Personal nobility and the Order of Malta

In Republican Europe there will in the future be more and more families who will be able to demonstrate such prominence for several generations and who, had the Monarchies survived, would have been ennobled; these too may perhaps be suitable candidates for the reformed class of Grace and Devotion. Since membership of the Order of itself has always been held to confer personal nobility, there is a strong argument for maintaining that the descendant of a Magistral Grace knight admitted more than one hundred years ago or for the fourth generation descended therefrom to be entitled to apply for Grace and Devotion, particularly if the intervening generations were also members of the Order.

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Nobility, the New World and the Order of Malta

NOBILITY, THE NEW WORLD AND THE ORDER OF MALTA

© Guy Stair Sainty

Today the U.S. Associations together represent twenty-five per cent of the membership, without including the Canadian, Antipodean and South and Central American Associations. The application of the "European" standard of noble proofs to New World citizens has been criticized both in the New World and by those outside who are familiar with these societies. There never has been any correlation between the right to bear an ancient coat of arms and social or economic standing in the New World (just as if there was once such a relationship in Great Britain, it exists no longer). North American armigers may be divided into three categories: firstly the descendants (generally protestant) of the handful of cadet members of English or Scottish landed families who settled in North America between 1630 and 1850, but whose social position in the new world was generally unrelated to the status of their families in their place of origin; secondly the descendants of members of the European nobility who settled in the United States after the end of the first World War, but whose rank as nobles is irrelevant to their social status and who are only rarely represented among the economic, political or social leadership of the United States; and thirdly the descendants of those wealthy American families who may have obtained a British grant within the last century - while these families may still enjoy wealth and prominence, the conferment of arms on Americans was unusual and was not a recognition of their American achievements or social position. Thus, since most American Catholics are not of English or Scottish origin, with very few exceptions potential applicants who can provide proof of descent from a genuine European noble or armigerous family are of fairly recent immigrant stock. In South America those of noble descent are predominately descended from Spaniards who settled there before the end of the eighteenth century, or whose families were ennobled by the Viceroys before independence. The social progress of families which have achieved prominence in the nearly two hundred years since then has not been recognized by the conferral of nobility and whatever their standing, or the contribution of their families, few are eligible for the noble ranks.

In the United States it is possible to identify at least one group which represents the military leaders of two centuries earlier, namely the Society of the Cincinnati. This was formed by the officers of the revolutionary army under the immediate command of General George Washington to commemorate their common struggle to "cause the separation of the Colonies of North America from the domination of Great Britain and, after a bloody conflict of eight years, to establish them free and independent sovereign states" on 13 May 1783. [1] Membership was open to all officers of the American "Continental" Army (including those who had resigned with honor after three years service), provided they subscribe one month's pay, and "as a testimony to the memory and the offspring of such officers as have died in the service, their eldest male branches shall have the same right of becoming members, as the children of actual members of the Society". By article 27 of the statutes, membership was also extended to those French officers above a certain rank (recently adjusted to include all French officers who served in the war) and a single representative among their descendants; despite the admission of French members falling into abeyance between the revolution and the 1920's, today the two hundred and fifty French members represent slightly more than twelve per cent of the total membership (and include several knights of Honor and Devotion in the French Association of the SMHOM). The rules have now been altered so that on the extinction of the direct descendants in the male line, and of the descendants of any collateral branch, the right to membership as the representative of an officer may (with the permission of the Society) pass through the female line. [2] The Society is headed by a President-General, who serves along with a Vice-President-General, Secretary and Treasurer, and there are Societies in the original thirteen States as well as France (and Associations in Texas and California for existing members resident in those States), each with their own President, some with slight variations of the admission rules to take account of the particular history of that State. [3] The only other Society to have been formed contemporaneously with the events it was designed to commemorate and whose badges can be worn on military uniform is the Aztec Club of 1847, the Military Society of the Mexican War. [4] Membership of the Cincinnati through male line descent may well be taken as evidence of a right to Grace and Devotion in any reformed system.

If the purpose of the application of nobiliary regulations in the SMHOM is to continue to distinguish those families which have played a leadership role in society for generations and encourage their younger members to join the Order, then the current system has not been wholly successful in the New World. For the Order to continue to attract representatives of those families which have provided Europe and the New World with their political, military, diplomatic and financial leadership, a system of selection needs to be devised to reflect the changes in society over the past two centuries.

The adoption of a new standard in the United States would be a great improvement and, although requiring some subjectivity of judgment, would probably be easier to evaluate and administer than the present system, which involves candidates for promotion to Grace or Honor and Devotion in elaborate research in often inadequate European archives and the application of a necessarily flexible standard of proof. Until the present rules are reformed the descendants of those families (whether originally or by conversion Catholic), which have played a prominent role in American society for generations and who, had they been of comparable prominence in Great Britain, would probably have been ennobled or petitioned for a grant of arms, will continue to be excluded from the noble grades and therefore from making the promise of Obedience. Unless they make full profession as knights of Justice, they will likewise be excluded from the highest offices in the Order. This contributes to a resentment against the authority exercised over their Associations by the senior members of European Associations with little prospect of a citizen of the New World, however distinguished his family, of sharing that authority.

Postulants (candidates) for the honor of Knight or Dame of Malta are usually chosen from those who have either inherited or earned a prominent place in society. Because the Order needs to maintain its membership and its humanitarian mission, it needs young members as well as those with greater experience of the world who are distinguished by what they have achieved in their own lifetimes. These younger candidates, not old enough to have shown the "merit towards the Church, the Order and their neighbor" required of those admitted in Magistral Grace, can generally only enter in the noble ranks. The average age of members of the three US Associations is substantially older than that of most of the large European Associations because there are relatively few candidates who can show such merits before reaching their forties. The practice of offering membership to older lay men and women who have distinguished themselves in their service to the Church or society has led to the misconception - which all three US Associations have done much to dissipate in recent years - that the Order is a reward for past services. Some Catholic Bishops have proposed deserving Catholics for membership in Malta or the Holy Sepulcher to acknowledge specially distinguished service to the Church, rather than rewarding such services by recommending individuals for membership in the Papal Orders. [5] While some children of active US members have been received at a relatively young age - particularly in the Western Association which also has the highest proportion of members in the noble ranks - they represent only a tiny proportion of the total.

The modest number of North American members admitted or transferred after admission to the first (Honor and Devotion) or third (Grace and Devotion) ranks of the third class is not only due to the relatively limited number of potential candidates able to provide the necessary nobiliary proof. Opposition from some US knights and dames who are opposed to the concept of noble ranks has also inhibited eligible candidates from applying. There is a misconception that requiring proof of being descended from a noble family or giving preference to those so descended is somehow contrary to the US Constitution. That all the members are part of an Order in which nobility has been, and still is, a requirement since soon after its foundation is viewed by some as irrelevant in the United States, a supposedly egalitarian society. Yet, while the United States recognizes that "all men are created equal" it does not give equal rights to all to become US citizens. Neither does it confer equal rights on all its citizens, since the two greatest offices of State, of President and Vice-President, are denied to those who have acquired citizenship other than by birth.

The concept of officially acknowledging the inheritance of particular advantages is not unknown in the United States. The notable privilege of automatic admission to the national military service academy of their choice is conferred by law on the children of recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Furthermore, by a joint resolution of Congress [6] the members of the Society of the Cincinnati, [7] the Society of the War of 1812, the Aztec Society (Mexican War of 1846) and the Loyal Legion can wear the ribbon designating such membership on military uniform, although the service was actually provided by an ancestor. [8] Thus, recognition of ancestral achievements and loyal service in the person of the descendants of those who provided such service is accepted. Even if the United States Congress was to enact a law requiring all public and private organizations not to discriminate in favor of those of noble descent, the Order of Malta would be exempted from compliance by virtue of the privileged constitutional treatment given to religious organizations (which, for example, exempts the Catholic Church from "equal opportunity" laws that might otherwise require the admission of women to the priesthood).

There is no conflict between equality before the law as citizens, and recognition that in the United States - as in every Western society - there are families which generation after generation have played a leadership role. Family traditions of service are not contrary to the American ethos, indeed they are generally admired. Those who are inspired to serve their country, the Church or their community in emulation of traditions established by their antecedents are surely worthy of commendation. Membership in the Order of Malta is a particular honor to which those who descend from such families enjoy privileged access. In return they accept the responsibility of service that accompanies such a privilege.

The status of nobility was conferred on those who, if not already of noble extraction from time immemorial, had risen to prominence in the service of their country or sovereign. Such distinguished service was recognized by the Crown or State and the historic achievements of their families may have been marked by the adornment to the name of a title, the particule [9] or coat of arms, which continue to serve as reminders to future generations of the privileges they enjoy and the obligations they impose. Those who have joined the Order's pilgrimage to Lourdes and observed the enthusiastic participation of the many young volunteers who accompany malades from across Europe can surely not ignore the fact that a large proportion are representatives of noble families which, in many cases, have provided generations of service in the ranks of the Order or to their country. Since their name confers the particular advantage of applying for membership in the noble ranks of the Order of Malta, an interest in serving is insured on the part of those who enjoy such specially privileged positions.

It should not be forgotten that distinguished Catholic Americans, several of whom were members of the SMOM, received titles of nobility from the Holy See as recently as the 1950's. Among the better known examples are the late Rose FitzGerald Kennedy, a Papal Countess and mother of President John F. Kennedy, and Bernardine Donohue, a Papal Countess created by Pius XII, whose husband Daniel J. Donohue is a Gentleman of His Holiness and member of the American Association of the SMHOM. In the 1920's one of the founders of the American Association, Nicholas Brady, received the title of Papal Duke while another, George Macdonald, sometime President of the Association, was created a Papal Marquess. A councilor of the same Association, Edward L. Hearn, was created a Papal Count by Pius XII. The Allied governor of Italy after the surrender in 1943, General Edgar Erskine Hume, [10] was a Virginia gentleman of ancient family who was made a Bailiff Grand Cross of Honor and Devotion on the basis of his proven noble descent and created Count of Chérisy by King Umberto II of Italy. These ladies and gentleman were all loyal Americans and good Catholics who considered their titles great honors of which they were rightly proud.

