Cassandra Voices

Tag: end

  • The End of RTÉ’s “Drive Time” Omertá

    And so, the omertà as to the RTÉ personnel getting ‘freebie’ cars has finally broken. It’s no coincidence that this was the only outlet probing this matter five years ago. We knew the topic was highly unlikely to be picked up by media reliant on revenue streams from advertising cars.

    We also knew that covering the topic was unlikely to win any friends for this publication in the state broadcaster – generally not a wise move for a fledgling operation trying to make it in the Irish media landscape. Despite the obvious pitfalls, the editor published my original piece – and then followed up the matter in his own stoic fashion.

    Sure enough, five years on, despite countless topics having been forensically covered by Cassandra Voices, and despite the editor having previously appeared on prime time RTÉ shows, they have never contacted him or this outlet regarding any topic featured herein. Cassandra was ‘cancelled’ almost as soon as she commenced.

    “Drive Time: The Irish Media’s Message“

    Accounts and Accountability

    Over the last week a series of details have emerged of a culture in RTÉ of personnel entering ‘side-deals’ where they benefit either by additional cash payments, or in kind – by way of high-value items such as cars or other luxury outings to prestigious sporting fixtures. Nice if you can get it.

    This has come as a revelation to most Irish people – yet readers of this publication know that there has been a serious issue going back two decades. Unlike commercial operators, there is an onus on RTÉ to be accountable to the public as it relies on approximately €150 million in state funding via the licence fee each year.

    Hence, it has long seemed apparent that there is a clear need for transparency to avoid conflicts of interest, especially when RTÉ employees engage in extra-curricular commercial arrangements.

    “RTÉ: Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams“

    Á la CaRTÉ?

    Cassandra Voices has long since called on RTÉ to release an easily accessible register of interests, as occurs with personnel who work at the BBC. Yet RTÉ have steadfastly refused to countenance such a notion – and for that, they are now having to answer.

    It is now of crucial importance to assess whether a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by Cassandra Voices with RTÉ in 2018 was answered with full and proper disclosure, as required by law.

    At the time, RTÉ were asked to disclose records of payments, or payments-in-kind, from car dealership to leading RTÉ stars, approved by RTÉ ’s management since January 1st, 2017 under the Personal and Public Activities Guidance.

    RTÉ’s FOI officer responded to say there was no record of any such payments or payments-in-kind. That FOI request was filed with RTÉ following an article by this writer, in which we outlined instances where RTÉ presenters had vilified other road users, notably cyclists – without making it clear to their audiences that they had ‘side-deals’ with car companies.

    It seemed obvious to us that there was an ongoing culture of side-deals with car companies, especially given there had been previous public references to this by the then Labour TD, Tommy Broughan.

    In hindsight, it was very brave of Broughan to raise the topic, given that TDs depend on media coverage to be elected. Today it turns out, courtesy of the Independent that there are in fact numerous side-deals between many RTÉ personnel and car companies. How credible is the FOI officer’s claim in 2018 that no such deals existed when asked by this small, independent media outlet?

    BMW i3

    Buy a Car to Save the Environment…

    The real problem is not that personnel have enjoyed such arrangements, but that there is a lack of transparency – and that this coincides with an apparent de facto black-out of transport issues being covered in an adequate manner.

    Dublin has been rated as the worst European capital among thirty for public transport by Greenpeace in 2023. Moreover, last year the OECD issued a stern assessment that castigated the Irish authorities for transport policy that is dependent on electric cars and mega-projects.

    Yet there seems to have been little probing by RTÉ into the strategic issues underpinning this malaise. Instead we find the blithe assumption that the airport metro will be a panacea, and in the meantime, sure why not buy an electric car to save the environment?

    New cars, by their nature, are of course bad for the environment – and electric cars bring their own set of problems, not least issues relating to mining for batteries, disposal of same, and, potentially, greater erosion of road surfaces, arising from the increased weight.

    In many instances, it may make sense to keep an older vehicle, used infrequently, on the road – rather than buying a new car.

