Republished with permission from MERCOLA.COM
Merck has a new antiviral drug, molnupiravir, that was being designed to treat influenza, but now is touted as a drug for COVID-19, even though its effectiveness for COVID is being questioned.
As the FDA considers Merck’s request to bring it to market, retired nurse lecturer John Campbell, Ph.D., makes a critical comparison of the two in a YouTube video. To be upfront, Campbell says he is pro-vaccine and pro-antiviral.
Ivermectin, he says, is one of the most-studied, repurposed drugs and, it’s not only FDA-approved for humans, but it won a Nobel prize as it “revolutionized the human treatment of a parasitic disease.” It also has demonstrated “broad spectrum antiviral activity against many viruses including HIV, Zika and Mers” and it inhibits the replication of the SARS coronavirus, and in fact got rid of 99.98% of SARS-viable particles in 48 hours.
Like ivermectin, molnupiravir is an oral drug, but it’s converted in the liver, and there is a safety concern that the metabolite action could also be mutagenic — cancerous — in mammalian cells as well as a trigger for birth defects in a fetus. While Merck says that’s not going to be a problem, Campbell says evidence he’s looking at shows “it at least needs looking into” because “if it stops the normal replication of RNA is it going to stop the normal replication of our DNA?”
Ivermectin, on the other hand, binds to the spike protein to stop it from going into your cells. It’s also an anti-inflammatory with high efficacy that inhibits cytokines and has very few side effects reported in its years of usage. The cost is a factor too: The price of a course of ivermectin is a fraction of molnupiravir’s.
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