or about the benefits of ivermectin, vitamin D and other safe, accessible treatments. 

Instead, everyone was channeled down a route that may not have been advisable for them, and threatened with exclusion from society if they didn’t acquiesce. Prior to covid, one might expect this sort of state behaviour in a place like North Korea, not the West. It should make a lot more people in the West unhinged with anger.