    It is understandable, if lamentable, that commercial media should shy away from damning stories as it may scare advertisers. That is why the role of a public broadcaster working in the public interest is so important.

    Train In Connolly Station – Dublin.

    Fail Rail

    A good example of how RTÉ operates is how they covered the ‘re-opening’ of the railway that passes through the Phoenix Park tunnel in Dublin. That railway connects the two main railway termini in Dublin, Heuston and Connolly Stations, linking the Cork and south-west commuter line from Heuston, through the north city centre, onto the Sligo and north-west commuter line that runs into Connolly.

    The railway has been present for over a century, and for years, carried passenger trains between the two termini – provided the trains were empty. At the same time, Irish Rail, were proposing a multi-billion euro tunnel, DART Underground, so as to create a new link from Heuston around to the lines linking into Connolly.

    Hence there was a line that could have been used, which Irish Rail were effectively refusing to use – but were instead proposing to spend billions. Why wasn’t RTÉ probing this matter?

    Ultimately, the Phoenix Park line was brought into use in 2017, but the new operation is not without problems. Most obvious is that although trains now run between Connolly and Heuston Stations, the services do not stop at Heuston Station – and instead simply fly by an idle platform!

    Although the new service passes through some of the most densely populated areas in the state, such as Ballyfermot, Inchicore, Cabra, and Phibsborough – the train only stops once in fifteen kilometres at Drumcondra, between Connolly and Park West Stations. A fit-for-purpose public broadcaster would surely have examined the issues involved, flagged to the RTÉ Dublin correspondent John Kilraine at the time.

    Instead, having studiously ignored the existence of this railway for many years, on the day of the re-opening of the tunnel to passenger services, the matter was simply presented as a ‘good news’ story.

    The modus operandi of RTÉ in this instance appears to have amounted to a suppression of the facts, until state policy mandated a change, where upon it was a case of ‘hooray for happy days’. Such an approach is not good enough. Irish Rail would not have been able to obscure the existence of that key railway had RTÉ been doing its job properly.

    Irish Independent, 2008.

    UnchaRTEd territory?

    It remains to be seen if RTÉ staff can redeem the reputation of the state broadcaster. This week’s outings to the Dáil did not inspire much confidence – particularly when the Chief Financial Officer was unable to recall his own payment levels; two hundred thousand euro, as we subsequently learned.

    As RTÉ correspondent Paul Cunningham observed, it turns out that there has been a ‘special arrangement for special people’.

    Although Cassandra was the lone voice raising such unpopular questions a few years ago, the levee has now properly broken, and it has emerged there have been all sorts of ‘side-deals’ and unusual accounting procedures that have facilitated junkets, luxury outings, ‘freebie cars’ and hidden payments. It will be interesting to see what else comes out. The public deserves a lot better from its national broadcaster.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Michel Houllebecq and the End of History

    Inspired by Michel Houllebecq’s novel Atomised (1998), Ben Pantrey considers the endurance of the Christian idea of the apocalypse in contemporary debates. Note: This article contains plot spoilers for Atomised!

    Atomic Particles 

    Last week, I was in the magazine office, where I picked up a copy of Michel Houllebecq’s book Interventions 2020, which is a collection of short essays. I was instantly struck by the humour, the choice of topics, and the easy-to-read-but-thoughtful analysis of contemporary society. I was shocked.

    “I thought Houllebecq’s books were all about whining about women and immigrants.” I said to the magazine editor.

    “No, of course not. He’s a great writer.” he replied.

    A few days later, I started reading Atomised.

    That book is also extremely readable. In fact it’s the most engaging book I’ve read by a living author. His description of modern life, and the meaningless existence elevated to an ideal in our society, is right on point. The situations he depicts are funny, grotesque, or just plain depressing, but he never wallows. There is a good balance between ideas and plot.

    Miniatur Wunderland.

    Miniatur Wunderland

    More than anything, I was struck by how Houellebeca’s vision matched an idea that had been pressing upon me for some time. In January 2020, I visited Hamburg, and went to an exhibition called the ‘Miniatur Wunderland’.