The present Grand Master has been particularly encouraging of those American knights who have submitted proofs for the noble categories by establishing descent from a European noble family [11] according to the relatively liberal British standard. There are now several members in the ranks of Honor and Devotion and Grace and Devotion in the Western Association, two in the Federal and one in the largest of the three, the American. Furthermore, a number of other members of the three US Associations could prove "noble" descent [12] in addition to those who have already satisfied the requirements. The stronger the representation of Americans in the "noble" ranks of the third class, the more influence the American Associations will have in the higher echelons of the Order which remain closed to non-nobles. Support for the maintenance of the nobiliary system is unanimous among the members of the Sovereign Council as well as the leadership of the European Associations. The Order is unlikely to abandon its nobiliary requirements as this special characteristic contributes much to the Order's influence and prestige in the modern, secular world.

The limitation of the noble ranks to those who could prove descent from a European noble family has meant that candidates from privileged North American Catholic families, which have give distinguished service to their country for generations, have often been unable to satisfy the standards demanded for entry, other than as knights or dames of Magistral Grace. Unlike comparable families in Great Britain, their social prominence was seldom recognized by ennoblement or a grant of arms in the colonial era and almost never after independence. Over the nearly four hundred years of the pre- and post-colonial history of the United States and Canada an identifiable privileged class has come into existence. The Order has not yet found a way to recognize this, however, by according it membership in the noble grades.

A reform of the rank of Grace and Devotion, permitting an alternative to the requirement for proof of descent from a European noble family, could enable the North American Associations to recognize and distinguish those families which have provided several generations of leadership in their country or the Catholic Community, or several generations of membership in the SMHOM. For five years from 1969 until 1974, special rules were approved for proofs of nobility in Canada on an experimental basis; a revision of such rules in response to criticisms of some aspects and a separate revision recognizing the particular circumstances of American Society could be drawn up for the future. Under the Canadian reforms admission in Grace and Devotion could be obtained in one of four ways.

(1) Proof of noble descent in the direct male line for a period of one hundred years (the usual "British" proof) or not less than three generations, including the applicant's own generation - this latter reform was criticized because it was possible for someone to obtain a new grant and his grandson or granddaughter immediately become eligible

(2) When an applicant's grandfather and father have been received into the SMHOM as knights of Magistral Grace, he or she could be received in Grace and Devotion without submitting further proofs of nobility [13] - this reform was criticized for the same reasons as the first, it being suggested that the reform should permit only the fourth generation to enter as Grace and Devotion.

(3) Nobility of office, by which the candidate, his or her father and grandfather must have held one of a variety of qualifying offices - some critics felt these qualifications were too broadly drawn, including not only judges, senators, members of parliament, ambassadors, cabinet ministers, provincial premiers, full university professors and deputy ministers in a federal or provincial government, but also those holding the military ranks of naval commander, army lieutenant-colonel, air-force wing commander and university doctorates.

(4) Personal Nobility, permitting the concession of Grace and Devotion to certain high officers, namely Governor-General, Chief Justice of Canada, Lieutenant-Governors of Provinces, Members of the Queen's Imperial Privy Council, Judges of the Supreme Courts, and Chancellors and Presidents of recognized universities, provided they could prove "honorable descent" for two or more generations. The reformed rules required that candidates seeking admission in Grace and Devotion under 3 and 4 should first have entered as knights or dames of Magistral Grace and could only transfer after a minimum of two years at the request of the Association.

A similar reform which placed greater emphasis on service to the Church, State or Society within each generation of the applicants family (but, not necessarily, his or her direct antecedents) and extended the qualifications for (1) and (2) by one generation could possibly satisfy those critics who fear reform would dilute the Order's nobiliary heritage. This would make it easier to bring in younger members and establish similar traditions of successive members from the same families which have served the Order so well in Europe. Despite the size of the three US Associations, the Order has been unable to establish an hospitaller and humanitarian role in the United States comparable to its achievements in Italy, Germany and France. This is virtually impossible without a large reservoir of younger volunteers. Without a reform which insures the opening up of membership to the younger scions of distinguished families, much of the humanitarian work of the Order in North America is likely to continue to be limited to financial contributions to worthy causes. If the noble ranks were enlarged the North American Associations would more closely parallel the European in structure and could provide more candidates for the classes of Justice and Obedience and the higher ranks of the Grand Magistery.

In establishing how such a system might work it is worth looking at the family histories of one particular group of Americans, those who held the office of President of the United States. [14] There have been forty-two individuals who have held this office since the election of George Washington in 1789. Of these, only one, George Washington himself, was certainly an Armiger. Two other Presidents, James Monroe and James Polk were probably descended from Armigerous families, while two others, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln, may have been. While the American ancestors of both Monroe and Polk had played a distinguished role in the life of Maryland and Virginia in the case of Monroe, and North Carolina in the case of Polk, the ancestors of neither Buchanan nor Lincoln, however, played any significant role in their country's history and they did not live in a style approximating that of the colonial gentry. Of the remaining Presidents the male line ancestors for several generations of Presidents John Adams (and his son John Quincy Adams), Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, William Harrison (and his great-grandson Benjamin Harrison), John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Theodore Roosevelt (and his distant cousin and nephew-in-law Franklin D. Roosevelt), William Taft and Calvin Coolidge, all played a prominent role in the society of their adopted country and would certainly have qualified as eligible for the class of Grace and Devotion if the Canadian "Gwyn" proofs had been applied.

If the class of Obedience is opened up to knights (or dames) of Magistral Grace, as has been proposed, there may be considerable pressure on the numbers. There are many worthy American knights who already fulfill the spiritual obligations required in their daily lives. The heads of the US and Canadian Associations may then be placed in the difficult position of having to choose between equally meritorious candidates. The broadening of the ranks of Grace and Devotion, on the other hand, could enable the present number of candidates for Obedience to be expanded while still insuring that it remains a nobiliary category. The majority of North Americans are presently excluded from entering the nobiliary ranks, whatever the past and future achievements of their families since their arrival in the New World. Until this barrier is lifted there will continue to be opposition from North Americans to the application of the requirements for proof of nobility for certain ranks of the Order.

With one Canadian knight of Justice, one professed Polish knight resident in the US and two knights of Justice in simple vows (one each in the Federal and Western Associations), it will soon be possible to form a Priory in North America. This would also include the knights (and dames, should the class of Obedience be opened up to ladies) of Obedience. There are already a number of potential candidates for the class of Grace and Devotion presently enrolled among the membership, and many more who could be eligible for this rank if there is a reform of the rules for the New World. It may then be possible to insure a substantial representation of North American knights (and dames) without radically changing the historic composition of the upper ranks of the Order.

The future of the Order of Malta's humanitarian work and its traditional example of leadership in the Catholic community depends on the enthusiasm and generosity of an expanding membership and on continuing to attract those who represent the most privileged and influential of modern Catholic society. The election of Fra' Andrew Bertie has meant that, in practice, the lingua franca of the Order is now English and the new Grand Master has already demonstrated an unprecedented willingness to listen to the views of the membership and that he is sympathetic to the concerns of the American knights, many of whom have felt excluded from full participation in the Order. With a better understanding of American society on the part of the great officers of the Order, so will an environment of closer co-operation be easier to realize. Only with the active participation of the whole membership will the Order's influence and importance in the Catholic world continue to grow and flourish, and only thus will it succeed in fulfilling its traditional Catholic, moral and humanitarian role in the New World and Eastern Europe as effectively as it does in Italy, Germany and France.

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Footnotes

[1] The stated intention was to "preserve inviolate those exalted rights and liberties of human nature for which they have fought and bled, and without which the high rank of a rational being is a curse instead of a blessing". Also "An unalterable determination to promote and cherish, between the respective States, that union and national honor so essentially necessary to their happiness, and the future dignity of the American empire".

[2] The membership can be enlarged by the addition of the single representative descendants of those officers who are not already represented by a member. However it is not merely sufficient for an applicant to prove that he descends from the recorded officer but also that he is a worthy representative and applications are voted on by the committees of the societies of the states from which the original officer came.

[3] In addition to the Society of the Cincinnati (the only such group formed at the date of the event or circumstance to be commemorated) there are numerous other societies (whose requirements for membership vary considerably in scope) commemorating descent from a particular class or group, nearly all permitting descent through the female line and which, unlike the Cincinnati, are not limited by the number of descendants of each ancestor who may petition to join. The principle societies for gentleman are: The Society of Colonial Wars - for any male adult lineally descended in the male or female line (or failing such, collaterally descended) from an ancestor (a) who served in the armed forces of the Colonies or in the forces of Great Britain when participating with the Colonies, between the settlement of Jamestown 13 May 1607 and the battle of Lexington 19 April 1775; or (b) who held high office (defined in the statutes) in any of the Colonies between those dates; this has various state organisations and recently a parallel Society of Daughters of Colonial Wars; The Society of Sons of the Revolution - for any adult male descended from someone whose actions in the war of independence would have made them liable to conviction of treason against Great Britain while remaining always loyal to the Colonies; The Society of Sons of the American Revolution - for any adult male descended from an ancestor who rendered material aid to the cause of independence; The General Society of the War of 1812 - for any adult male descended lineally from someone who served in the U.S. armed forces in that war; The Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States - for the descendants of officers who served the union cause in the war between the states (the badges of these Military societies may be worn on military dress uniform); The Society of Mayflower Descendants - for adult males and females lineally descended from persons who sailed on the Mayflower; The Society for Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence - for adult males and females descended from the signers of the Declaration. Of a slightly different nature is the Society of Saint George, founded in the 1770's for gentlemen of English descent. The principle societies for ladies are: The Society of Colonial Dames of America - for adult ladies descended lineally from some ancestor of "worthy life" who settled in the colonies prior to 1750, and who himself or one of his descendants held before 1783 a prominent office in the colonial government, rendered efficient service to his country during the colonial period, or founded an important institution which has survived to the present day; The Society of Daughters of the Revolution - for adult female lineal descendants according to the same rules as the Sons of the Revolution; The Society of Daughters of the American Revolution - for adult females lineally descended according to the same rules as the Society of Sons of the American Revolution but also from the mothers of those who rendered the qualifying service; the Daughters of the Cincinnati - a recently founded but parallel organization to the male Society of that name. There were many more such organizations at the beginning of the century often with badges resembling decorations, but support for such groups has declined and only the largest and most prominent have survived.

[4] Founded as an association of gentlemen in Mexico City by the then current American officers serving with the army of Occupation and today composed of the descendants of those officers, both direct and collateral. This was the first major American conflict fought on foreign soil. The President is the Hon Richard B. Abell and the Society meets annually in addition to meeting to commemorate the battle of San Jacinto where General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President of Mexico, was defeated.

