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In a video podcast episode, Covid, Ivermectin and the Crime of the Century, the host Bret Weinstein says of his guest, Dr Pierre Kory, President of the FLCCC:

Bret Weinstein: [...] Dr. Kory is not only an advocate for a therapy that is incredibly useful in the context of COVID-19 but he is also someone who pioneered treatments already that are now the standard of care for COVID-19 patients. [...]

Dr Pierre Kory: Our first protocol included blood thinners and cortico-steroids at a time when every national and international society basically said that there's insufficient evidence and do not use it. They thought cortical steroids were harmful. I was actually invited to give senate testimony in May where I testified in the senate that it was critical to use cortico-steroids, lives are being lost. [...] We were totally criticized for not having an evidence based approach. We actually did, our reading of the evidence was that you had to use it. That was the first component of a protocol. Like you said, Ivermectin was not in our protocol initially.

Bret Weinstein: You discovered as clinicians that cortico-steroids and blood thinners were important in the treatment of COVID patients and trying to make this point you were criticized and then vindicated, this is now the standard of care.

Is the claim that Dr. Pierre Kory innovated using cortico-steroids for treating COVID-19 patients and that it's now the standard of care to treat them that way correct?

Oddthinking
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Christian
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    I edited away the censorship claims. It wasn't germaine to the actual claim. We already have [an open question](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/51903/did-youtube-take-down-dr-pierre-korys-congressional-testimony) about *whether* he is being censored, so assuming it as a premise without references isn't reasonable here. – Oddthinking Jun 20 '21 at 07:18
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    This is actually quite difficult to answer, properly. Was he among the first to use & advocate then non-standard therapy? Is what he said back then now used – *in the same way* he advertised (which will need some evaluation commentary)? Plus: *what* is *'the'* standard of care? Is there one? Where? Do we need a timeframe (as it *will* continue to change). Standard of care in most of India *had/has* Ivermectin in it, Chinese guides listed TCM formulas etc. As I read it, the answer to this complex thing needs to be historical and long? Do you see a way to focus it further? – LangLаngС Jun 20 '21 at 19:59
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    steroids were adopted as part of covid treatment after convincing results in large trials like RECOVERY. did Kory advocate them before that? Possibly, but whether his advocacy was remotely connected to the trials is not obvious (timelines and references might tell us). In any case, even if he was right once, doesn't mean his judgement is right this time on ivermectin where trial results are inconsistent. We don't decide treatments because advocates recommend them: we do it because large, high quality trials have shown they work. – matt_black Jun 21 '21 at 13:27
  • Current NIH guidelines say in essence: 'There are no large scale studies, some evidence that they might helps exist.' Ref: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/immunomodulators/corticosteroids/ – pinegulf Jun 28 '21 at 06:58
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    @matt_black : It's interesting that you suggest that deciding about which treatments we do isn't about meta-analysis of trials, besides that, Oddthinking decided to edit the context away. This post wasn't about how we decide treatement but about who should be able to speak in the debate about treatments without being censored. – Christian Jun 28 '21 at 11:02
  • @Christian Two problems: meta-analyses of bad trials doesn't trustworthy results; while censorship is usually unhelpful, advocates of new treatments who flirt with conspiracy theories and who selectively quote data while not playing by the normal rules about generating trustworthy results, get in the way of the progress of knowledge while misleading the public. Promoting better trials of new drugs is not the same as "my favourite drug is being suppressed by the establishment". – matt_black Jun 28 '21 at 12:55
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    @matt_black The establishment is engaging in suppression. Censoring senate testimony is an act of suppression. The normal rules of science are about publishing to peer-reviewed journals. Hariyanto et al was published in Reviews in Medical Virology which has a decent impact factor and concludes with "Finally, ivermectin should be considered as an essential drug for future Covid-19 therapy models." – Christian Jun 28 '21 at 19:23
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    @matt_black To the extend that you mean with "normal" rules of evidence "Paying the kind of money for a clinical trial that can only be justified by the profits of a patented drug getting approved", ivermectin does not fulfill those standards. I have never seen any evidence that justified those standards. They are generally accepted as dogma based on non-empiric arguments. – Christian Jun 28 '21 at 19:23
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    @Christian The rules of evidence can be abused: recent online testimony allowed people to claim before state hearing that the covid vaccine mede people magnetic. Whether online sources have been overzealous is not for me to say, but *surely* allowing the propagation of nonsense is bad (january 6th!!) so somebody has to draw a line. The correct approach for advocates is peer reviewed publications, but one publication doesn't make a convincing case: you need *good, high quality, large studies* not a preponderance of small, poor ones... – matt_black Jun 28 '21 at 19:29
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    @matt_black Censoring information is suppressing evidence. That's what suppressing evidence is about. The fact that the evidence is reachable by some people doesn't mean that there's no supression going on. Nobody argues that a single study proves that it works. After Kory (and his FLCCC) advocated steroids in May 2020 and got attacked for it other people did run expensive high quality trials, that's true. Given that track record the reasonable thing for organizations like the NHI would be to fund a expensive high quality protocols for his current protocol instead of villifying him. – Christian Jun 28 '21 at 19:57
  • @matt_black : The ridicious thing is that at the same time where people like you argue against ivermectin because trials are not high quality enough. People on this website have trouble understanding why evidence of clinical benefit for vaccinating people who had COVID-19 should matter at all for whether we should do so. I don't like double standards, and when I see them I do consider it's important to argue against them. – Christian Jun 28 '21 at 20:00
  • This was a rather heavy-handed edit https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/51910/revisions. A question about one instance of censorship does not a question about censorship of a person or topic make. – user1521620 Aug 12 '21 at 01:18
  • "Good, high quality, large studies" eh? Remember Thalidomide. Exhibit T: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/health/thalidomide-fda-documents.html. The thalidomide pharmaceutical manufacturer employed many of the same tactics that modern-day drug companies have used to promote their products, the memos show, including hiring influential doctors to vouch for thalidomide, as well as helping the researchers to write scientific articles, “almost to the extent of ghost writing for them,” Dr. Weilerstein wrote in an internal memo. The playbook has changed, a bit. https://samizdathealth.org – user1521620 Aug 21 '21 at 07:57