    It was a building with floor upon floor of model railways in different settings: famous cities, woodlands, desserts, mountains and so on. A miniature model of Hamburg itself was there, with its red light street, the Reeperbahn, where model women posed in red-lit windows, and model men with beer bellies gathered.

    Although constructed from wood, acrylic, steel and plaster, this world was a moving world. Trains and trams shuttled to and fro, aeroplanes took off, and ambulances raced through intersections with their blue lights flashing. I was amazed by the amount of detail that went into this work. They were like Brueghel paintings, with little stories and humorous incidents everywhere you looked: a man falling off a ladder; a love affair; a protest.

    It didn’t happen immediately, but as the years passed, the vision of life suggested by the Miniatur Wunderland wormed its way into my thinking. Standing in the street, I would start wondering how it would look if I was staring down from the sky. How would I perceive the world if I had nothing at stake? If all I was bringing to bear on it was my own curiosity?

    The downside of comparing the world to a model is that it makes everything seem flat and mechanistic. It denies the one real truth of life – subjectivity – and puts in its place a deterministic universe, full of cause-and-effect situations and atoms endlessly shuttling to and fro. There is no space for inner truth, no space for change. Only matter in a void. A big round ball of Being.

    But, since the age of Lucretius this has been exactly the view underpinning the development of scientific thought, and worked out in capitalist economics. Atomistic, materialistic, deterministic. One apple is equivalent to another. Through the medium of money, the variety and uniqueness of physical reality is squashed into a flat virtuality.

    One day Banzan was walking through a market. He overheard a customer say to the butcher, “Give me the best piece of meat you have.” “Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. “You cannot find any piece of meat that is not the best.” At these words, Banzan was enlightened. (Zen Koan)

    The notion of a commodity with a fixed price (your used copy of a book is worth the same as another person’s used copy of a book in the same condition) ignores the sentimental value of an object.

    ‘Sentimental value’, by which we deem everything that belongs to the domain of actual lived and meaningful experience, is excluded from the reckonings of the marketplace. All the worse, then, that our entire society has become a marketplace, where individuals compete for status: monetary, cultural and sexual. It is this last arena that most fascinates Houellebecq.

    Miniatur Wunderland.

    Love is an anomaly…

    In Atomised, Houellebecq satirises the dominant ideological model of society, exposing it as spiritually barren, dominated by selfishness, exploitation and ruthless competition in every sphere of life. Love is an anomaly, and quickly snuffed out in a cold world.

    The novel loosely follows the story of two brothers: Michel and Bruno. Their parents are divorced, and they grew up with very different childhoods.

    Michel was fascinated by the natural world, and in his adolescence met by chance with a beautiful girl who loved him in an almost spiritual way, but was met by coldness on his side.

    Bruno, meanwhile, was bullied mercilessly, had no success with girls, and cared more for literature.

    In their adult life, their paths diverge widely. Michel has no desire for life, he drifts onwards, pulled only by his own curiosity to understand the world scientifically. He ignores romantic opportunities, and eventually commits suicide after putting his scientific insights down on paper.

    Bruno, meanwhile, is a sex addict. He pursues sex relentlessly, seeking a validation that no experience can ever provide. No matter the sexual pleasure, or how many orgies he participates in or taboos he breaks, he cannot develop a sense of wholeness. He is always frustrated. This frustration is expressed in his misogynistic and racist articles that nobody wants to publish.

    There isn’t a plot, per se. The main interest lies in the various hijinks Bruno gets up to, and in the bits of social commentary Houellebecq the narrator includes along the way. When describing the protagonists’ father attending school, for examples, the narrator says:

    “Martin’s teacher was keenly aware that there was more to his job than spoon-feeding elementary facts and figures to every untrained citizen. His task was to seek out the qualities that allowed a child to join the elite…” (p. 18)

    Here, Houellebecq is able to bring social critique into his narrative quite effectively, posing provocative interpretations of the role of schooling to the reader. In general, novels act as great mediums for this. The all-knowing tone typical of a novel’s narration, and the fact that they are consumed in private, allows for a direct, and didactic engagement with the minds of readers. The length allows the author to present a totalising view of life all in one go, unlike an article that can only sketch at a perspective.

