mar 29, 2021 | Beata Ciupińska
10 March 2021 HHS in Texas

On March 10, 2021, Dr. McCullough, who is a great supporter of the early implementation of covid treatment, the same as Włodzimierz Bodnar in Poland, spoke at the meeting of the Senate Health Committee in Texas. Dr. McCullough and his team have developed a covid outpatient care guide for patients. Please find below the entire transcription of Dr. McCullough testimony.

Dr. Peter McCullough: Good afternoon, I’m dr Peter McCullough. I’m an internist and cardiologist and professor of medicine at Texas University School of Medicine. I’m on Baylor Dallas Campus and I’ve been integrally involved in the response to covid-19.

Now, the opinions I’ll express are those of my own and not necessarily those of my institution. I can tell you that in my field I’m an academic doctor, I see patients but I’m very involved in the research. I’m an editor of two major journals. In my field I’m the most published person in my field which deals with the heart and the kidneys in the world in history.

And when covid-19 hit I saw it as a medical super bowl. And there were going to be doctors like dr Urso coming out of wherever they worked to face the virus and there were doctors in the hospital that just had to receive the virus and then there were those who headed for the sidelines and there were those that were detractors against the pandemic. And so, as I started to survey the literature, I had patients with heart and lung disease who needed an urgent treatment and I refused to let an illness which lasted for two weeks at home before they got sick enough to be hospitalised, I refused to let a patient to languish at home with no treatment and then be hospitalised when it was too late. It was obvious, that was obvious in April that that was the case. So I used the best tools or drugs available at the time and these are appropriately prescribed off label, remember a label is an advertising label, a label isn’t a scientific document, sure, it’s there, there is an appropriately prescribed off-label use of conventional medicine to treat an illness and I, in  May, I put together a team of doctors because the group that was facing the pandemic to the greatest degree was in Milan, Italy so most of them were in the coracle Italian research network. We summarised all we knew about the available drugs and we published our finding in the August in 8th issue of The American Journal of Medicine and the title of that paper was The Pathophysiologic Basis And Rationale For Early Ambulatory Treatment and it had a premise there’s two bad outcomes to covit-19: hospitalisation and death.

The second premise if we don’t do something before the hospitalisation we can never stop it. We can never stop it. And I have to tell you, when I was a lead author in that paper but we had dozens of authors from Italy, India, UCLA, Emory and we had the best institutions in the United States. I can tell you, the interesting thing was 50 000 papers in the peer-reviewed literature on covid, not a single one told the doctor how to treat it. Not a single one! When did that happen?

I was absolutely stunned and when this paper was published in American Journal of Medicine it became a lightning rod, oh my gosh, it became the most cited paper in basically all of medicine at that time. The world started, and boy, the world started knocking down on my door, and I said, oh my lord, I just can’t believe what became untapped.

And, uhm, I had never been on social media before and my daughter who was home from law school was talking to her about it, she said, well, why don’t I make a youtube video. So I made a youtube video with four slides from the paper. This is a peer-reviewed paper published in one of the best medical journals in the world. Four slides! I ever wore a tie in a suit and she showed me how to record it in powerpoint and I posted on Youtube. It went absolutely viral. And within about a week Youtube said you violated the terms of, uhm, the community. And that’s when senator Johnson’s office got involved in Washington, said, oh my gosh, this is important scientific information to help patients in the middle of this crisis and social media is striking it down, based on what authority?

Well, one thing led to another, uhm and I became a lead witness for the US Senate Testimony of November 19, 2020. And the reason why there was Senate Testimony is because there was a near total block on any information of treatment to patients. A near total block.

And so what had happened over time is that we had gotten into a circle in America of no information on treatment. Patients actually think that the virus is untreatable and so what happens is they go out to get a diagnosis. Now, I’m a covid survivor, my wife in the galley is a covid survivor. My father in a nursing home is a covid survivor. You get handed a diagnostic test, it’s says, here you’re covid positive, go home. Is there any treatment? No. Is there any resource I can call? No. Any referral lines, hotlines? No. Any research hotlines? No.

