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.