    Miniatur Wunderland.

    New Age Society

    The most damning portrayal of contemporary society arrives in a part of the novel where Bruno attends a festival-cum-self-help-weekend. Houellebecq’s description of the activities at this event could be seen as a a damning assessment of New Age Society as a whole:

    “All around him human beings were living, breathing, striving for pleasure or trying to develop their personal potential. On every floor, human beings were improving, or trying to improve, their social, sexual or professional skills or find their place within the cosmos.” (p. 100)

    Obviously, Houellebecq is not impressed.

    The prime example of Houllebecq’s critique of this self-help 60s-influenced culture is in Michel and Bruno’s mother, who abandons her children in favour of an endless quest of self-discovery and spiritual development.

    Atomised is a bitter and satirical portrait of the modern world where only isolated instances of illogical love redeem a landscape that is otherwise cold, selfish, brutal and crude. Death haunts every moment, with the decaying of our bodies, the shocking cruelties of fate, and our obsession with sex: the one means of delaying the extinction of the species.

    It’s definitely a cynical point of view that Houellebecq promotes, but it’s hard to argue against, and really isn’t so different to that expressed in such popular fiction as The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins, 2008). Here, too, society is depicted as a ruthless arena of competition. A zero-sum game where those in the lower rungs of society desperately vie to join the elite in a viciously enforced hierarchy.

    Miniatur Wunderland.

    Sci-fi Twist

    The final pages of Atomised turns the book on its head, adding an unexpected sci-fi twist. Michel, who has spent his life devoid of romance, devises a way to allow humans to propagate without the need for sex.

    It will all be done in a lab from now on, as with Dolly the sheep, and this lab-based reproduction will allow for genetic modification to create healthier humans that won’t develop crippling conditions like cancer, dementia, cystic fibrosis etc.

    In hindsight, our age of sexual competition, desperate consumerism, and widespread anxiety and paranoia seem rather laughable and superficial. Everything will be settled in peace by a race of sexless, immortal post-humans.

    What do we make of the idea that we are at the cusp of a vast historical shift? The start of a new Millennium, paired with vast strides in technological innovation, certainly put this idea in many people’s minds. This apocalyptic notion manifested first as a fear of the Y2K bug – that computers worldwide would crash at the start of the new Millennium due to dating difficulties, wreaking havoc in the world of finance, medicine and transport.

    Next, there was murmuring over the date 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar, after the Western calendar had ceased to be a problem. This, of course, passed without a hitch. Now we project our apocalyptic fears onto the climate, or on advancements in AI.

    Terence McKenna introduced the doomsday date of 2012 into mass culture. He was vague about what exactly would happen, but believed it would be something new and unexpected. His listeners, high on the drug of Christianity, took this to mean apocalypse.

    Shows like Charlie Brooker’s ‘Black Mirror’ explore the idea of human minds being uploaded into virtual reality when our bodies expire, where we can live in an Eden of our own construction. Is this what Christians meant when they thought of history as a long journey starting and ending in paradise?

    Michel Houellebecq in 2008.

    Edenic State

    The paradisal state of Eden is that of ignorance: paradise was lost once humanity became self-conscious. In our hedonistic pursuits, I wonder, do we strive for that same unselfconsciousness we have lost?

    It is clear that we see our faculty of reason as something of a curse, even if it does bring us closer to the state of angels. Gnostics lament that nature didn’t bring us one step closer: let us keep our psyche, but free ourselves from the physical body. Let us be like angels!

    With this context, we see how Western science has really been a gnostic dream, with the destruction of physical reality (ecological collapse) and the ascension to pure spirit (cyberspace) its logical goal. We haven’t reached this impasse by accident, but by design.

    Only by recognising and consciously rejecting the gnostic message can we take control of our situation. That involves acceptance of the body, and a rebellion against the tyranny of the mind.