That’s the standard of care in the United States. And if we go to any of our testing centres today in the, in Texas, I bet, that’s the standard of care. I bet that’s the standard of care. No wonder we have had 45 000 deaths in Texas. The average person in Texas thinks there’s no treatment. They honestly think there’s no treatment. They don’t even know about these EUA antibodies you heard from a 90-year-old gentleman who got a bamlanivimab, terrific. Where’s the focus? There’s such a focus on the vaccine where’s the focus on people sick right now?

This committee ought to know where all these monoclonal antibodies are they ought to know where all the treatment protocols are. They ought to have a list of the treatment centers in Texas that actually treat patients with covid-19. So I lead the initiative, the second paper was published in a dedicated issue of reviews in cardiovascular medicine, now I had 57 authors including dr Urso, dr Emanuel, uh, lead doctors in Houston, San Antonio, all over and it was another worldwide paper, and now we have it updated integrated. So yes, we used drugs to affect viral replication the antibodies are terrific. We can use intracellular anti-infectives in that box. We used corticosteroids and inflammatory drugs. The best anti-inflammatory drug is colchicine. You’ve probably never heard about it, in the largest, highest quality randomized trial, over 4 000 patients, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, there’s a 50% reduction in mortality. No word of it! None! Complete block to anybody culture scene.

How can that be? How can that be? And then, the most deadly part of the viral infection is thrombosis. So I have always treated my patients with something to treat the virus, something to treat inflammation and something to treat thrombosis, just as dr Urso had. And I had very, very sick patients and I’ve lost two. But I have to tell you, what has gone on has been beyond believe.

How many of you have turned on a local news station or a national cable news station and ever gotten an update on treatment at home? How many of you have ever gotten a single word about what to do when you get handed the diagnosis of covid-19?

No wonder. That is a complete and total failure at every level. Okey, let’s take the White House, how come we didn’t have a panel of doctors assigned to put all their efforts and stop these hospitalisations? Why don’t we have doctors who actually treated patients get together in a group and every week give us an update? Why didn’t we have that? Why didn’t we have that at the state level? Zero!

Why don’t we have any reports about how many patients were treated in spared hospitalisation? From all that I listened to six hours of testimony today. Zero! Zero! We have a complete total blank spot on treatment! It is a blanking phenomenon!

At least in the United States there’s some heroes now, the American Society of Physician and Surgeons took the lead. They’re the group, they’ve identified 35 treatment centres in Texas. They know who they are. They have emergency hotlines. They helped dr Hall put together this very brief pamphlet but there’s more an extensive one we can pass it around to everyone. That at least gives people half a chance to find out about information. Okey?

This is a complete and total travesty to have a fatal disease and not treat it. Now, the National Institutes of Health and the Infectious Disease Design of America started putting out guidelines in the treatment of covid-19 and to this date they nearly exclusively deal with a hospitalised patients.

The two papers that I have published as the lead author, and supported by wonderful people, by dr Urso, are the only publications in the peer-reviewed literature that tell doctors how to treat covid-19 as an outpatient, based on the support of scientific information. The only two.

The home treatment guide by the American Physicians and Surgeons is the only source of information available to patients on how to treat covid-19 at home, the only source.

So what can be done right here, right now? There’s going to be more people that die in Texas and it’s an absolute tragedy. How about tomorrow, let’s have a law that says, there’s not a single result giving out without a treatment guide and without a hotline of how to get into research. Let’s put a staffer on this and find out all the research available in Texas and let’s not have a single person go home with a test result, with a fatal diagnosis, sitting at home going into two weeks of despair before they succumb to hospitalisation and death.

It is unimaginable in America that we can have such a complete and total blind spot. I blame the doctors for not stepping up. Where was the medical society stopping up and putting effort on this? How about from the federal and state agencies? There never was a single bit of group collaborative effort to stop the hospitalisations. Nobody even kind of thought about it. Bob Hall had me on a teleconference in April or May and we’re like… wait a minute, how come where’s the UT Southwestern. I’m a graduate of the UT Southwestern. Where’s the ANM, where’s the rest of the universities? How come we’re not stopping this? How come we’re not stopping this? But it get’s worse because in the paper I published in December of 2020, you know, what he did, I had a terrific dr from Brazil. We went through country by country by country and just asked the question, what are the other countries doing? When was the last time you turned on the news and ever got a window to the outside world? When did you ever get an update about how the rest of the world is handling covid? Never!