[5] In the US Associations, in particular, the hierarchy has much greater influence than elsewhere; the Church's responsibilities towards the Order are actually limited to celebrating its Masses, superintending retreats and reporting whether postulants for admission are Catholics in good standing. Their admission as Chaplains ad honorem is a privilege conferred by grace of the Grand Master.

[6] September 23, 1890.

[7] The foundation of the Society of the Cincinnati gave rise to concerns (notably expressed by both Jefferson and the Marquis de Mirabeau), that this would somehow give rise to the creation of permanent inequalities in society. This did not prove to be the case and the sole exclusive privilege of membership, of wearing the ribbon and badge on military uniform, has certainly not caused any permanent rift among the citizenry.

[8] With the exception of the Society of the War of 1812 these bodies were founded by the officers for themselves and their descendants.

[9] Such as "de" or "von".

[10] General Hume was President-General of the Society of the Cincinnati.

[11] This is not limited to those who have received a noble title, but also includes those of the British and Continental nobility or gentry who are descended from ancient but untitled families, noble by origin or creation.

[12] Among these were the late Peter J. Grace, who would certainly have qualified for the rank of Grace and Devotion and another former President of a US Association still serving the Order. In addition there are a number of descendants of Colonial families, British gentry and European nobles who are presently members in the rank of Magistral Grace..

[13] It must be emphasized that such descent did not confer any right of admission.

[14] The principle source for this study is Debrett's Presidents of the United States, by David Williamson, 1989.

THE NOBILIARY CHARACTER OF THE ORDER OF MALTA

THE ORIGINS OF THE NOBILIARY REQUIREMENTS FOR MEMBERSHIP IN THE ORDER OF MALTA

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN BRITISH AND CONTINENTAL CONCEPTS OF NOBILITY AND THE ORDER OF MALTA

MAINTENANCE OF THE NOBILIARY TRADITIONS OF THE ORDER OF MALTA

RETURN TO ORDER OF MALTA

RETURN TO CHIVALRIC ORDERS MAIN PAGE

The Conflict Between British and Continental Concepts of Nobility and the Order of Malta

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The Conflict Between British and Continental Concepts of Nobility and…

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN BRITISH AND CONTINENTAL CONCEPTS OF NOBILITY AND THE ORDER OF MALTA

© Guy Stair Sainty

The nobility of most of Western Europe had a common origin in the feudal system of early medieval society; the noble class being a relatively small group whose land tenure depended on providing services to their superior lord. The Scottish and Irish Nobilities developed within a tribal structure, descendants of the chiefs being considered noble. In feudal Europe the great magnates held their fiefs directly from the Crown, with lesser knights holding their land from an intermediate lord or minor sovereign. By the fourteenth century proof of descent in the male line from any knight or the possessor of a "knight's fee" came to be considered evidence of nobility, entitling such a person to enjoy the class privileges which had been conferred or confirmed by the Crown (and which varied considerably in different states). While nobles adopted Arms as the outward sign of nobility, distinguishing such Arms with Coronets according to their rank in the nobility, Arms were not a universal indication of nobility and were legally assumed by a much broader class including farmers, traders and shopkeepers. Only in England and Scotland was an effective heraldic jurisdiction established by Crown authority, and not until the beginning of the sixteenth century was this enforced by the appointment of Heraldic Visitations (the first in 1530).

European Sovereigns and Princes soon began to confer or confirm the status of "nobility" as a separate hereditary privilege, while the number of nobles providing personal military service as knights declined with the increasing importance of infantry as an effective weapon against mounted cavalry (the havoc wrought by English long-bowmen at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 being an example of this). Thus a division was established quite early on between those who were noble "by extraction" (i.e. from "time immemorial") and those created by grant. The rank of knighthood eventually became separated from the provision of mounted military service and was seen as a special personal distinction conferred in recognition of long or distinguished service or valiant conduct in battle. It became unnecessary to have served in the military to receive the honor of knighthood and nobility was conferred on Crown servants exercising both administrative and judicial functions. In most of fifteenth century Europe, the nobility could be loosely divided into two groups - those whose personal service or great wealth brought them to the court of the Sovereign, and those whose services had earned them a landed property, often of modest size and, in some states, privileges such as exemption from certain types of taxation. Nonetheless, the nobility was clearly identifiable, less from the fact of having received any particular distinction than by its lifestyle and role in society.

By the later fifteenth century the right to hereditary arms was apparently considered to be the principle evidence of nobility for British postulants for membership of the Order of Saint John. Today it is considered to be the sole evidence thereof by the SMHOM, despite the fact that a right to arms is not necessarily proof of nobility and it is certainly not evidence that a particular family has enjoyed a leading role in society for the past century or more. Not all British nobles are necessarily armigerous. Of the extant titled British nobility there are fifteen hereditary barons (in the UK peerage) [1] and twenty-seven baronets who are not technically armigers. [2] The theoretical method of dating the conferral of nobility for the purposes of the British Association of the SMHOM, for those of British descent, is the date on which arms were conferred upon the family of the postulant, so it would appear that none of these Peers or Baronets would have qualified for the SMHOM as "nobles", a clearly nonsensical result. Since those who received knighthoods from the Crown were entitled to petition for a grant and their primogeniture descendants were Esquires, the descendants of those eighteenth and nineteenth century knights who did not so petition surely cannot be considered disqualified from claiming gentility merely because their ancestor did not choose to spend the few pounds necessary to obtain a grant. One cannot deny the nobility of a person who has been actually "ennobled" by the British Crown but has not received a grant, thus proof of the right to hereditary arms cannot be considered an absolute standard for determining whether a postulant is noble.

When the British Association was founded in the mid-nineteenth century the proof of a right to arms was instituted once again. If membership in the noble grades had been limited to the descendants in the male line of the recipients of hereditary titles or knighthoods bestowed by the Crown, the association could only have been very small. Requiring the same broad standard used by the heralds to determine whether a person was entitled to petition for arms could have lacked the objectivity that is bestowed by demanding proof of actually enjoying such a right. The decision to adopt the qualification of being an Armiger may be attributed at least in part to the need to establish some kind of objective standard but, perhaps inevitably, it has proved to be unsatisfactory. In the British Association (as of 31 December 1994), excluding the eighteen descendants in the male line of the recipients of non-British titles or conferrals of nobility, sixty-three members (of whom twenty are hereditary peers and peeresses and two are baronets) out of the one hundred and eighty-three members of the noble grades, are descended in the male line from the grantees of hereditary peerages or baronetcies (i.e. who had been ennobled directly by the Crown). Thus one hundred and seven members of the Association in the grades of Justice, Obedience, Honor or Grace and Devotion may be presumed under the regulations to have proved their right to bear legitimate British arms granted more than three hundred years prior to their application or that their four grandparents enjoyed a right to hereditary arms (for Honor and Devotion) or one hundred years (for Grace and Devotion) as the sole evidence of their nobility. An examination of the roll of members demonstrates, however, that this is not actually the case.

For several members in the noble grades, including peers, proof of descent from the recipient of arms living more than three hundred or one hundred years ago (depending on the rank) has not in practice been treated as the absolute test of nobility. The families of several knights of Honor or Grace and Devotion are the first recipients of grants of arms, sometimes conferred retroactively on an ancestor on the basis that that ancestor would have been eligible for a grant if he had applied and to extend the grant to a wider range of members of that family. For some members a recent male ancestor, who was judged to have enjoyed the status of gentleman, may have been the first recipient of a new grant within much less than the one hundred year limit that is the technical requirement for entry into Grace and Devotion or the three hundred year limit for Honor and Devotion. [3]

In those countries in which the nobility enjoyed substantial privileges, the right to confer membership of this class was guarded jealously by the sovereign but, in England, the prerogative of recognizing nobility by according or confirming arms came to be delegated to the discretion of the Earl Marshal and Kings of Arms and, in Scotland, to the Lord Lyon King of Arms and his Court. Thus, while the conferral of a peerage, baronetcy or knighthood was the exclusive privilege of the English or Scottish Crown, it was never necessary to have received such an honor in order to apply to the Earl Marshal or Lord Lyon for a grant. Since 1964 it has actually become less common for those who have been ennobled by the conferral of life peerages, or who have received a knighthood or other such royal favor, to apply for grants, while many of those who have received grants over the past two centuries may never have received any notable mark of distinction or honorific directly from the Sovereign. Although the Earl Marshal holds his authority from the Crown and members of the College of Arms are officers of the Sovereign's household, the recognition of gentility by a grant of arms is not initiated by the Crown but is a privilege conferred upon the request of a petitioner, subject to the personal sanction of the Earl Marshal. The British Crown has never attempted to restrict entry to the gentry or lesser noble class, leaving it up to the Kings of Arms to define its extent, despite the considerable reluctance of every Monarch until George III to increase the size of the peerage.

Until the early sixteenth century, the spiritual peers were generally in the majority but Henry VIII, in order to ensure passage of his measures against the Queen and against the Church, considerably increased the size of the lay peerage. In 1523 twenty-eight lay peers were summoned to Parliament, in 1529 the number had increased to forty-four and, in 1536, to fifty-three, putting the lay peers in the majority. [4] From the mid-sixteenth century until 1700, the size of the English peerage expanded to one hundred and sixty, thanks in part to the creations made to reward changes of political allegiance. This number remained more or less constant until 1783 but was much smaller in the size of the continental privileged nobility. The considerable changes in the size of the English and British peerage (excluding Scottish and Irish titles) after that date can best be demonstrated by detailing the expansion of the different degrees of the peerage over the following twenty-five years - as of the end of 1808 all eighteen Ducal titles had been created before 1783, but eleven of the twelve Marquesses, twenty-nine (or 31.5%) of the ninety-two Earls, ten (or 45.5%) of the twenty-two Viscounts and an astonishing eighty-nine (or 63%) of the one hundred and forty-one barons, making one hundred and thirty-nine (or 48.9%) of the two hundred and eighty-five peers, were created during this quarter century.

During the period from 1815 to 1964, the British peerage expanded nearly four times, although the number of British peers was proportionately always much less than the titled continental nobility, since a peerage accorded the right to a seat in the nation's parliament. The French Peerage founded in 1814/15 and which continued through the Orléanist Monarchy was of a comparable size and indeed established in imitation of the British. The lesser British nobility or gentry likewise increased enormously during the same period with the establishment of an entrenched upper class whose wealth derived from business or the professions rather than land and whose interest in petitioning for arms was stimulated by Victorian historical revivalism. No longer were hereditary titles conferred in recognition of a family's wealth, standing and power, however, but rather as tokens of regard for meritorious service. Thus the heirs of such titles no longer necessarily represented the leading elite.