    Am I calling for a plunge into the irrational? After the horrors of the twentieth century, Western man has an understandable fear of the irrational. But remember it was distorted Reason that led to the horrors propagated under Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany.

    No ‘primitive’ society could have arranged the Holocaust. No, this horror was the dark face of civilisation and a perverse ‘rationality‘. The ‘greater good’: the cold inhumanity of reason. This is what comes of rejecting emotion and feeling, of being out of touch with the messages of the body, our one tangible link with Nature.

    Although we call ourselves a secular society, Christianity still lurks in the shadows of our thinking. Take, for instance, the apocalyptic tone that inevitably attends discussions around climate change or Artificial Intelligence. World leaders packed two by two in Bezos’s Ark. A just reward for our sins. Mr Beast healing the sick. It’s all a bit hellfire and brimstone.

    I’m not saying these areas won’t pose issues in the future, but I think it’s concerning that we always think in black and white: either it’s business as usual or it’s the apocalypse. This blindsides us from acting and reacting in the face of more subtle forms of change. This is, after all, the most likely result of our ecological challenge: the Earth will become slowly more inhospitable. Can we train our eyes on this without jumping to hyperbole?

    This obsession with apocalypse is of course a remnant of Christianity. For Christians, history is linear and has a clear end point: the Day of Judgement, or the Return of Christ. Everything we do until then is fleeting, and only relevant insofar as it affects the judgement that will be meted out to us (unless you’re a Calvinist, in which case there is no relevance whatsoever to these happenings on Earth).

    Christianity has the concept of an End of History built into it, in contrast to cultures that see time as cyclical, just like the seasons of a year or the passing of generations.

    The end of history, or civilisation, does not mean the end of life on this planet, nor even human life necessarily. But it does mean the end of “progress” as we have previously considered it. Our buildings will not always grow taller. Our phones will not always become more sophisticated. Our food will not get more processed. Is that so bad? To live closer to the Earth and to one another?

    For Houellebecq, the end of history means the end of sex as a means of reproduction. And this he considers a form of liberation. The Buddha would agree. He said all desire is suffering. Yet, there’s such a thing as enjoyable suffering. What kind of music would Houellebecq’s post-humans make?

    Another day ends. Throughout the building, lights are flicked off. Conversations slow to a light murmuring, and then drop off completely. At what cost will we keep living in Wunderland?

    Feature Image: Miniatur Wunderland

  • The Cruel End Result of the Affair

    In the wake of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s extraordinary gaffe in Washington the day before Paddy’s Day, I‘ve been thinking about Monica Lewinsky, the intern he so crassly referred to in his ‘off the cuff’ remark.

    So who was Monica Lewinsky? What went on between herself and Bill Clinton, then the most powerful man in the world, and twenty-seven years her senior? And what were the outcomes for her. And for him.

    Back to when it all kicked off. She was a bright, freshly minted grad who jumped at the chance of an internship at the White House. She developed a ‘crush’ on Bill and soon the ever-opportunistic Mr. President was inviting her into the Oval Office for an increasingly intense sexual affair.

    Not only was the affair ‘reckless’ on his side, it took place as the Republican Party were gathering forces under a new, viscously partisan cabal made up of right-wing parliamentarians, partnered with a shadowy group of lawyers and key professionals known as ‘the Elves’, all desperate to bring this Democratic Love God down.

    This nasty lot had cosied up to a distraught young woman Bill had exposed himself to, and asked to, eh, kiss the mighty phallus.

    At the same time a years long, $70 million trawl conducted by Judge Kevin Starr into Bill and Hilary’s involvement in a land deal in Little Rock, had pretty much come to a dead end, when the circling sharks were handed live meat: forget the girl asked to kiss yer man’s pee pee, currently the President of the United States is shagging a twenty-two-year-old intern. In the White House.