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The question is -

Has Dr. Pierre Kory pioneered treatments that are now the standard of care for COVID-19 patients?

The CDC treatment guidelines do mention steroids but I do not see any mention of blood thinners.

George White
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    The question is not about whether subsequent suggestion are automatically effective but whether it's reasonable for a big tech platform to censor such a person. – Christian Jun 20 '21 at 18:53
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    I understand that I had a comment within my answer - I deleted it for clarity. I did answer the actual stated question which was about whether his past work has become part of the standard of care. If you want to ask about the reasonableness of youtube's actions (or if they followed there own policy) that would be a different question. – George White Jun 20 '21 at 19:07
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    @Christian It seems the "censorship" is specifically related to content promoting a particular treatment that lacks evidence. It's kind of irrelevant what else he has done. – Bryan Krause Jun 21 '21 at 00:33
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    @BryanKrause That's evidently wrong. Whenever Kory speaks he presents sth he sees as evidence. Presentation & discussion of said evidence is censored. One isn't allowed to know or to weigh it. His ideas in fact are usually better supportable than masks, lockdowns or even vaccines for ppl <70. Only the censors say in Kory's case that his ideas are anathema and must be destroyed. They never destroyed a pro-mask video, never a let's vax newborns, zero good evidence or even ethics in favour of those, but in censors' eyes those are allowed *beliefs.* Perversion is: presenting evidence is censored. – LangLаngС Jun 21 '21 at 07:56
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    @LangLangC That is not my impression at all with his statements about ivermectin. He claims there is strong evidence for it's efficacy and that this evidence is being censored, but does not produce evidence that is high-quality and ignores the evidence that it doesn't actually work. That's misinformation. There are places to debate the science but YouTube isn't it. – Bryan Krause Jun 21 '21 at 14:07
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    @BryanKrause Kind of a weird thing to say, since there's probably millions of hours of pseudo science on YouTube and Google *doesn't* care. –  Aug 12 '21 at 16:32