Topic: WorldNetDaily
Researcher Andrew Hill has told the tale of how he initially highlighted how ivermectin seemed to be effective for treating COVID -- but turned against that conclusion when he discovered medical fraud in previous pro-ivermectin studies and that the remaining non-tainted ones showed no benefit for the drug. He wrote of the abuse and threats he received in response to that finding:I was sent images of Nazi war criminals hanging from lamp-posts, Voodoo images of swinging coffins, vivid threats that my family were not safe, that we would all burn in hell. This was happening most days – I opened my laptop in the morning to be confronted with a sea of hate and disturbing threats. Twitter did nothing after I reported these threats. So I had to shut down social media.
There were also threats to my scientific reputation on email. I know many other scientists who have been threatened and abused in similar ways after promoting vaccination or questioning the benefits of unproven treatments like ivermectin. If scientists cannot communicate for fear of threats and abuse, how can all the misinformation be controlled?
Back in December, WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill touted a harangue against Hill by Tess Lawrie -- whom Cashill insists is "a world-renowned data researcher from the U.K. with an international reputation for integrity" but who is in fact a rabid anti-vaxxer and equally rabid ivermectin enthusiast -- made in a Zoom call between the two. In it, she screeched that Hill was bought off by lobbyists, insisted that "All other countries are getting ivermectin except the U.K. and the USA and Europe are owned by the vaccine lobby," and sneered to him, "I don't understand how you sleep at night, honestly."
Well, that harangue has been compiled into a video, and Art Moore devoted a March 8 article to promoting it, with an emphasis on attacking Hill:
At a time when the nations of the world were recording about 15,000 COVID deaths per day, Dr. Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool was about to publish a meta-analysis for the World Health Organization and other leading health agencies indicating the remarkable effectiveness of a repurposed drug in treating COVID-19, reducing hospitalization by some 80%.
But when he published his highly influential pre-print paper on Jan. 18, 2021, his stated conclusion didn't match the study's findings.
Instead of urging physicians around the world who were desperate for solutions to try the safe and effective drug, Hill wrote: "Ivermectin should be validated in larger appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities."
The English researcher's turnabout didn't go unnoticed.
A colleague, Dr. Tess Lawrie, confronted Hill in a remarkable Zoom video conversation that was recorded and featured in a short documentary produced by Oracle Films.
Lawrie, the director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Bath, South Africa, got Hill to admit that his non-profit sponsors, UNITAID, pressured him to alter his conclusion.
[...]
Lawrie noted to Hill that he is not a clinician.
"You're not seeing people dying every day. And this medicine prevents deaths by 80%. So, 80% of those people who are dying today don't need to die because there's Ivermectin."
Hill argued that the National Institutes of Health would not agree to recommend ivermectin.
"Yeah," Lawrie replied, "because the NIH is owned by the vaccine lobby.
"This is bad research. So at this point, I am really, really worried about you," she said.
Needless to say, Moore made no effort to contact Hill for his response to being targeted in such a way, nor did he report on the death threats he received for following the science.Nor did he subject Lawrie's claims to any sort of fact-check -- he supports her narrative, being an ivermectin enthusiast himself, and is more than happy to be her stenographer.
