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- [00:00]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Cheryl Akisson
Hi, everybody. Cheryl Akisson here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure after hours. Today, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden is part of a growing movement to make Ivermectin available without a prescription. She talks about efforts to take her down for prescribing Ivermectin during COVID and how her lawsuit proved the FDA wrong on full measure Sunday, October 5th. I'm reporting on growing efforts to have Ivermectin approved to be sold over the counter without a prescription. This effort, an outgrowth of the whole Covid controversy, when doctors were punished if they prescribed Ivermectin for Covid, even though many saw it as effective. And many studies have proven since then, some even at the time, that it works quite well. But as you probably know, there was a huge propaganda campaign against it. Many well regarded doctors, including Dr. Bowden, paid the price as a result of this propaganda campaign. You'll hear her talk about that in the long run. She and other doctors have arguably won their battle, but say there's a lot more work to be done. Because if you recall, even when some doctors did prescribe Ivermectin and continued to be able to do so, in some cases there were pharmacies that would not fill these legal prescriptions. Numerous people are trying to figure out ways to prevent a repeat of many of the horrors that we saw during the COVID pandemic. Here's Dr. Bowden.
- [01:44]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Yeah, I'm an ear, nose and throat and sleep medicine specialist in Houston, Texas. Solo physician, very quiet practice. Prior to the pandemic, I had patients. As an ent, we see people with respiratory tract infections. So I had people coming to my office when Covid hit. And I didn't really become known in town until I started speaking out on social media about what I was seeing. So I started off by just testing people for Covid. And early on it was really hard to get a, a test that you could get results back quickly because LabCorp was completely slammed. It was taking two weeks. We had access to a saliva test. It took 24 hours to get the results back. So my little clinic exploded just because we had this test.
- [02:30]
Interviewer
Like, how many tests were you giving?
- [02:31]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
I mean, I think throughout the pandemic, I think we tested like 80,000 people. It's crazy. Then, then I didn't have a lot of people asking me for treatment early on, but when they came in, I just use common sense. I use breathing treatments and I treated for secondary infection with antibiotics. I did steroids. I didn't really even know about Ivermectin. Early on, I did know about hydroxychloroquine, but as soon as President Trump spoke about it, it was shut down. The Texas State Board of Pharmacy actually prohibited us from prescribing hydroxychloroquine. So I put that on the back burner, did the best I could using common sense. And then monoclonal antibodies came out, and those worked great. I could get as much as I needed directly from the manufacturer. I'd have them at my door the next day. I didn't ever ration them, and so I became known in town as a place you could go get the monoclonal antibodies for Covid. The government then took over distribution. It became harder and harder for me to get them, and that's when I turned to Ivermectin.
- [03:34]
Interviewer
What made you think of Ivermectin?
- [03:35]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Well, there was a little here and there that I heard from friends, and then the media started talking about it, but I really didn't start using it until summer of 2021. So a little bit on the later side, and because of the hype around it, I really dug into the safety. So I just wanted to make sure. I wasn't sure it was going to work, but I want to make sure I wasn't going to hurt anybody. And I did what anybody could do, and it didn't take very long. I just went to the FDA's website. I found the original study that Merck submitted to the FDA in order for it to get approved. And they have all sorts of toxicity data on there. And they have something called the LD50 or lethal dose 50, which is a benchmark number that we use to gauge the toxicity of a medication. The LD50 of ivermectin is anywhere from 11 to 80 times higher than the dose that we're using to treat Covid. Then I did a literature search, and I tried to find incidents of overdose, either accidental or intentional overdose with Ivermectin. I couldn't find a single study, whereas if you look at that for Tylenol, you'll find thousands of of reports. So I knew it was safe, and then I started using it. And I found it worked just as well as the monoclonal antibodies. I didn't always use it, you know, solo Ivermectin. I'd combine it with other things. But during the pandemic, I treated over 6,000 COVID patients, and everybody that got early treatment survived. I've never treated that many patients with a single disease in my career. You know, this is a constant. I mean, it's all I saw for years, and I'm sure I'll never do that again. But you quickly become an expert when that's all you see. The problem was when the shots came out, when the COVID vaccine came out, because I was doing so much testing, I was tracking people by their vaccination status, positives and negatives. What I saw was the vaccinated outnumbered the unvaccinated and were just as sick.
- [05:31]
Interviewer
If not sicker, in terms of having Covid.
- [05:34]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
In terms of having Covid. So. So I was expecting my practice to slow down with the shots. Instead, it got just as busy, if not busier. And I had privileges at Houston Methodist Hospital, which was the first hospital in the country to mandate the shots. And they did this five months before Biden. And I went to them first, actually. I had a good relationship with them. I was collaborating with them, doing research with them. I said, what's going on? Are you seeing what I'm seeing, these breakthrough cases? And they basically just gaslit me and said, oh, well, it just lowers the severity. So then I started speaking out on social media. And on one day, I said 25 times, I tweeted out the same message. I just said, vaccine mandates are wrong. And then I put a screenshot of emails I'd gotten from patients who were very distressed over these mandates. And then five days later, I got a text message from a reporter at the Houston Chronicle saying, can you please confirm that your privileges have been suspended by Houston Methodists for spreading dangerous misinformation? And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And so I go to my email. They had suspended me. And then they were tweeting about me, too, and said I was spreading dangerous misinformation. And then they reported me to the medical board. And it's just been a saga since then.
