Pierre Kory, MD, one of the most vocal proponents of ivermectin for COVID-19, has the support of Simon & Schuster, with the leading publishing house slated to distribute his upcoming book, which claims the widely discredited drug “saved millions.”
Slated for release in February 2023, The War on Ivermectin: The Medicine That Saved Millions and Could Have Ended the COVID Pandemic, documents the critical care physician’s efforts to push for ivermectin in COVID-19 treatment protocols, and what he calls a corrupt and concerted effort from the medical establishment to deny its efficacy.
But while studies have shown, time and time again, that ivermectin is not effective to treat COVID-19 — and mainstream medical organizations have repeatedly recommended against its use for the virus — Kory’s book is still being supported by the large publishing house.
“It is infuriating to see misinformation mongers being taken seriously,” Timothy Caulfield, LLM, professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, told MedPage Today. “This kind of book can do great harm. It legitimizes bad science and erodes trust in scientific institutions.”
David Boulware, MD, MPH, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who has been involved in multiple studies of ivermectin, emphasized that none of the trials investigating the drug for the treatment of COVID-19 showed any benefit as they were designed and as they were dosed.
“Will serious doctors buy his book, no,” Boulware said in an interview. “No one that’s in the mainstream medical community will care what he has to say.”
But a lack of transparency from the federal government and poor data create the opportunity for misinformation and conspiracy theories around ivermectin to stick, Boulware added. “I think that feeds into distrust,” he said.
The War on Ivermectin will be published by Skyhorse Publishing. Simon & Schuster is the distributor for Skyhorse, and handles functions such as warehousing, shipping, and billing for their books. Kory’s author page on the Simon & Schuster website lists The War on Ivermectin as his first book that will be distributed by the publishing house.
When MedPage Today inquired about Simon & Schuster’s support of The War on Ivermectin, a spokesperson from the publishing house said that distribution clients are completely independent third parties, noting that their editorial, marketing, and publicity decisions are made independently of Simon & Schuster, and that it does not pick and choose which titles to distribute.
Skyhorse Publishing, founded in 2006, has twenty imprints — one of which is Children’s Health Defense, an organization that opposes vaccination for kids. Skyhorse has also published books written by other physicians and public figures who have previously spread misinformation about COVID-19, including Robert Malone, MD, Peter McCullough, MD, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Kory is a co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which frequently touts the unproven therapy. The War on Ivermectin is described as the Wisconsin-based physician’s “personal and professional narrative,” detailing “his plight to alert the world of his group’s identification of ivermectin as a highly-effective, life-saving, widely available generic medicine with an obvious ability to end the global pandemic.” The book also purports to cover “the catastrophic impacts of mass media censorship and relentless mass media propaganda that he witnessed against ivermectin and his organization’s ability to help save lives.”
Kory has repeatedly pushed for the use of the drug to treat COVID throughout the pandemic. In March 2020, Kory co-founded the FLCCC, which was established by critical care specialists to develop treatments for COVID. The researchers suggested that ivermectin had a combination of antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties that make it useful preventatively, and for treating early and late-stage illness. Countless randomized trials in multiple settings never proved this out.
FLCCC was subject to controversy over the quality of evidence it presented, as the group was vocal about its opposition to randomized controlled trials. Additionally, the organization later came under fire for including ivermectin on a list of treatments for long COVID, again supported by little to no evidence.
Kory has become involved in some right-wing political movements, including the “Defeat the Mandates” tour, in the company of groups such as Physicians for Informed Consent, the Unity Project, the International Alliance of Physicians & Medical Scientists, and FreedomMed.
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