Sixteenth and Seventeenth century English writers, as Sayer has demonstrated, [5] established a distinctive hierarchy in the English nobility. The privileges of a peer were always restricted to the peer himself while his sons (irrespective of the courtesy title and precedence they enjoyed as a result of their father's dignity) were by birth all "Esquires," a title which would descend by male primogeniture to the descendants of the peer's younger sons. The same title likewise descends by male primogeniture to the eldest son of a knight or those who had received the title of Esquire from the Crown by investiture, and is born by right by the eldest son of a baronet until his succession. It later came to be attributed to other classes by virtue of office, but only for the duration of the office or lifetime of the holder. [6] All the other male descendants in the male line of peers, baronets, knights and esquires were simply "gentlemen," a very precise term as interpreted by sixteenth and seventeenth century heralds in their visitations, recognizing the fact that such a person was entitled to use or, alternatively, qualified to petition for a grant of arms.

It may be observed that from the late seventeenth century it became increasingly rare for new knights to petition for a grant. Thus, while the descendant of such a knight would be entitled theoretically to the formal style of esquire or gentleman, he would be unable to prove nobility for the Order of Malta. Today the precise meaning of the titles of esquire and gentleman have been lost and they are commonly used without any relation to the armorial status of the person so qualified. [7]

In England and most of Europe from the fifteenth century the possibility of transmission of the right to arms through a female heiress was reduced to the right to quarter the arms, and thus was limited to persons already possessing the right to coat armor. In Scotland and Portugal the transmission unquartered was permitted through the female line (although in the case of Portugal the female arms had to be suitably differenced), but the Order of Malta has resisted recognizing that nobility, as opposed to arms, could be transmitted in this fashion. A case was made by officers of the Scottish Lord Lyon Court for the Order to recognize that "nobility" could be inherited from an "heraldic heiress" and three members of the British Association whose paternal lines were deficient, were treated leniently in the application of the rules because of their inheritance of ancient arms through the female line. Nonetheless, the SMHOM has more recently refused to recognize that proof of a right to Arms inherited from a female could entitle a postulant to claim nobility from the date of the original grant or recognition of those arms. Thus the Order does not automatically accept local nobiliary law when such law conflicts with the general standard (i.e. nobility only passing in the male line). [8] The British rules permit entry into the noble ranks of the descendants of families which have received grants relatively recently. Families which have received grants of arms within the last one hundred and twenty years (when the French Third Republic was instituted), have provided many high officers of the Association in the class of Obedience who would have been ineligible for this class had they been born French. It may be argued that this reflects a more balanced view of society and that there are many continental families which over four or more generations have maintained a status comparable to that of the English gentry.

The jurisdiction of the Lord Lyon King of Arms is more extensive than that of the College of Arms, in both the effect of the Lord Lyon's grant and the penalties that he can impose for improper use of arms. While the grant of arms in England is merely recognition of the gentility of the recipient, the grant or matriculation in Scotland "constitutes" the grantee as a member of the "noblesse"(although this may not be considered the equivalent of "conferring" nobility). As in England, a Scottish grant is made only following the petition of the would-be grantee, thus the Scottish nobility cannot be compared with that of continental Europe whose members owed their status to royal grant or confirmation, after 1815 always initiated by the sovereign. "Constituting" an individual as a member of the noblesse of Scotland, however, is not the exclusive privilege of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, since there can be no doubt that a non-armiger who inherits a Scottish peerage through the female line, or the recipient of membership in the Order of the Thistle, must be considered to be a Scottish noble whether or not that person receives a grant of arms. Under the present regulations of the British Association of the SMHOM it would appear that not only would the non-armigerous heirs of ancient noble titles who had not petitioned for arms be ineligible for the noble grades, but also their lineal descendants. This is a further example of the deficiency of a proof of a right to Arms being considered the sole qualification for the noble grades.

The authority given to the heralds to confirm and grant arms sometimes led, particularly during the Tudor period, to the confirmation of doubtful arms with fanciful descriptions of the confirmee's ancestors as noble and to increasingly frequent grants to deceased persons and their descendants. [9] To halt any possible abuses, a prerequisite to each grant came to be the warrant of the Earl Marshal, a consistent practice since 1673 which today does permit grants to deceased persons in exceptional cases with the assent of the Earl Marshal. [10] Even the Earl Marshal has to rely upon the honesty and impartiality of the officers of the College and this has not always been possible. Since a grant of arms is not of itself creation of nobility but rather recognition of gentility (i.e. of being a "gentleman"), it is logical that the descendant of a person whose immediate ancestor's status was that of a "gentleman", should be able to successfully petition for a grant of arms to that ancestor. This practice has been questioned by continental critics, however, who have misunderstood the fundamental difference between an English grant of arms and a European conferral of nobility. Merely because a person who fell into the definition of "gentleman" had not troubled to petition for arms, should not disqualify a descendant who had maintained the status of "gentleman" from claiming gentility. Such a subjective standard of determining "nobility" (gentility) in England requires careful judgment and creates direct conflict with the standard presently applied in the rest of Europe. But to insist on applying the Continental standard is to misrepresent the nature of the class which is defined as "gentry" in England. The pretense that it is possible today to define this class only by proof of a right to hereditary arms is simply not sustainable.

The English heralds were better organized and armed with greater authority than any of the comparable royal officers in continental Europe. Thus it was possible, through the Heraldic Visitations, to regulate the use of arms and identify the extent of the provincial nobility or gentry. The heralds not only had the right to remove or deface arms used improperly but denounce those who falsely used any title or dignity (other than the arms of peers, which were regulated by Garter King of Arms), including those of Esquire and Gentleman. All who described themselves as Baronet, Knight, Esquire or Gentlemen were summoned by the heralds to prove their right and those who could not prove their right to the style they claimed would be required to sign a disclaimer of arms and gentility (or, if otherwise eligible, petition for a grant) and their names would be published in the local shire town. This duty was taken seriously and the number of disclaimers could be very high - at the 1665-68 Yorkshire Visitation there were two hundred and fifty-seven disclaimers as against four hundred and seventy-two claims entered. [11]

By the mid-seventeenth century the status of "gentleman" was no longer confined to members of county families (the "landed gentry") but also included leading figures in the city of London and other prominent representatives of the merchant and professional classes, without any official differentiation of their status. Indeed, some London merchants were scions of county families who, after amassing a fortune, acquired a country seat and re-established themselves in the landed gentry.

The abandonment of Heraldic Visitations soon after the 1688 revolution was paralleled by a dramatic decline in the number of families petitioning for grants of arms, which it became customary to assume without authority, even though after 1783 new baronets were theoretically required to apply for arms. Thus between 1730 and 1760 there were only one hundred and sixty new English grants, increased tenfold over the next forty years. With eight thousand three hundred and twenty new grants during the nineteenth century and an even greater numbers in the twentieth (there are now approximately one hundred and fifty grants to individuals per annum in England alone), the size of the armigerous gentry has been expanding, while in the rest of Europe the nobility has been steadily decreasing. [12] After 1688, however, one could no longer define the elite of society, the landed gentry, by a universal right to coat armor. Since there was no compulsion for those styling themselves gentleman or esquire to apply for a grant, many of those who evidently enjoyed that status did not bother to do so just as many assumed Arms who could not properly be styled Gentleman. In the twentieth century a substantial proportion of applications for grants were made for historical or romantic reasons and neither the petitioner nor society saw the conferment of such grants as recognition of any particular social status.

This is particularly relevant since loss of social status did not deprive the descendant of an Armiger of a right to arms and. therefore theoretical membership of the lesser noble class, even if his standing in the community was no longer that of "gentleman". The social changes from the end of seventeenth until the mid-nineteenth centuries, with the growth of larger estates and the conversion of many smaller manors to tenant farmhouses, led to the size of the landed county families being halved. Although many families disappeared through the lack of a male heir, the number of armigers who became absorbed into the masses was considerable. The descendants of such families, with diligent genealogical research, can today prove "nobility" and, if their candidature is otherwise acceptable to the SMHOM, may demand admission into the rank of Honor and Devotion ahead of families which may have played a prominent role in British society for several recent generations. [13]

Sixteenth and seventeenth century heralds required proof of a right to arms to qualify a person as an "esquire" or "gentleman" in order to ensure that persons entitled to this qualification would petition for a grant. But membership of the English class of "gentry" was defined in practice primarily by social and economic standing rather than the right to hereditary arms. An attempt to equate the British gentry with the continental nobility was made by the Stuart kings in exile, who issued many declarations or confirmations of nobility for their adherents to assist them in obtaining preferment for offices for which nobility was a qualification. While most of the recipients of such declarations were armigers, not all were and proof of a right to arms was not seen as a prerequisite for such a declaration.

During the seventeenth century the privilege of nobility came to be conferred almost as broadly in much of continental Europe as grants of arms were conceded in England, although the right to create nobles or confirm nobility in Europe was very rarely delegated to a third party. In the Italian and German city states and in certain Spanish cities, the right to recognize noble status was assumed by the local powers which, in Italy, were often Republican. But by the Reformation these jurisdictions had generally been overturned and replaced by a Monarchical structure, as when the Florentine Republic was succeeded by the Medici Duchy of Florence and Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

Among the several ways in which the later nobility of continental Europe may be distinguished from the English gentry, defined by public achievements, occupation and social and economic standing, is the fact that they owed their status to royal favor. In France nobility was normally conferred or confirmed in a patent signed by the Sovereign himself. Tenure of certain offices, such as Secretaire du Roi, which could be acquired by purchase with the consent of the Sovereign, could also confer personal nobility or with some offices hereditary nobility when the office was enjoyed by three successive generations. This class of nobility, while treated before 1798 as a lower degree by the Order of Malta, was in law nonetheless a specific noble status, recognized by the addition of the particule to the name. Until Colbert's reformations, the responsibility of examining claims to nobility was consigned to the Juge d'Armes, but afterwards the responsibility was delegated to the Intendants of each province who, by confirming such claims, could occasionally authenticate the spurious; generally, however, the French nobility was carefully regulated and its privileges closely guarded.