    But, Monica Lewinsky was no longer in the White House. Her superiors, worried by this semi-blatant affair, had shunted her off to the Pentagon, where aged twenty-two, miserable, heartbroken and horribly confused – why wasn’t her powerful lover bringing her back to him? – she confided her woes in a tough older woman, named Linda Tripp.

    Tripp by name and Tripp by nature, the lovely Linda, surely spotting gold was to be made, began taping her conversations with the distraught young intern and doing the rounds of literary agents, and journos with dynamite tale in hand.

    It’s still blood chilling to hear this older woman advice a confused and clearly lovestruck Lewinsky to keep every gift the President has given her, make sure NOT to dry clean the blue dress with the President’s semen still on it, and not to worry, all will be well. All the while taping the conversations, leading the young woman deeper and deeper into a trap.

    Next, the judge who’d unsuccessfully spent millions trying to entrap the Clintons via a land deal in Little Rock, was tipped off by a helpful member of ‘The Elves’ as to what was going on.  Smelling blood in the water, he pounced. This could actually bring the President down.

    The sting took place one day in a shopping mall where Linda and Monica were to meet for coffee. Linda approached, flanked by FBI, and a terrified Monica was escorted to a pre-prepared upstairs hotel room where lawyers for Mr. Starr awaited.

    Monica, refused a lawyer, refused even a call to a lawyer, still unaware that all her conversations had been taped, and shared, was told she MUST co-operate fully and agree to wear a wiretap to entrap the President, and unnamed others. The alternative was years in jail. Jail perhaps also for her Mum and Dad?

    She was alone, terrified, mortified, suicidal.

    God love her, she refused to co-operate. She still loved Bill.

    Eventually, after hours of this travesty of justice, she was allowed phone her Mum.

    Her Mum, very sensibly, urged co-operation. Her Dad got a lawyer. Eventually she and her Mum were allowed creep off, battered and exhausted, to her Mum’s apartment where they holed up for months, the press camped outside their window.

    The big guns now turned their sights on the Pres.

    For months the American media, public, and Congress were convulsed  with fascinated horror as the details of the affair tumbled out.

    In thanks for her co-operation every snog, every orgasm, every breathless gush, pace Linda Tripp’s tapes, was made public. All detailed by Monica herself.

    The President eventually slithered free: ‘I did NOT have sex with that woman’.  Went on to finish his term, write a bestselling memoir, charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches, and keep his marriage. Hilary her hair coiffed to within an inch of its life as the drama dragged on, standing by her man: ‘He was a hard dog to keep on the porch’. The hard dog grinning away, delighted with himself, doling out settlements for hundreds of thousands of dollars for women he’d sexually harassed to women he’d outright raped.

    Monica meantime was universally pilloried.

    She became a national joke. ‘A slut’. ‘A Bimbo’. ‘An over sexed blabbermouth who couldn’t keep her mouth shut’.

    Even solid gold feminists and lefties like Gloria Steinem and Michael Moore got stuck in.

    She was fair game.

    For years, in her own words, she ‘floundered’. She tried celebrity schlock. Handbag design. Dieting endorsements. But eventually removed herself from the public eye. She went to the London School of Economics and did a Masters in Social Psychology . She decided to take control of her story. She co-authored a book. She supported MeToo. ¸She did a Ted Talk. She became an ambassador for anti-bullying, helping ‘survivors of the shame game’. She openly criticised the ex-President who to this day likes to cast himself as the helpless boy and she ‘just a buffet and he couldn’t resist the desert’.

    It’s a tale Shakespearian in its breadth. And tragedy. But she is the one who has  emerged with flying colours. The President, and sadly his wife, once a proud feminist, and the cohort of savage Republican lawyers and parliamentarians, do not come out of this so well.  Oh no.

    So perhaps next time Leo goes off piste in one of his speeches he might do a little background reading first. Make certain who is the butt of his jokes, made only hours after cosying up to Mrs. Clinton.

    Fuck the Patriarchy. Let the Patriarchs starve.

    Feature Image: Clinton with Lewinsky in February 1997.

  • Could Ivermectin End the Pandemic?