- [06:53]
Interviewer
And were you required to get vaccinated to continue your privileges during this time?
- [06:58]
Cheryl Akisson
And how did that go?
- [06:59]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
They required you to sign an attestation that you were either vaccinated, vaccinated or intended to get the vaccine. And I did sign that intending to get the vaccine. I actually went to a grocery store. I waited in line. I got impatient because it was taking too long. I said, I'll come back later. And then I never went back.
- [07:18]
Interviewer
Were you really going to get it at the time? Because that was before you saw a lot of your patients have problems.
- [07:23]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
I was really. I didn't want to get it, but I didn't think at that time, it was going to hurt people. I wasn't convinced it would work and I hadn't seen injuries yet. And I was just. I kind of put it on the back burner. And I woke up on Saturday morning and was like, I'm just going to get this over with. I did a search online for availability. I went to some random grocery store. I waited in line and then I just got impatient and left. And thank God I left and I never went back.
- [07:52]
Interviewer
Before we get into what's going on with Ivermectin today, what happened to you after that?
- [07:59]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
So Methodists went after me. I had cnn, Washington Post. I had people screaming at me from Australia. It was very hard because I'd never been in the media or anything like that before. But I decided to fight back. I held a press conference. I sued Methodists twice. Unfortunately, I lost both of those, but they reported me to the medical board. And then at the same time this was happening. I was trying to help a man who was dying in the hospital from COVID obtain I Ivermectin. His wife had sued it's Texas Huguely Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. His wife sued the hospital to allow him the opportunity to try Ivermectin. They had basically given up. They had tried everything, said there's not much else we can do. They were talking hospice and she wanted him to try Ivermectin. And then she asked me to be an expert and I testified along with Senator Bob hall in Texas. And we won. And the hospital was ordered to grant me emergency temporary privileges. They gave us a lot of pushback. They made me submit a 30 page application, get letters of reference, submit my surgical case log. They made it as difficult as they could. And then they said, oh, well, we're not going to approve your privileges. So they had to go back to the judge. There's all this back and forth. And finally my lawyer said, okay, we're good to go. I sent the nurse there. The nurse is greeted by the police. She leaves. There's not a scene. But because I sent the nurse to the hospital and the hospital said I did not have privileges, then they turned me into the medical board. And I have been fighting that for almost four years now.
- [09:40]
Cheryl Akisson
What happened to the guy?
- [09:42]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
He died. I mean, he actually did survive for about six months, but then he just. He'd lost half of his body weight while he was in the hospital.
- [09:53]
Interviewer
Did he ever get Ivermectin?
- [09:54]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
No, no. I mean, his wife did rub it on him topically while she was in the hospital while he was in the hospital, but he never was allowed to get it.
- [10:04]
Interviewer
You also were part of a lawsuit brought against the fda.
- [10:08]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Oh, this FDA attacked Ivermectin. And I believe it was purposeful. I believe it was to try to get everybody to get the vaccine. It started in March of 2021. They put out misinformation on their website, basically saying that you should not take Ivermectin for Covid. And the FDA's role is to approve medications and move on. They're not allowed to tell doctors how to use these medications. They're not allowed to tell the public what you should and shouldn't take for a disease. So they were stepping outside their lane. So this was March 2021. That was right before Houston Methodist mandated the shots. They did that on April 1st. That same day, April 1st, Biden doled out $11.5 billion in propaganda. It's called COVID 19 Community Corps. It was sent out to influencer groups, church groups, sports leagues, all sorts of organizations to try to basically take down doctors like me and spread the safe and effective mantra. So that summer 2021, that was the third and the largest surge of the pandemic. This is after the rollout the shot. So it's not what we were expecting. And then late August, the FDA sort of launched their nuclear bomb on Ivermectin with that tweet. And it was this attractive healthcare worker. She's nuzzling a horse. And the caption says, seriously, y', all, you're not a horse, you're not a cow. Stop it.
- [11:43]
Interviewer
And the implication is Ivermectin is, like many medicines, also used as in a veterinary form for animals. And the FDA was falsely implying this is horse medicine that you people are taking, which is not true.