Within the French privileged nobility there was a small hereditary elite, the Peers, who enjoyed the right to a seat in the Parlement of Paris (not a political assembly but a superior law court), and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries numbered between forty and fifty. Their numbers were considerably extended under the Restoration and July Monarchies (in the latter case being nominated for life), when they were given a similar function to the British House of Lords. In Spain, the "grandees of the first class" were likewise a specially privileged elite with precedence before all other titled nobles from the date of the grandeeship, but without political privileges. A politically privileged Sicilian peerage was established during the British protectorate but was abolished in 1815 and only revived briefly during the 1848 revolution. Both Austria and Prussia established different forms of peerages during the nineteenth centuries, but more akin to a nominated Senate.

Elsewhere in Europe, when a sovereign wished to buy support, nobility might be granted more widely. The quarrels between the Bourbons and Habsburgs over possession of the Two Sicilies insured that each side paid-off their partisans with the wholesale conferment of titles and nobility. Meanwhile in the more politically stable states, uninterested in territorial expansion, the noble class remained more exclusive. In Russia a hierarchy was established by which the military and the bureaucracy were automatically ennobled according to the rank they held, vastly increasing the size of the nobility as a proportion of the population in the years between 1700 and 1900. In Poland the nobility was approximately ten per cent of the population, having expanded substantially in the seventeenth century (any Jew who converted to Catholicism would be automatically ennobled, for example), although there was a tremendous gulf between the great nobles (such as the Czartoryski and Zamoyski families) and the lesser nobles, some of whom were just one step away from the peasantry and would often not qualify as "gentlemen" by the British definition.

The Order's nobiliary authorities were generally keen to protect what was considered to be the "purity" of noble blood, and each Langue had different concerns. In France and Italy there was a continuing controversy over the acceptance of descent from noblesse de robe families in any of the required noble quarters, many knights considering that each quarter should be a noblesse de l'epée family. [14] The three French Langues, until the mid-seventeenth century, required proof of nobility in four quarters for two hundred years but, on 24 November 1673, an alternative requirement of proof of eight quarters for more than one hundred years was introduced. [15] With the exception of the Nobilities of the Republics of Lucca and Genoa and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Italian Langue excluded those urban noble families which had amassed fortunes in trade or banking, making such participation a total bar to membership of the Order of Saint John. The Italian proofs still require proof of nobility in four quarters for more than two hundred years, this latter restriction having been introduced by the Chapter-General of 1598. [16] Vertot complained that in the states of the Church, which purported to exclude banking and business families, this rule was not enforced with sufficient strictness. [17] He complimented the Germans, however, for continuing to exclude nobles whose wealth derived from business although he ignored the fact the Germans actually did accept such families if their nobility had been granted by the Emperor prior to 1582 (the Thurn und Taxis and Fugger families for example). Whatever the ideals of a purist such as Vertot, in practice there was much greater flexibility and, despite sometimes bitter resistance, the need to find qualified recruits meant that compromises were not infrequently made.

In Spain proof of nobility in four quarters for four generations [18] was required. Considering the size of the Spanish nobility, this was a much more modest standard than that prevailing in France and Germany, but an additional requirement was that none of the four families could have been of non-Christian descent. [19] The examination of proofs was confined mainly to the testimony of witnesses and less weight was given to documentary proofs. In Portugal, which as part of Langue of Castille subscribed to the Spanish rules, the Crown had long established a public register of noble families and provided the four families were included therein, no further inquiry was necessary. The German Langue was the most rigorous of all, with illegitimate sons, even of royal houses, being excluded (unlike the other Langues) and each postulant having to prove that the families of all sixteen great-great-grandparents were born into the military nobility. The majority of German Swiss knights, part of the German Langue, had received their grant from the Emperor or some other German Sovereign. Postulants who were unable to prove nobility could instead provide evidence that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born legitimate and of "honorable estate" and that none of them had practiced any of the "vile offices or sordid or mechanical arts." [20] Today the rules of the Swiss Association require candidates to prove nobility according to the rules of the German, French or Italian Associations, depending on the canton from which their family originates.

The French Revolution marked the beginning of an end of a privileged noble class in most of Europe, but the conferment of noble titles actually increased dramatically, since nobility no longer carried any significant prerogative (such as exemption from taxation) but was an inexpensive means for sovereigns to reward their prominent subjects. The new nobility was no longer an identifiable class, however. With the exception of the hereditary lay peerage in Great Britain and its short-lived equivalents in France and Sicily, and the still-extant Spanish grandeeships, each of which elites were only a minority of the whole noble class, it enjoyed neither prerogatives nor responsibility; the assumption of the particule became a mark of social achievement rather than a sign of privilege. Only in Russia did the noble class enjoy any substantive privileges but these were gradually diminished during the course of the century. In France, Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Charles X together more than doubled the size of the titled nobility in a period of only twenty-two years, while during the later nineteenth century the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Savoy Monarchies likewise recognized the new social realities by the widespread conferment of nobility on bankers, industrialists, bureaucrats and local and national politicians.

The differing numbers of the nobility as a proportion of the population and the disparity in relative status in the formerly sovereign states that compose united Spain, Italy and Germany, has led to some strange anomalies where similar regulations for noble proofs apply to all. There are far fewer noble families in northern Italy than in the south, making the proofs more arduous for some than others. A typical anomaly resulting from the varied histories of different parts of the same country is that one of Italy's most prominent and distinguished citizens, Avvocato Giovanni Agnelli, whose mother was born a Bourbon del Monte of the Princes of San Faustino and whose paternal family's position in early 19th century Piedmont would certainly have been recognized by ennoblement in southern Italy (two later nineteenth century ancestors declined offers of noble titles from the Savoy kings). Nonetheless he was only entitled to be admitted to the Order in the rank of Magistral Grace, in which he holds the grade of knight.

The disparity in the rules between different national associations has meant that two members of the Stagno dei principi di Alcontres family, noble in the direct male line since the 14th century, the hereditary Prince of Oettingen-Oettingen und Oettingen-Wallerstein, whose mother is a Countess Schenck von Stauffenberg and who is noble in the male line since the tenth century, and Princess Huberta von Croy, born a Baroness of Wolff-Metternich and noble in the male line for more than five hundred years, are all enrolled in Grace and Devotion, although under the British rules they would have been eligible for Honor and Devotion. In North America, almost all the members of the second class are the first grantees of arms (often retroactive) or recipients of confirmations from the Chief Herald of Ireland, having undertaken this expense in order to fulfill the requirement of proving nobility according to the European standard, as they wished to make a deeper spiritual commitment to the Order by seeking promotion to the rank of Obedience. There are now proposals to reform the class of Obedience with both Knights and Dames of all three lay ranks of the third class being able to make this special promise.

In Spain a higher proportion of northern than southern families and all Navarre families established before a certain date are technically noble (although this class of nobility is unrecognized by the four military Orders), while in some German states nobility was more common than in others. In the Netherlands it is necessary only to prove nobility in the paternal line for one hundred and fifty years to be eligible for Honor and Devotion, while in Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland that would be insufficient for Grace and Devotion. Being a noble in Sicily generally meant something very different to being a noble in much of northern Europe, just as most Sicilian princes rarely enjoy the same prestige, status and wealth, even in Sicily, as the heads of German mediatized princely houses or French or English dukes do in their countries.

---

Footnotes

[1] Amwell (1947), Archibald (1949), Burden (1950), Hemingford (1943), Kershaw (1947), Lindsay of Birker (1945), Macandrew (1959), Marley (1930), Moran (1943), Morris of Kenwood (1950), Morrison (1945), Shepherd (1946), Silkin (1950), Simon of Wythenshawe (1947) and Strang (1954)

[2] Including several eighteenth and nineteenth-century creations namely Houston-Boswell (1836), Duntze (1774), Elton (1777), Ogilvy-Wedderburn (1803) and Young of North Dean (1769).

[3] The nobility of one high ranking member of the Association, presently in the category of Obedience but admitted to membership as a knight of Grace and Devotion in 1971, then subsequently transferred to Honor and Devotion, is an interesting case in point. Of his four grandparents, the paternal line did not receive a grant of arms until 1929 (from Lord Lyon), the same year as this gentleman's birth and that grant was to a collateral, not a direct ancestor. This individual is, through his father's mother, the representative of a collateral line of an ancient Scottish family. In no European Association would such proofs be sufficient even for Grace and Devotion without a special allowance for the antiquity of this second quarter, as it is the antiquity of the nobility in the paternal line which is considered of primary importance. Two other members of the Association, one in Honor and the other in Grace and Devotion, also claimed these ranks by virtue of proving the antiquity of their maternal rather than the paternal lines, which would not have qualified them for the nobiliary grades. Theoretically, as the British Association rules required four quarters, it was possible for a non-armigerous postulant with four living grandparents to have each of them apply for new grants and thereby make him (or her) eligible for Honor and Devotion. To prevent such obvious misapplications of the rules, the regulations now require postulants for Honor and Devotion who are unable to prove male line nobility for more than three hundred years to submit four quarterings, proving that each grandparent was born armigerous and that none were the first recipient of a grant.

[4] J. Horace Round, MA, Studies in Peerage and History, pp. 330-346.

[5] M. J. Sayer, MA, English Nobility, the Gentry, Heralds and the Continental Conflict, Norfolk Heraldry Society, 1970, p.4.

[6] Sayer, Op.cit., p.9, lists such offices as those of High Sheriff, Justices of the Peace, Heralds, Serjeant-at-Arms, Serjeants-at-Law, Doctors of Divinity and Dignified Prebends, while Barristers-at-Law were qualified as gentleman (and, until recent reforms, could not therefore sue for their fees). In the United States the style of esquire has come to be the exclusive perquisite of a qualified lawyer whether male or female and is almost never used to describe any other class of citizen.

[7] The right to bear hereditary arms, differenced by a label for each cadet branch of the family, was proven (in the sixteenth and seventeenth century) either by descent in the male line from a grantee, from someone whose right to arms had already been recorded, or, if the person concerned showed evidence of a public position which would have entitled him to a grant, by prescriptive use for more than eighty years.

[8] For a fuller discussion of the descent of nobility through females, see Sayer Op.cit., p.6.

[9] For a broad discussion of various invented pedigrees and the activities of sixteenth and seventeenth century heralds in this regard, see Round, Op.cit.

[10] See Sayer, Op.cit., p.7.

[11] Sayer, Op.cit., p.9.