    The bacterium streptomyces avermitilis was discovered by Satoshi Omura at the Kitasato Institute in Japan in conjunction with William C. Campbell at MSD (Merck, Sharpe and Dome) in the early 1970s. From this compound the medicine Ivermectin was developed. Ever since, it has proved a wonder drug for the treatment of parasites in humans and animals.

    Most of these infections occur in Africa and Latin America, but it was nevertheless a lucrative drug for MSD. Nonetheless, in 1987 they provided the drug to the world free of charge as the Kitasato Institute gave up rights to any further royalties from its sale. This was an exceptionally generous gesture as it was a $1 billion per year product, and had been for several years. Its extensive and widespread use in humans has been described by Chris Whitty, Chief Scientific Advisor to the British government throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as ‘a drug with a good safety profile’, with a serious adverse drug reaction rate of 1/800,000’

    Another paper says ‘Ivermectin was generally well tolerated with no indication of associated CNS (central nervous system) toxicity for doses up to 10 times the highest FDA approved dose of 200mcg/Kg’. In a nutshell, it is a safe drug, in use for a long time, and the nuances of clinical usage are therefore known to many physicians.

    A recent paper from India using ivermectin as a preventative used 15mg on average, twice per month at a cost of $1.20 per month in healthcare workers resulted in a 72% reduction in infections. In a recent online enquiry to a wholesaler in India I was offered 100 x 3mg tablets for $12. Yet remarkably this same dose in Ireland would cost €100 per month.

    As is well known by now, in early 2020 the WHO alerted the world to a pandemic virus that apparently emerged out of China, a virus for which there was no known treatment available and which was most dangerous in elderly patients with underlying conditions.

    The illness presented with cold-like symptoms that after a period of between five and eight days could develop into severe respiratory symptoms, requiring hospitalisation and sadly in some cases leading to death.

    Guidelines for General Practitioners

    The Irish College of General Practitioners stated in their guidelines to general practitioners in April 2020: ‘Clinicians should be aware of the potential for some patients to rapidly deteriorate one week after illness onset’ (members access only: https://www.icgp.ie/speck/properties/asset-Interim Guidance for General Practitioners).

    The same document lists those conditions and age groups in which this is a possibility. It goes on to state that ‘no medications have shown any therapeutic benefit on the progress of Covid-19 pneumonia.’

    This advice has not been updated since April 2020. So ‘do nothing until the patient turns blue’ appears to be the invaluable advice from a national body sixteen months into this crisis. However, in the spring of 2020 if you were unfortunate enough to find yourself in a nursing home your blue pallor would not summon the arrival of a flashing blue light, but instead you would receive midazolam and morphine, both respiratory depressants, whilst you awaited the Grim Reaper.

    GPs were discouraged from examining their patients. Even the use of the stethoscope was deemed unnecessary. Shades of blue were everything. The ‘do nothing’ approach is still supported in the guidelines issued by HIQA in February 2021, despite over forty studies demonstrating the efficacy of ivermectin in the intervening period.

    HIQA Advice

    HIQA currently advise that ‘individuals do not prescribe or use interventions for the treatment of COVID-19 that do not meet the necessary minimum criteria’, but don’t outline what these criteria are.

    They go on to ensure that ‘practitioners are not criticised for not prescribing these interventions.’ This latter is a somewhat curious statement if a body is so confident that their evaluation of the evidence is above reproach.

    Yet William C. Campbell co-discoverer of Ivermectin with Satoshi Omura – with whom he shared the Nobel prize – in a speech to the Royal Irish Academy in April 2020 stated: ‘there is the possibility that a safe dosage of Ivermectin might reduce the rate of viral replication in the mammalian body, or affect the virus in other ways that might be revealed by further research.’

    Ivermectin (IVM) bound to a C. elegans GluClR.

    Fortunately for some Irish patients, a few brave GPs looked beyond this island for guidance. Asking doctors to do nothing, and specifically indicating certain actions that they should not take, is a restriction that disconcerts many experienced doctors, if not being a downright interference in the doctor-patient relationship.

