Peter McCullough, MD testifies to Texas Senate HHS Committee

TRANSCRIPT:
00:00 good afternoon i'm dr peter mccullough and i'm an internist and cardiologist and professor of medicine at texas a m university school of medicine i'm on the baylor dallas campus and i've been integrally involved in the response to covet 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 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 covet 19 hit i saw it as our 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 then there were those that were detractors against the pandemic

01:05 and so as i started to survey the literature i had patients with heart and lung disease who needed urgent treatment and i refused to let an illness which lasted for two weeks at home before they got sick enough to be hospitalized i refused to let a patient languish at home with no treatment and then be hospitalized 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 uh in may i put together a team of doctors because the the the group that was facing the pandemic to the greatest degree was in milan italy so most of

02:00 them were in the coracle italian research network we summarized all we knew about the available drugs and we published our findings in the august 8th issue of the american journal 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 covet 19 hospitalization and death the second premise if we don't do something before the hospitalization 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 we had the best institutions in the united states i can tell you the interesting thing was there 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 does that happen i was absolutely stunned and when this paper was published in american journal medicine it became a lightning rod oh my

02:57 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 my door and i said oh my lord i just can't believe what became untapped and um 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 even 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 the of the um 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

03:49 and social media is striking it down based on what authority well one thing led to another uh and i became the lead witness for the u.s 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 cycle in america uh 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 coveted survivor my wife in the galley is a father in a nursing home is a cobit survivor you get handed a diagnostic test it says here you're covet positive go home is there any treatment no is there any resources i can call no any referral lines hotlines no any research hotlines

04:44 no that's the standard of care in the united states and if we go to any one of our testing centers 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 bam 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 covet 19. so i led 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

05:39 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 viable replication the antibodies are terrific we can use intracellular anti-infectives in that box we use 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 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 pharmacists just as dr urso had and i have very very sick patients and

06:35 i've lost two but i have to tell you what has gone on has been beyond belief 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 the hand of the diagnosis of 19. no wonder that is a complete and total failure at every level okay 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 hospitalizations 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 hospitalizations from all that i listen to six hours of testimony today

07:31 zero zero we have a complete and 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 centers 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 okay 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 covet 19 and to this date they nearly exclusively deal with a hospitalized patient the two papers that i have published as the lead author and supported by wonderful people by dr

08:27 urso are the only publications in the peer-reviewed literature that tell doctors how to treat covet 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 cova 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 given 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 with a test result with their fatal diagnosis sitting at home going into two weeks of despair before they succumb to hospitalization and death

09:19 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 hospitalizations nobody even kind of thought about it bob hall had me hana teleconference in in april or may and we're like wait a minute how come where's ut southwestern i'm a graduate of ut southwestern where's a m where's the rest of the universities how come we're not stopping this how come we are not stopping this but it gets worse because in the paper i published in december of of 2020 you know what he did i had i had a terrific doctor from brazil we went through country by country by country and just asked the question what are the countries doing was the last time you turned on the news and ever got

10:11 a window to the outside world when did you ever get an update about how the rest of the world is handling covet never what's happened in this pandemic is the world has closed in 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 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 covet 19 and get them together for our 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

11:09 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 warp speed went full tilt for vaccine development and there was a 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've when we vaccinate all efforts have to be on vaccination and probably if i had four 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

12:03 with no vaccine effect eighty percent and more people are developing cova today they're gonna become immune people who develop covid have complete and durable immunity and a very important principle complete and durable 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 cove recovered patient there's no rationale for ever testing a covert recovery patient my wife and i are covered 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 cover to recover patients let them forego the vaccine and let people who are clamoring for it get it but at 80 percent hurt immunity in the vaccine trials

12:57 fewer than one percent in the vaccine in the placebo actually get coveted 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 hurt 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's 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 try to find asymptomatic spread you can't find it and that's been you know one of

13:53 important pieces of misinformation when senator hall called a conference call what should we do in the capitol when we reopened 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 covet 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 are available

14:44 to them now the monoclonal antibiotics are better better there's an 85 reduction in hospitalizations and death 85 85 percent i want you to remember that number 85 percent we have over 500 000 deaths in the united states the preventable fraction could have been as high as 85 percent 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 and what have you laser focused sick patient treat them we lost focus on the most fundamental doctor that's my that's my testimony yeah thank you i can tell how passionate you are and certainly i 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 kova 19 is going to be with us right i mean it's uh

15:42 you know i hope we're at 80 percent heard immunity i don't know yet i'll read your papers but um i appreciate that and the message is is that there are drugs out there that work there are therapies out there that work 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 one drug and saying oh it doesn't reduce cancer mortality we never do that in cancer we never did that in aids we don't do in hepatitis c what we look is for is signals of benefit and acceptable safety and then we combine them and that's what that's all we've done so but but but this 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 um error that we've made on our side we never should have expected single drugs to

16:35 reduce mortality but drugs in combination against a fatal vital infection we should have this entire session is less learned from lessons i know we're running short on time uh center hall you have one question or real quick um 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

17:36 treatment for these folks rather than wait till they show up in the hospital we could at least have a physician group approved a guide the 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 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 ivermectinus 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

18:25 this ought to be saying listen where are those monoclonal antibiotics are do we stock them at the nursing home what are the big nursing home chains what are the big urging care chains in texas and what are they 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 covet and when i asked those doctors i said you don't treat how come they go well there's 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 covet 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

19:17 okay 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 yep