What’s happened in this pandemic is the world has closed on us. There’s only one doctor whose face is on tv now. One! Not a panel! Doctors, we always work in groups, we always have different opinions. There’s not a single media doctor on tv who’s ever treated a covid patient. Not a single one. There’s not a single person in the White House task force how has ever treated a patient. Why don’t we do something, both, why don’t we put together a panel of doctors that have actually treated outpatients of covid-19 and get them together for a meeting and why don’t we exchange ideas. And why don’t we say how we can finish the pandemic strongly.

Isn’t it amazing? Think about this. Think about the complete and total blind spot. So what happened? I can tell you what happened. What happened in around May it became known that the virus was going to be amenable to a vaccine. All efforts on treatment were dropped. The National Institutes of Health actually had a multi-drug program. They dropped it after 20 patients, said, we can’t find the patients. The most disingenuous announcement of all time and then world speed went full tilt for vaccine development and there was silencing of any information on treatment. Any! Silencing! Scrubbed from Twitter, Youtube! Can’t get papers published on this. You can’t, we can’t even get information out in our own medical literature on this. There’s been a complete scrubbing so this program has been one of try to reduce the spread of the virus and wait for a vaccine and when we, when we vaccinate all efforts have to be on vaccination and probably, I heard 4 hours of vaccination on here.

Think about it as we sit here today, the calculations in Texas on herd immunity. The calculations are we’re at eighty percent herd immunity right now with no vaccine effect. Eighty percent! And more people are developing covid today. They’re gonna become immune. People who develop covid have complete and durable immunity. And a very important principle, complete and durable immunity. You can’t beat natural immunity. You can’t vaccinate on top of it and make it better. There’s no scientific, clinical or safety rationale for ever vaccinating a recovered patient. There’s no rationale for ever testing a covid recovered patient. My wife and I are covid recovered, why do we go through the testing outside? There’s absolutely no rationale.

I’d encourage this committee to actually look at what’s being done and ask is there any rationale? Is there any rationale for anything?

Listen! There’s plenty of covid recovered patients, let’s them forgo the vaccine and let people who are clamouring for it get it. But at 80% herd immunity in the vaccine trials fewer than one percent in the vaccine and the placebo actually get covid. Fewer than one percent. The vaccine is going to have a one percent public health impact. That’s what the data says.

It’s not going to save us. We’re already 80% herd immune. If we’re strategically targeted, we can actually close out the pandemic very well with the vaccine but strategically targeted. People under 50 who fundamentally have no health risks, there is no scientific rationale for them to ever become vaccinated. There’s no scientific rationale.

One of the mistakes I heard today as a rationale for vaccination as asymptomatic spread and I want you to be very clear about this. My opinion is, there is a low degree if any of asymptomatic spread. Sick person gives it to sick person. The Chinese have published a study, British Medical Journal, 11 million people, that tried to find asymptomatic spread, you can’t find it. And that’s been, you know, one of important pieces of misinformation.

When senator Hall called a conference call what should we do in the capitol when we re-open I said, you know what, you know what we do at Baylor? You walk in, and they zap your temperature, you got a temperature check and go in. I mean, do we test everybody who walks in the Baylor Hospital? No. Are they a lot sicker than everybody in this room? You better believe it.

So why would we do something here at the capitol that has absolutely positively no scientific rationale? And then do it in this context.

So my testimony as I said here today is covid-19 has always been a treatable illness. A very large study from McKinney Texas, another one from New York City show that when doctors treat patients early who are over age 50 with medical problems, with a sequence multi-drug approach with the available drugs, uh, four to six drugs that available, to them, now, the monoclonal antibodies are better. There’s an 85% reduction in hospitalisation and death. 85%! 85%! I want you to remember that number 85%.