    As GPs in the community we deal with people who are part of a family within a social setting. We are therefore cognisant of many features of health – which outsiders might consider superfluous to the ‘science of medicine’.

    Now I laugh each time someone juxtaposes those words, especially when I consider the absolute chaos that is general practice’s interaction with people. At the end of some consultations, I’m lucky to be able to spell my own name correctly, let alone apply the cold, steely, rational logic of science to solving any problems.

    But no matter how chaotic or complex, or even futile, medical interventions may be, one must never vanquish a patient’s hope. Even when close to death, hope – if not for further life at least for a peaceful death – is something the GP can bring to the situation.

    So who are these people in the ICGP or HIQA to say to GPs that there are no treatments available for their vulnerable patient who develops a SARS-CoV2 infection; to say ‘well let’s wait and see, and sure if you turn blue we’ll get an ambulance’?

    We won’t visit or examine you, and you won’t be coming to our surgeries, but we’ll look after you by proxy. So why were we as doctors advised to do nothing? Not even to try a cheap, effective and safe drug, if only to elicit the placebo effect?

    Criminal Charges

    In India WHO’s chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan is facing criminal proceedings brought by the Indian Bar Association for disseminating disinformation about ivermectin and its effectiveness as a preventative and early treatment for SARS-CoV2 infection.

    Should those in HIQA who made recommendations to Irish doctors not face similar charges? Is this not a case of wilful blindness?

    In the USA two distinct groups of doctors-intensive care physicians lead by Drs Pierre Kory and Paul E. Marik set up the FLCCCA (Front Line Covid Critical Care Alliance), and community-based physicians led by Professor Peter McCullough of Texas A+M University, in conjunction with AAPS (American Association of Physicians and Surgeons), devised protocols in their respective fields using Ivermectin and other medications, deemed ineffective by the WHO.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEmOCWOZPk8

    Their rationale was based on medical ethics and a professional desire to give their patients a fighting chance against this condition. They have faced vilification and attempted sanctions, as have doctors in Ireland who were simply trying to help their patients. And some patients even had the temerity to get better.

    I’m not sure what irked the Medical Council of Ireland more, the survival of the patients despite being given a HIQA/WHO proscribed substance, or some previous impotence at not being able to impose their second hand thoughts on all members of the medical profession.

    There is no money in helping patients as the current system is set up. One makes more money merely by ascertaining how ill someone is by using the phone. Even if these medications do nothing beyond the placebo effect why has there been a concerted effort to block the use of what has already been shown to be a relatively low risk intervention?

    Meta-Analysis

    The most recent Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines by Laurie, Bryant et al in the American Journal of Therapeutics found a 62% reduction in death in a meta-analysis of fifteen RCTs. It concludes:

    Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.

    The WHO’s own assessment of seven trials showing an 81% risk reduction was diminished in significance because of ‘imprecisions’ resulting in the WHO falling short of recommending the use of ivermectin. Fudge, fudge and more fudge.

    Let’s cut to the chase here with this and perhaps many other substances. There are powerful vested interests steering advisory bodies away from the evidence, buying up integrity and burying it in a deep dark place.

    The current vaccines are deemed to be the only safe and reliable treatments. This is ironic given that these products are all still in phase 3 trials, and safety data will not be fully available until late 2022 at the earliest.

    The fact is that emergency use authorisations (EUAs) issued by the FDA in America and the EMA in Europe are contingent on there being no other treatments available in a public health emergency deemed to be effective. This is about money, vast sums of money. It is about wilful blindness at the highest echelons of the WHO, national governments and so called scientific advisory bodies.

    It is about conflicts of interest, and the damaging and intellectually limiting dependency that science has placed on large corporations, and it would seem that now governments are in the same stranglehold.

    As it is often said, the first casualty of war is truth. Clearly this also applies to pandemics, where body counts mean money, power and influence. And as in war inflation of body counts has always been good for business. Death may evoke much front of camera hand wringing but behind the scenes there is even more palm rubbing and back slapping.