- [11:55]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Exactly. They branded it as horse medicine. And it worked. It was very effective. I mean, even a couple weeks ago, I had a reporter at Vanity Fair. She was talking about me, and in the description, she prescribes horse dewormer. I mean, this is four years later. So they really. It was a hit job on Ivermectin. That tweet went viral. It was their most successful tweet ever. At the same time, they went after Joe Rogan. It was all. And then. And then a couple of weeks later is when Biden mandated the shots. So I feel like it was very orchestrated. So we sued them, myself and two other doctors, Paul Marek, who was one of the founders of flccc, which is a big proponent of early treatment for Covid and then Robert Apter, who's emergency room physician, who was also. All three of us just got pummeled for our stance on Ivermectin professionally with the boards and the public. And we actually won. The FDA backed down and they had to remove their misinformation from the website and they had to remove the tweet. But years later, years, it's still, I mean, I'm still having a hard time getting my patients. I can't. If I send a prescription to Walgreens for Ivermectin, there's probably a 75% chance they're not going to fill it. And that's four years later. So the FDA, I mean, we're really pushing two things from the FDA. We think that they need to make a public statement just to inform the world that, yes, this is a medication that's been used widely. I mean, billions of people. It has been life changing in Africa for parasitic diseases, river blindness, it won the Nobel Prize in medicine. It's incredibly safe. I mean, it's safer than Tylenol. So we want them to put out a statement to just correct that misinformation and then we want them to make it over the counter because people are going to the feed store to get this medication. It's completely unnecessary. I mean, this is America. We should be able to get the safe medication from a drugstore without a problem.
- [14:18]
Interviewer
Do you have a petition before the FDA or how are you trying to influence them?
- [14:23]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Yes. So American Frontline Doctors, which is started by Simone Gold, she brought up a citizen petition to make Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine over the counter. She actually submitted this petition for hydroxychloroquine years ago to the FDA and it didn't go anywhere. So now she's resubmitting it. That was filed, I think, last week.
- [14:47]
Interviewer
What have we learned about Ivermectin in this time period? It's my understanding there are many, many studies now. We can look back retrospectively and see what happened to those who tried to use it for Covid.
- [15:00]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
So There are now 105 studies supporting the efficacy of Ivermectin for Covid. There's a great website, c19early.com I believe that kind of gives you a rundown of all those studies. You know, it's no, no drug is 100% effective. And what I would do is combine it with other medications depending on, you know, risk factors and, you know, severity of disease. But all in all, it shows that you Know, basically the earlier you start using it, the more efficacious. But even when used late in the game, even the second week of the illness and Covid is when people really got sick. And that was this massive inflammatory response, less so from the actual virus. It was the inflammatory response. But even in those late stages, it worked. It helped anywhere from 30 to 40% decrease in intubation and mortality. And it's so safe and you can use it at incredibly high doses. I think the argument with the pharmacist is typically when you're treating a parasite, you give a three milligram pill. And we were using higher doses for Ivermectin. But like I said earlier, when you look at the toxicity data, you can go up super high on these doses without any problem.
- [16:21]
Interviewer
Are there studies that look at it for preventive?
- [16:24]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Yes. So that's actually if you go to the meta analysis of the data, the earlier you use it, even for prevention, prevention is actually the best outcome. But what we're seeing now, Covid, is not life threatening. I don't worry about my patients. I did used to worry about my patients. I don't worry about anybody now that gets Covid. I don't discourage people from taking Ivermectin, but I'm not like, yeah, you need to take it for prevention. At this point, what is the status.
- [16:55]
Interviewer
Of over the counter efforts in states? Are you involved in some effort to try to lobby the states to do this in the absence of action from the federal government?
- [17:05]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
17 states filed bills this last session to make it over the counter and four have been successful. Tennessee was the first in 2022, most recently was Louisiana, but Idaho and Arkansas are also in there. Problem is, what I'm hearing from people, at least on X, is that even though they are legally allowed to sell it over the counter, you've got to find a willing pharmacist, and that's problematic sometimes. So, yes, I agree that it should be over the counter in these states, but honestly, the easiest thing to do would be for the FDA just to make it over the counter and then we wouldn't need to go through all of this state by state.
- [17:47]
Interviewer
Anything else? Are there any sort of lessons learned from all of this or anything else you wanted to address?
- [17:53]
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
Well, yeah, I think we. I certainly learned so much as a physician during the pandemic. I learned, you know, I came into it with this dogma that you can't treat viruses. And I think that was a big problem. I think that's why so many people were told to just wait until you can't breathe and go to the hospital. But I encourage other doctors, maybe open your mind up a little bit, do a little of your own research. And yes, you can do something about a virus early. Even ivermectin can be used for other viruses. It has 20 mechanisms of action. It's anti inflammatory, so even if you're not treating the virus, you can treat inflammation with it and it's super safe.
- [18:45]
Cheryl Akisson
I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that you will watch our October 5th edition of full Measure for more on this story and others. I will also be reporting from El Salvador, the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, and the couple running the Bitcoin office in El Salvador is a fascinating American couple that you'll hear from. Please consider sharing this podcast with your friends, subscribing to it and leaving us a good review. And check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Akison Podcast, to hear more fascinating medical information about scandals and controversies you probably never heard about before. Check out my bestseller, follow the How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails that comes complete with tools to help you take back control of your health and your family's health in this highly managed medical environment. And lastly, I hope you will visit cherylakisson.com and click the Store tab to find some exciting products designed exclusively for free thinkers like you. Proceeds benefiting independent reporting, causes and slogans on some of these exciting products include I need to find some new conspiracy theories, all my old ones came true and do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself.