God ‘put an idea into my head:’ How Dr. Vladimir Zelenko came to hydroxychloroquine

The Forward ^ | 05/22/2020 | Ari Feldman

[SeekAndFind]

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko went for an urgent blood-clot removal surgery two years ago and wound up losing his entire right lung. The surgeons found it riddled with a rare and aggressive cancer — pulmonary artery sarcoma. Without highly toxic chemotherapy to prevent its return, his doctor told him, the disease would likely kill him.

Zelenko was then an unknown family practitioner, treating mostly Hasidic patients in a clinic in upstate New York, not yet the controversial promoter of an unproven drug he has called the “cure” for Covid-19 — the man whose urging apparently contributed to President Trump’s surprising decision to himself take the drug, hydroxychloroquine.

An Orthodox Jew, Zelenko looks back on his own near-fatal bout with cancer as something of a harbinger for what he sees as his catalytic role in the coronavirus crisis. Instead of opting for the standard treatment, he decided to try an untested cancer drug — one that would later be pulled from the market after being found ineffective in clinical trials — and credits that gamble with saving his life.

Now, he is not only unafraid to buck the American medical establishment in regard to his anti-Covid drug cocktail, he feels almost a religious calling to do so.

“A few months ago, Hashem put an idea into my head — I don’t take any credit for it,” Zelenko, who is known as Zev, said in a video he released last weekend, using a Hebrew name for God.

[Ouchthatonehurt]

The guy just lost his Scientist Card.

[FreedomVsControl]

I actually was thinking of this just yesterday, that it was almost as if it was a gift from God, to provide us with a treatment that would stop the spread of this disease.

Could it be that the Communists and the Leftists who deliberately spread this virus were hoping for more deaths, and that HCQ has foiled their efforts?

[Skywise]

THATS NOT SCIENCE!

I sense thousands of souls crying out in terror.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: The guy just lost his Scientist Card.

If it were all about religion without any mention of the science behind it, you are right. But is that the case with Zelenko?

[SeekAndFind]

FROM THE ARTICLE:

(SNIPPETS COPIED )

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He has partnered with two German doctors — themselves appalled at the political dimensions of the pandemic in the U.S. — to analyze data from more than 1,000 of his patients.

He said he consulted with health officials and doctors from Latin America, South Africa and Ukraine about his use of a three-drug cocktail — hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and a zinc supplement — on asymptomatic patients outside of hospital settings.

Zelenko insists he has been cautious, prescribing the cocktail only to patients at high risk for Covid-19 because of their age or other medical conditions, or those experiencing serious symptoms from the disease.

When Zelenko decided in March to begin giving even asymptomatic patients the hydroxychloroquine cocktail, there was little evidence supporting any kind of treatment for coronavirus. Based on his own reading of the limited studies, he decided that the drug — which has antiviral properties and has been used for decades to treat malaria and rheumatoid arthritis — could be combined with azithromycin and zinc to safely keep patients out of the hospital.

“I’m not claiming any miracle cures,” he told me when we first spoke, in March. “But I have observed that early intervention with my above-mentioned regimen seems to have very positive results.”

But Zelenko was not alone in experimenting with hydroxychloroquine. Some doctors across the country prescribed the drug for themselves, as prophylaxis. Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious-disease specialist at NYU Langone Health, said that early on he and his colleagues turned to the same drug triumvirate in their desperation to help patients critically ill with Covid-19.

“Zinc has some potential antiviral activity, and hydroxychloroquine is an ionophore, which means it helps zinc get into the cells, and may help zinc’s activity,” Rahimian explained, in reasoning similar to Zelenko’s. “We didn’t have any other options at the time.”

Rahimian’s analysis of those efforts, released earlier this month, found that the addition of zinc helped hospitalized patients who were never admitted to the intensive-care unit get home sooner, though he said that the cocktail’s overall effectiveness would not be clear until formal clinical trials were completed.

Dr. Rosy Joseph, a New Jersey rheumatologist who had been prescribing patients hydroxychloroquine for decades, also began treating presumptive Covid-19 cases with it based on a protocol published by Massachusetts General Hospital.

“In general, I’m quite a conservative physician,” Joseph said in March. “But we give this medication with barely a second thought.”

On March 17, Dr. David Boulware, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, began a clinically controlled study on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating presumptive positive patients outside hospitals. In a recent tweet, he said that patient safety for the study so far has been good.

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After reading these, you tell me if this is pure religion or if there is medical science behind it.

[Hostage]

Wrong.

He was a brilliant medical student and has a firm command of the biochemical pathways of the SARS-COV-2 virus.

Your comment reveals a lot more about you.

[bgill]

He should never have admitted that.

[Hostage]

I will fight that this doctor is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He is humble and doesn’t aspire for such things but it’s important we show our young people how we honor our heroes.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: He should never have admitted that.

The man is a doctor first and foremost, and a straight shooting speaker who is my estimation, is not very politically savy.

But that has nothing to do with whether or NOT the Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin + Zinc protocol.

The treatment stands on its own regardless of whether Dr. Zelenko is alive or dead or never existed.

[Guenevere]

+1

[SeekAndFind]

RE: He should never have admitted that.

The man is a doctor first and foremost, and a straight shooting speaker who im my estimation, is not very politically savvy.

But that has nothing to do with whether or NOT the Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin + Zinc protocol works.

The treatment stands on its own regardless of whether Dr. Zelenko is alive or dead or never existed.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Tagline

[Buckeye McFrog]

ALL of the thoughts in all of our heads come from God.

Talent on loan and all that.

[SeekAndFind]

For those who want to set religion aside and are only interested in the MEDICAL side, here are some developments (from the article ):

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Earlier this month, St. Francis Hospital, in Roslyn, N.Y., began a clinically controlled study of outpatients treated with Zelenko’s regimen, one that Zelenko posted on social media. “Dr. Zelenko’s results have added significantly to the findings of others around the world who have used these medications to treat people with COVID-19,” a spokesperson for the hospital’s network, Catholic Health Services, wrote in an email Thursday. “These efforts have inspired us to do this study.”

He is also working with two German doctors who do pharmaceutical research on a forthcoming review of the efficacy of his treatment. It would be the first observational analysis of outpatient treatment with hydroxychloroquine. Zelenko said that he is analyzing data from more than 1,000 patients who were treated with his three-prong cocktail, all of whom had confirmed cases of Covid-19. (Only one of his patients died from the disease, he said — a man who didn’t complete his course of the hydroxychloroquine regimen.)

The doctors — Roland Derwand and Martin Scholz — had independently hypothesized that hydroxychloroquine, combined with zinc, could be an effective outpatient treatment, and, in the course of publishing their initial paper on the subject, connected with Zelenko. They said that the analysis, which they expect to be published in June, shows high levels of safety for the treatment.

“You need a study at the end. But in a pandemic you need to take into account all the evidence you can,” Derwand said in a joint interview with Scholz. “He did not harm patients. He helped a lot of patients.”

Zelenko, a clinician new to the timelines of analyzing and publishing medical studies, had first told me to expect the study around the end of April. In anticipation, I told Zelenko I wanted to do an in-depth article on his journey through the pandemic. He was receptive, and later that day we spoke for an hour. We planned for more interviews, but other news came up. We continued messaging; he shared the file for his autobiography, and, Monday evening, confirmed that he was the doctor Trump had mentioned when talking about taking the drug.

[RummyChick]

https://corsination.com/covid-19/

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko is the Medical Advisor for this TeleMD program.
Dr. Zelenko does not receive compensation from the TeleMD program and he does not serve in any official corporate position.
The CorsiNation.com TeleMD program is NOT political. TeleMD is open to all people on an equal basis, regardless of political perspective, race, gender, or age.

[SeekAndFind]

I’ve told people who called him a charlatan ( yes, we have such people in FR ) — A charlatan wants money and fame.

Zelenko doesn’t make money out of this and his fame equates to aggravation, attacks and notoriety (even from his own religious community).

There’s nothing in this for him personally. All he wants is to make sure that we have an effective treatment against this virus.

[DannyTN]

Great read.

Gifted doctor.

Shame things have to be so political even in a pandemic.

[SeekAndFind]

Dr. Zelenko used the name : Hashem.

In casual conversation some Jews, even when not speaking Hebrew, will call God HaShem ( השם), which is Hebrew for "the Name" (cf. Leviticus 24:11 and Deuteronomy 28:58). Likewise, when quoting from the Tanakh or prayers, some pious Jews will replace Adonai with HaShem.

[Skywise]

Sarcasm.