We have over 500 000 deaths in the United States. The preventable fraction could have been as high as 85% if, our pandemic response would have been laser focused on the problem, the sick patient right in front of us. We’re focused over here and focused over there and focused on masks. What have you… Laser focused on sick patient, treat them, we lost focus on most fundamental thing.

Senator Lois Winkelmann Kolkhorst: Doctor…

Dr. Peter McCullough: That’s my testimony

Senator Lois Winkelmann Kolkhorst: Yeah, thank you, I can tell how passionate you are and certainly have been a leader in talking about preventive protocols and also the ambulatory stage and I do think, that that has been missing and it’s been a concern because covid-19 is going to be with us, right? I mean it’s, uh, you know, I hope we’re at 80% herd immunity. I don’t know yet. I’ll read your papers, but, uhm, I appreciate that and the message is that there are drugs out there that work. There are therapies out there that work.

Dr. Peter McCullough: But no single one works alone and so the, the, the dismissive mistake was to do a very small study, oh, we studied 200 patients and we used ivory hydroxychloroquine and it didn’t work, that’s like cancer and picking up one drug and saying, oh, it doesn’t reduce cancer mortality. We never do it in cancer, we never did that in AIDS, we don’t do it in hepatitis C. What we look for is signals of benefit and acceptable safety and we combine them. And that’s all what we’ve done so, but, but there’s independent declaration drug by drug, that drugs don’t work, has been, uh, and that’s on, that’s on us. That’s been our medical house. That’s been a, a giant, uhm, error that we’ve made on our side. We never should have expected single drugs to reduce mortality but drugs in combination against a fatal viral infection we should have.

Senator Lois Winkelmann Kolkhorst: This entire session is less, learned from lessons. I know, we’re running shot on time, uh, Sir Hall, you have one question or …

Senator Bob Hall: Real quick, uhm, I’d ask the question earlier when dr Hellestad was here about the idea that fits in with what you’ve talked about is that when we test someone rather than just say, give them, yep, you’re positive, you’re negative, be on your way. That we at least provide them information of what we know out there, can be, can be used. Not trying to play the role of doctor out there. Would you, do you agree with dr Hellestadt’s interpretation that, that should not be done because it’s setting up a doctor-patient relationship and simply informing people or providing with, with over-the-counter drugs that, so that we could possibly have the early treatments for these folks rather than wait till they show up in the hospital?

Dr. Peter McCullough: We could at least have a physician group approved a guide that AAPS guide has been used in over 500 000 cases in the United States. In fact, the early treatment is probably what prevented us from overflowing the hospitals in the last quarter of the year. I, when, I testified, I said, listen, we’re on track, and I was very convinced of this. We’re on track of overflowing our hospitals, our break point was 135 000 in the hospitals United States we hit 128.

Now, the curve started going down long before the vaccine. So I can tell you, herd immunity, long before the vaccine showed up started to go down but the early treatment kicked up ivermectin, skyrocketed, hydroxychloroquine, monoclonal antibodies. As much as we can push them sadly the monoclonal antibodies are still sitting on the shelf in a lot of places. But committees like this ought to be saying, listen, where are those monoclonal antibodies? Are, do we stock them at the nursing homes? What are the big nursing home chains? What are the big urging care chains in Texas and what are doing? What are their early treatment protocols?

You know, these are blank spots. I bet nobody here has even thought about this. This is, this is really low hanging fruit that we can, uh, we can tackle, the bottom line is a lot of doctors have checked out and when patients call them, they say, I don’t treat covid. And when I asked those doctors, I said, you don’t treat covid? How come? They go, well, there is no treatment. I said, but do you, do you call them two days later to see how they’re doing? No. So what’s that? That’s not, that’s not I don’t treat covid. That’s I don’t care anymore. That’s a loss of compassion.

So we have a crisis of compassion in our country in the medical field. That’s in our house right now. But for every doctor that’s ever told a patient that they don’t treat covid, okey but then they call them two days later and help them get oxygen or see how they’re doing. If the answer is no, that, that’s the Hippocratic oath going out and that’s on us. And I’m telling you we have a real self-check to do, uh, in the house of medicine.