[12] See Sayer, Op.cit., pp.13-16. These figures ignore the large number of grants made by the Scottish Lord Lyon Kings of Arms during the same period. The Republic of Ireland has also established its own genealogical office with a civil servant appointed as Chief Herald . The Chief Herald has the authority to issue confirmations of arms to any person who can establish descent from an Irish Armiger, or make a new grant of arms to any person of Irish descent, whatever their social standing. Since the constitution of the Irish Republic has forbidden the grant of titles of nobility, the English College has taken the view that grants by the Chief Herald (and the only grants recognized by the College are to those born after the Republic finally severed all its links with the British Crown on 29 December 1937, since before that date the Ulster King's authority still prevailed), are of burgher, not noble, arms. Thus the descendants of such grantees may not necessarily be able to claim nobility in the SMHOM in the British Association, even though it is unlikely that the Irish Association will take this view of the entitlement of the descendants of Irish grantees.

[13] A significant limitation to this is the strict standard now demanded by the College of Arms in proving descent from a recorded Armiger. With many parish records missing and no alternative source (wills, etc) for families at the bottom of the social scale, those families which did lose their status as gentry do, in practice, find it harder to prove such descent.

[14] Vertot, Op.cit., Vol IV, Dissertation, pp.9-20. The differences between the military nobility and the noblesse de robe was not always as clear as Vertot maintained and, despite his criticisms, noblesse de robe quarters continued to be accepted by the French Langue.

[15] See Bertini Frassoni, Il Sovrano Militare Ordine di S. Giovanni di Gerusalemme, detto di Malta, Rome 1629, p.64. These alternative standards are still retained by the French Association, but with some flexibility regarding quartering substitution.

[16] For a fuller discussion of the noble proofs of each Langue, see Bertini Frassoni, Op.cit., pp.63-78.

[17] In this context it is worth noting that of the sixty-one Popes who reigned between 1362 and 1963, only seventeen came from the old military nobility, while twenty-five came from the banking or commercial nobility, twelve from the bourgeoisie and seven from peasant families. By a special convention the descendants in the male line of the brothers of a Pope are eligible for Honor and Devotion without further proof - and the majority of Papal families could not make the required proofs for Honor and Devotion under the Italian, German or French rules.

[18] There were some slight variations within the Spanish Langue in different provinces. See Bertini Frassoni Op.cit., p.64.

[19] This rule, and the measures taken against the Jews in 1492, have been interpreted as evidence of Christian intolerance but should be better understood as the inevitable result of militant nationalism. Spanish Christians had for centuries lived in fear of the Moors, who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had been ruled by a fanatical Moslem fundamentalist dynasty bent on the destruction of Christian civilization in Spain. This had encouraged a form of ardent nationalism whose triumph was finally marked by the surrender of the Moorish king of Granada at the end of the fifteenth century. The Spanish quickly persuaded themselves that their security depended on total homogeneity under a centralized Crown and accordingly instituted harsh laws designed to bring about the conversion of all to Christianity. The rules of the military Orders, which had provided the bravest and most determined crusaders, had been designed to ensure that there was no possibility of a family relationship with anyone who could possibly be numbered among the enemies of a united Christian Spain and hence excluded the descendants of non-Christians from membership.

[20] See Bertini Frassoni, Op.cit., p.64.

THE NOBILIARY CHARACTER OF THE ORDER OF MALTA

THE ORIGINS OF THE NOBILIARY REQUIREMENTS FOR MEMBERSHIP IN THE ORDER OF MALTA

MAINTENANCE OF THE NOBILIARY TRADITIONS OF THE ORDER OF MALTA

NOBILITY, THE NEW WORLD AND THE ORDER OF MALTA

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COVID-19 doctors not allowed to use treatments that work - Dr McCullough Video and transcript May 2021 | VitaminDWiki

https://vitamindwiki.com/COVID-19+doctors+not+allowed+to+use+treatments+that+work+-+Dr+McCullough+Video+and+transcript+May+2021#Transcript

COVID-19 doctors not allowed to use treatments that work - Dr McCullough Video and transcript May 2021

Table of contents

• Vimeo Video Interview 5/19/2021
  • Introduction by John Leake
• Transcript
  • He published The Pathophysiologic Rationale ,,,
  • No positive feedback from his paper
  • Emergency Use Authorization for hydroxychloroquine
  • Fake paper published in Lancet
  • Hydroxychloroquine - the most studied and used therapeutic
  • Enormous effort to suppress early treatment. Hydroxychloroquine
  • Hydroxychloroquin not cause scarring of the heart
  • Hydroxychloroquin is useful, but not as a single drug
  • ivermectin and FLCCC
  • hydroxychloroquine and Ivermetic used for prevention and early treatment
  • Drs. unable to get consensus when they could not meet during COVID-19
  • His father got COVID-19 and was treated by zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, quercetin, etc.
  • our methods could reduce hospitalization and death by 85% - We're treating 10,000 to 15,000 patients a day.
  • South Africa success customizing treatment to each patient
  • 40% of drug use is "off label"
  • Drs being told to not treat COVID-19 with drugs
  • FDA, etc say what not to do, but does not say what to do
  • monoclonal antibodies - emergency use authorized, big money, but no updated information
  • Extensive "advertising" for vaccines, but nothing else
  • monoclonal antibodies being squashed, vaccines promoted
  • Vaccines were not tested on pregnant women, but they are vaccinated anyway
  • Previous vaccines had 48 months of testing, this one had 2 months before getting EUA
  • Feedback to his paper - do not try treating, we do not have published studies
  • He and his wife got COVID-19 in October
  • early treatment doctors started to become scrubbed
  • America has offered nothing to the sick person.
  • Early treatment without hospitals
  • international Dr. group called C-19
  • Combination therapy works, rarely wil a single drug work
  • Drs. being penalized for prescribing treatments
  • This is not new - The first Dr. using lung machine for polio was thrown off the staff
  • Book: "COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are The Prey",
  • Why are we vaccinating pregnancies, why are we vaccinating young health care workers?
  • He had estimated maybe 20 million people would need to be vaccinated,
  • We knew from the clinical trials that it didn't stop COVID-19
  • He is pro-vaccine in general - but now 4,000 vaccine-related deaths
    when Swine vaccine deaths reached 25, it was stopped
  • Marked in a database - but not if have nautral immunity?
  • If the vaccine was like water ... who wouldn't take it?
  • He had vaccinated many, but "I can no longer recommend it."
    - - patients are getting vaccinated to something that doesn't even exist anymore
    "It's just like giving everybody a narrow spectrum antibiotic"
    • Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection
• VitaminDWiki
  • COVID-19 treated by Vitamin D - studies, reports, videos
  • Additional ways to prevent COVID-19
  • Ivermectin
  • Vaccines
  • Virus videos or books
• Mercola interviewed McCullough: video and transcript (before July 3, 2021)
• McCullough has weekly podcasts
  • Presentation at Commonwealth Club in SF, July 14, 2021
• Rebutal
• Web

---

Vimeo Video Interview 5/19/2021

Dr. Peter McCullough Interview

Introduction by John Leake

Dr. Peter McCullough has been the world's most prominent and vocal advocate for early outpatient treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection in order to prevent hospitalization and death. On May 19, 2021, I interviewed him about his efforts as a treating physician and researcher. From his unique vantage point, he has observed and documented a PROFOUNDLY DISTURBING POLICY RESPONSE to the pandemic — a policy response that may prove to be the greatest malpractice and malfeasance in the history of medicine and public health.

Dr. McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A & M College of Medicine, Dallas, TX USA. Since the outset of the pandemic, Dr. McCullough has been a leader in the medical response to the COVID-19 disaster and has published "Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection" the first synthesis of sequenced multidrug treatment of ambulatory patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the American Journal of Medicine and subsequently updated in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine. He has 40 peer-reviewed publications on the infection and has commented extensively on the medical response to the COVID-19 crisis in TheHill and on FOX NEWS Channel. On November 19, 2020, Dr. McCullough testified in the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and throughout 2021 in the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, Colorado General Assembly, and New Hampshire Senate concerning many aspects of the pandemic response.

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, FACP, FACC, FAHA, FCRSA, FCCP, FNKF, FNLA
Professor of Medicine, Texas A & M College of Medicine
Board Certified Internist and Cardiologist
President Cardiorenal Society of America
Editor-in-Chief, Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine
Editor-in-Chief, Cardiorenal Medicine
Senior Associate Editor, American Journal of Cardiology
For more information about Dr. McCullough, please visit: heartplace.com/dr-peter-a-mcculloug

Transcript

0:00:11.2 Dr. Peter McCullough: I'm Dr. Peter McCullough, and I'm an internist and cardiologist, and academic physician, professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine on the Baylor, Dallas campus. And in February of 2020, like many physicians, I was really taken by storm with the news that a tremendously contagious virus was emanating out of Wuhan, China, and it looks like the United States was in the cross-hairs.

0:00:47.2 DM: In the beginning, in my clinical practice, I really didn't have any viewpoint about prior viral pandemics, and some had mentioned prior influenza, pandemics... We go back to 1300s, there was plagues that occurred across Europe, but point in fact, we were largely and very quickly thrown into emergency mode, and so what happened was a whole series of communications within health systems that really dealt with protection of the doctors and nurses and Americans were introduced to a term called PPE or personal protective equipment, and most of our task force meetings and calls really didn't have to do with sick patients, it had to do with protection of the health care workers and doctors, so I got a sense early on that fear, group fear was a major driver in behavioral response to the pandemic.

0:01:44.4 DM: My research endeavors and my research life before COVID-19 centered on the interface between heart and kidney disease, I'm the president of the Cardio Renal Society of America, I'm considered the most published person on this topic in the world in history, I chair many FDA approved clinical trial data safety monitoring board. In fact, I've probably seen and examined more drug safety trial data than any doctor in current American medicine, so I'm well-grounded in chronic disease epidemiology in randomized trials but for COVID-19, our major viewpoint that we had early on, or at least for me with my prior cardio renal collaborations was with Italian doctors, and so we were starting to email each other in terms of what is going on in the Metro Milan area, and Milan and then down to Siena and Tuscany, and we quickly started to get an understanding that this illness was like a upper respiratory infection, like a common cold, and for a majority of individuals, it was like the common cold, however, in some individuals, it could progress to what we call the Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, where there's an overwhelming attack against the lungs, patients lost their ability to breathe and exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, and then required mechanical intubation, so this was unlike any common cold, and it appeared to be very different than influenza.

0:03:18.2 DM: Influenza in elderly people can also cause the Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, but it's almost always because of a secondary bacterial infection, like staphylococcal infection. So SARS-CoV-2, the virus in COVID-19 appeared to have these special features, and then within a few weeks, we understood pretty clearly that the illness had three major biological features to it, one was early viral replication where the virus replicates exponentially as other viral infections do. And that it has a second phase where the immune system is tipped off into a very abnormal maladaptive pattern, so instead of the immune system defending the body, the immune system sends out signals that begin to damage organs, including the heart, the lungs, kidneys, the brain, the blood system, and then very importantly, the virus itself, through the spike protein or the dangerous spicule on the surface of the ball of the virus, the spike protein itself caused coagulation or blood clotting and a unique type of coagulation. It caused the red blood cells to stick together at the same time, the platelets stick together, so this is a very different type of blood clotting that we would see with major blood clots in the arteries and veins, for instance, blood clots involved in stroke and heart attack, blood clots involved in major blood vessels and the legs.

0:04:50.1 DM: This was a different type of clotting, and in fact, the Italians courageously did some autopsies and found micro-blood clots in the lungs, and so we understood in the end, the reason why the lungs fail, it's not because the virus is there, it's because micro blood clots are there.

0:05:11.9 DM: The waves of reports and published medical literature originally emanated out of China, the early ones, and the public should understand that the typical publication cycle for an academic paper that's peer-reviewed and published can be anywhere from nine months to two years. So what happened was the publication cycles were too long to get any rapid information out, so immediately our system collapsed into what's called pre-prints, so publications would be submitted, papers would be submitted for publication, but the pre-print would come out basically telling the world that the paper had not yet undergone peer review, but we need to get this information out now 'cause people need to understand what's going on. So we had a wave from China originally, which was difficult to interpret because of English writing, because the Chinese population is just so different in terms of its structure, and it was hard to make much out of what was coming out of China outside of... In some cases, it could be fatal.

0:06:15.5 DM: Italy was much more like the United States, there was the next big wave, and we just collaborate more freely with the Italians, and what I had done is I had reached out to what's called the cortical network in Italy as an American doctor, and I freely said, Listen, I am not a virologist or an immunologist, but I can tell you every infectious disease doctor in America is completely subscribed to inpatient care of patients with COVID-19, and there's nobody able to think their way through what's going on in the pandemic. And so what we learned relatively early is that this illness was clearly and strongly amenable to risk stratification or that baseline risks were very, very strong determinants, even more so than the virus itself for mortality. So what that meant is the strongest determinant of mortality is age, and age itself is an underline determinant or a cause of death, if you will, in the general population, then we start adding on the typical things that put people at risk for death of other causes, heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes. The interesting thing is that obesity appeared to be a super loaded factor, and so the virus seemed to really prey upon patients, particularly who are obese.

0:07:40.6 DM: And there are some reasons for this in terms of how the cytokines and immune factors are generated in response to the virus that could explain it, but we understood quickly that individuals under age 50, for example, with no major medical problems, could ride through this illness very easily, and in fact, the Swedes figured this out very quickly and said, You know what, we're not gonna shut down, we can just... This is sufficiently understood that we can simply protect the individuals at risk the best we can, the best that any protection measure can, and then we'll just have our economy and our schools move along in a usual fashion. With the pandemic, what happened is it was a global shutdown on travel and a global shutdown in academic meetings, so for the first time in my career, we could no longer meet with our colleagues in the United States or overseas. And academic medicine, its life blood is meeting an interchange of ideas. And so for the first time, we could not freely interchange ideas as a group.

0:08:46.6 DM: In fact, I recall a teleconference early on, held by the National Institutes of Health, strictly actually by the Division of insulin... Of Diabetes and Kidney disease, it was that institute that I'm aligned with in terms of clinical trials and it was led by Dr. Robert Star, a terrific scientist, and as I recall, there were hundreds of people on the call to just learn about what was going on in other centers, and people were asking each other, Well, what are you seeing out at UCLA? What are you seeing at Baylor? And what are you seeing at Harvard? And so we were literally just communicating to try to understand what in the world is going on with this virus? Who needs to be hospitalized? What happens when they're hospitalized? Who needs mechanical ventilation.

0:09:33.3 DM: All of these interactions had us settle on the idea that this was enormously amenable to risk stratification. People under age 50 without new medical problems, unless they presented with severe symptoms, they were gonna be fine, honestly, it was gonna be like a head cold. But over age 50, there became a real risk of hospitalization and death, and the two important endpoints, the two important endpoints were hospitalization and death. If you ask Americans, What are you afraid of? Are you're afraid of getting a cold and being at home for a few days or a few weeks? No, I'm afraid... I'm definitely afraid of being hospitalized and obviously afraid of dying. Why was the hospitalization so frightening? Because for the first time, patients would be hospitalized, they were put into isolation, they could never see their loved ones again.

0:10:21.6 DM: Those who died actually never did see their loved ones again. The workers were terrified, they were wearing personal protective equipment, they had very reduced visitation to patients in rooms, they started using telemedicine services were the poor patients were in glass rooms, no one was coming in and seeing them, and the care that was offered was modest, honestly, it was supportive care until patients need to go on the respirator, so to sit in the hospital on oxygen, terrified day by day by day, no one being able to come in the room, not being able to see their family, these messages got out to other family members and it put America on watch with extraordinary fear. Now, over the last year, I've published, and I've managed to get this out, despite our incredibly difficult publication cycles, I've published 40 peer-reviewed papers on COVID-19, that may be more than anybody in America. One of my very first papers, the title of it, and the paper dealt with what are the important outcomes? That's hospitalization and death, and when I started to see that scoreboard come up on the major media channels where it listed positive cases and death, and all the Americans remember this, this was up there almost instantaneously, it came from Johns Hopkins, instantaneously, it was cases and deaths, and I kinda wondered, how did they get that information so quickly?

0:11:43.7 DM: That was amazing. We don't have death certifications and other things that are very rapid at all, and who could be determining this, but in any way, it was up there, and what I said was, I said really what we need to know is who's being hospitalized, because if we can't figure out who's being hospitalized, and we can't figure out where the hospitalizations are occurring, we don't know where to allocate resources. So I published a paper on this in the journal that I edit Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine, I immediately wanted to reach the American public, I published an op-ed in The Hill, which is a newsletter out of Washington, and I said, Listen, there's an emergent need, we need the hospitalizations. And I screamed as loud as I could to the administration to say, Listen, get an executive order to get the US hospital census every day so we could see what was going on. It never happened. We got an executive order to get the positive test results to come in from all the major laboratories and through the hospital laboratories because all the tests for the virus were under the emergency use authorization, so it was linked to an executive order.

0:12:54.6 DM: So the positive tests were just coming into the Johns Hopkins Center, so we knew who was test positive, there was no control over duplicates by the way, so if a patient had one or two or three tests, unless the system had a way of actually filtering out these duplicates, those piled on, and it really didn't take into consideration who was sick and who wasn't sick, so we just had test positive and then we had the deaths, which started to take on a cadence of trailing by about four weeks after the positive test cases, but that whole death ascertainment was a real mystery to Americans, and what I said, I think it was around March or April, I basically made the statement relatively publicly, I said, Listen, there are two bad outcomes, hospitalization and death. I'm gonna put together a team of doctors and figure out how to stop these hospitalizations and death. I felt compelled as an academic leader in medicine, if no one in the White House can say that... No one in the White House task force could say that, if no one in the FDA could say that, or the NIH or the CDC, and Americans were pouring into hospitals and dying, no one could make that courageous statement. Uniquely and individually and alone I made that statement.

0:14:20.9 DM: We had as our country's leadership, an inability to frame the problem. The problem was there was a virus, it was popping up in clusters in the United States, and in most people it was causing a cold and they got through it just fine, in other people, It was leading to hospitalization and death but we couldn't frame the problem that the virus in some people causes hospitalization and death, let's stop it. Let's stop the hospitalizations and death, let's treat the virus, we could not frame that problem, our leaders couldn't frame that problem. I personally didn't have any problem framing the problem. It's a bad thing. If there was another form of pneumonia out there, I would have said the same thing, another form of newly acquired asthma, another form of a urogenital infection or gastrointestinal infection. Ebola had just been actually in Dallas a few years earlier, and I think Ebola hurt us in terms of our thinking, because Ebola was so terribly contagious and so quickly fatal that the fear that Ebola created in Dallas was extraordinary. I'll never forget at our medical center one time I tried to get in one of the usual doors that I go into and there was a police officer there, I said, What's going on? He goes, We're here to block anybody with Ebola from coming in our hospital, we're going to shunt them to Presbyterian Hospital north of us.

0:15:55.7 DM: When do we shunt patients away from one hospital... The fear that Ebola created because of this idea was terribly contagious and fatal quickly, I think set us on edge, and with SARS-CoV-2 virus, what we learned is the average person sits at home for two weeks, there's no immediate lethality to the virus. In fact, we've got a long window of time to make a diagnosis, organize treatment, and prevent hospitalization and death. So SARS-CoV-2 was very different from Ebola, but we look at other conditions where we readily accept the fact that somebody can fall ill at home, but if we start treatment early with an infection, we can save the patient. That exists for community-acquired pneumonias. It occurs for various forms of staff infection, staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome, it occurs for diverticulitis and abdominal conditions, it occurs for skin infections, various forms of cellulitis. It occurs from meningitis. For instance, if someone had a forming meningitis, we wouldn't say, Listen to sit at home for two weeks, and then if you're really, really bad and you're having seizures and you can't even breathe anymore, then come in the hospital and we'll start treatment.

0:17:14.9 DM: So the different unique aspect of the medical response to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 was for the first time we had an infectious disease where the medical community settled into a groupthink, and this was supported by the NIH, the CDC, the FDA, the American Medical Association, all the medical societies, it was supported by these societies to tell doctors, don't touch this virus, let patients stay at home, let them get as sick as humanly possible, and then when they can't breathe anymore, then go to the hospital. In fact, it was shocking in October 8th when the National Institutes of Health came out with our first set of treatment guidelines, because prior to that, none of the societies had any treatment guidelines, they actually didn't tell doctors how to treat the illness. Now there were suggestions about what should be done in the hospital but Americans cared about what was going on when they got sick at home, and the first set of guidelines said, you get sick at home, don't do anything. Don't do anything, come into the hospital when you really can't breathe, still don't do anything. Until a patient needs oxygen, then start doing something, then actually give the first anti-viral drug, which was Remdesivir.

0:18:32.0 DM: Well that's 14 days after the virus had already started replicating, by that time, the virus is long gone. When people can't breathe, the problem is micro-blood clotting in the lungs, so the federal agencies, CDC, the NIH and FDA, were enormously inept in terms of perceiving what this problem was. Incredibly inept in applying any type of judgment or direction to doctors. And what had happened among the doctors was we're so terribly frightened, we're not gonna do anything unless we have the intellectual support from our associations, from our federal agencies, from our medical societies, and it was just the opposite of what medicine had always been. Medicine had always been early innovation by doctors, empiric treatment, small studies, randomized trials, and then sponsored large randomized trials in that order, and then after large randomized trials, then guidelines bodies would then look at all those large randomized trials, make determinations of what should be done, and then those guidelines bodies would issue guidelines, and then the federal agencies would follow the guidelines. That's exactly what we do for mammography, colonoscopy, treatment of myocardial infarction, treatment of pneumonia. It always started out with early empiricism, then getting to guidelines and agency statements years later.

0:20:00.2 DM: It was a dangerous assumption to assume there's nothing that one can do for a fatal infection is enormous blunder, it's a blunder by citizens, it's a blunder by health responders, and it's a massive blunder by agencies. Can you imagine... Let's make an assumption, and could our assumption lead to the absolute worst possible outcome, which would be hospitalization and death?

0:20:29.0 DM: Or we can make another assumption and say, You know what, it's treatable, we're gonna try to treat it, which assumption is more dangerous? Absolutely, the dangerous assumption is to do nothing, the dangerous... You could take any example, let's make an assumption on traffic safety, you can assume that traffic safety rules and lines and stop signs and seat belts do something, or you can assume they don't. Let's try and let's have a free for all out on the streets right now and see what happens versus pay attention to some rules. We never make assumptions that are dangerous to people, and the thing that really worried me about this whole thing is this series of extraordinarily dangerous assumptions. Can you imagine a senior citizen who has heart and lung disease, recovered from cancer, has some kidney disease, is handed a diagnostic test result and says, Here you have COVID-19, now you have your fatal diagnosis. Our recommendations based on the assumption, we can't do anything, is go home and wait it out, and when that panic and that fear and that breathlessness and that fever is so overwhelming, when you can't bear it anymore, then go to the hospital and...

0:21:42.1 DM: How do people go to the hospital? They call family members. They contaminate all their family members. They call EMS, Uber drivers, taxi drivers. Every hospitalization in America was a super spreader event. So this assumption that there's nothing we could do, and giving somebody a fatal diagnosis with no instructions led to a massive amplification of cases. So what we could have assumed and what I did assume was that there are some principles we can adopt from other precedents. For example, every form of pneumonia known to man does better if treated early, even influenza. And that's the reason why Tamiflu, as an example, and there's an analogous product RFDA-approved for the treatment of influenza. They have some partial effect. Now, do we ever use Tamilflu alone? No, we typically combine it with other drugs to get patients through the illness. There are supportive respiratory drugs. There are forms of inhalers, what's called beta-agonist inhalers and steroid inhalers. We use those liberally in forms of emphysema, pneumonia, asthma, allergic pneumonitis. There's other things that we can do to help patients get through the syndrome.

0:23:00.1 DM: The inflammatory nature of the syndrome became very interesting. We understand that antihistamines, as an example, montelukast, aspirin, steroids, corticosteroids, play an important role. If I had an asthmatic at home, I wouldn't say, "Listen, sit at home for two weeks until you can't breathe anymore, and then go into the hospital." Are you kidding me? I'd put that asthmatic on inhalers. I probably would use some empiric antibiotics in that patient, and then some steroids, and I'd prevent the hospitalization to the best I could.

0:23:34.7 DM: So I approached COVID-19, respiratory illness, like any other, with the following thought, and we had pretty quickly put together our approach based on other precedents, including influenza, including asthma, including bacterial pneumonia as follows: That this was gonna be amenable to risk stratification. Those under age 50 who had no pulmonary symptoms, they could simply ride through the illness. We had data suggesting that nutritional deficiencies seemed to increase the risk for hospitalization and death. And so that's where the nutraceuticals came in early on, that there was supportive data, now, not curative, but supportive data for zinc, for vitamin D, vitamin C, and interestingly, a polyphenol substance called quercetin or querceten. There were some others that were considered, including lysine and N-acetyl cysteine. They became what we called the nutraceuticals bundle, so it was reasonable to do that. And patients would say, "Yeah, if it's linked to mortality, we don't know anything else. There's no harm in these supplements, they're readily available, people can buy them."

0:24:40.4 DM: So we recommended the nutraceuticals bundle for those under age 50, and really, no medical treatment. That amounted to, roughly, of people getting ill at the time, probably two-thirds to three-quarters of patients really needing no treatment. However, if someone below age 50 with medical problems presented with severe symptoms or over age 50 with medical problems, it became clear that the rates of hospitalization and death were greater than 1%. That was enough, greater than 1% is a magic number in this whole equation, that's enough to do something, that's enough to do something. We knew somebody at age 60, for instance, would face about an 18% chance of hospitalization and death, 18% chance, that's too high. In my field, cardiology, our guidelines say anything more than 5% is high-risk; 1%-5% is moderate, less than 1% is low-risk. In general, for anything less than 1%, we don't go after it. So in this low-risk group, we didn't go after it, but age over 50, young people presenting with severe symptoms, we went after it, so it was nutraceutical bundle.

0:25:44.1 DM: What did we know next? The timeline was very interesting. We knew from SARS-CoV-1, SARS-1, that's 80% similar to SARS-CoV-2. We knew from studies dating back to 2006 that hydroxychloroquine, a drug that's used for lupus, it's used for rheumatoid arthritis, it's used for other rheumatologic conditions, including dry eyes, as well as malaria, safe, was effective in reducing the viral replication of SARS-CoV-1, we knew that. And so United States knew that. In fact, that drug was stockpiled by the United States government, Australian government, some European governments. So hydroxychloroquine was onboarded appropriately and ready to rock and roll. In fact, many countries frontlined hydroxychloroquine for high-risk patients, and still do so today. We would go to Athens, Greece, Rome, Italy, across all of Eastern Europe, Central and South America, hydroxychloroquine is the lead drug. India and East Asia, hydroxychloroquine is the lead drug. So hydroxychloroquine played a role. We also knew that by the summer, we knew that ivermectin played a role. This is an anti-parasitic drug used for scabies and other illnesses, safe and effective.

0:26:56.3 DM: So these drugs, the reason why they work against the virus is they get inside cells. A lot of the antibiotics like penicillin doesn't get inside the cell. But these what's called intracellular anti-infectives do. Japan had an influenza drug that had the exact same activity as remdesivir, their first US-approved inpatient IV drug. That drug's called favipiravir, and the Japanese had data to suggest that favipiravir, like oral remdesivir, would play a role early on, and it was readily approved by five countries, FDA-approved, FDA-equivalent approved in those countries to treat COVID-19.

0:27:33.0 DM: So we had hydroxychloroquine, we had ivermectin, favipiravir. We combine it with either doxycycline or azithromycin, those are antibiotics Americans know about. They get inside of cells. They're also intracellular anti-infectives, and and they were slightly assistive in a couple ways. They cut down on some of the bacterial superinfection that would occur in the sinuses and respiratory tract. And we knew for some studies that there was about a 3% overlap between COVID-19 and what's called atypical pneumonias, which would be mycoplasma chlamydia pneumonia, and these would also be responsive to these. So quickly, hydroxy and azithro, ivermectin and doxy, these were a common... Favipiravir and doxy outside the United States became common intracellular anti-infectives.

0:28:16.5 DM: But those alone didn't carry the day because what happened is the viral replication tipped off what's called cytokine storm, or the immune system going haywire. And so doctors, early on, in the hospital started using steroids. And we had some confusing literature, "Are they hurting? Are they helping?" And the British helped out a lot with a study, an inpatient study called the recovery trial. And the recovery trial picked an odd corticosteroid, which is dexamethasone, in an odd dose, 6 mg a day. We typically use 10 mg four times a day. So an odd dose, but did show a small reduction in mortality. And there was a meta-analysis published looking at hydrocortisone, prednisone. It turned out any steroid worked in some reasonable dose. So in the United States, we quickly adopt using prednisone, which we use in asthma, frequently.

0:29:06.0 DM: And then another trial in the UK was done called the stoic trial using inhaled budesonide. Now, that was a very interesting development because there was a maverick doctor, former military doctor, Richard Bartlett from West Texas. He would make the national news by saying, "You know what? I think inhaled budesonide works." And he said this early in the spring, and he was on national news, he said, "You know, I'm trying it. I'm a doctor, I'm trying to help my patients. I am using empiric treatment. I know there's no randomized trials," but he was doing the right thing. That's what American doctors all should have been doing, is trying to help their patients by taking empiric choices on drugs that made clinical sense, and he tried it. And indeed, it worked. The British did the stoic trial, and sure enough, there was over an 80% reduction in hospitalization if we just used inhaled budesonide in outpatients with COVID-19. So that made it onboard.

0:30:00.6 DM: Montreal Heart Institute, one of the leading overall randomized controlled trial centers in the world got funding from the National Institutes of Health, Gates Foundation, Canadian authorities, and tested a gout drug, which works against the immune system, particularly works against the white blood cells and their ability to proliferate toxic granules and assemble microtubules, that drug is called colchicine. So Americans will recognize this as a gout drug. They carried out and conducted a prospective randomized trial, double blind for 30 days, the best quality trial done in all of COVID-19, and they demonstrated that there was a marked reduction in hospitalization and death. So colchicine came onboard.

0:30:46.0 DM: And so the last thing that we really had to look at was blood clotting. And to this day, there has not been a single outpatient study of drugs to impair platelet aggregation or antithrombotics. However, we can learn from inpatient studies, and there's been very good analysis, they all agree, the use of full-dose aspirin in the hospital is associated with reductions in mortality, and the use of full-dose anticoagulation, whether that be injectable, low-molecular heparin, full heparinization, or we can even use oral anticoagulants as an outpatient, is associated with reductions in mortality.

0:31:22.2 DM: So what I had been doing is I was working with the Italians looking at how these concepts are coming together, and I published a paper in the American Journal of Medicine in August of 2020. And I have to tell you, when I looked at the literature through the spring, working with the Italians, there had been... When at the time I submitted the paper on July first, there were 55,000 papers in the peer-reviewed literature. Not a single one taught doctors how to put drugs in combination and treat the virus. And it seems so odd to me. We knew this was a fatal viral infection. In fatal viral inflections, single drugs never work. We knew this in HIV, we knew that we needed multiple drugs in HIV. We knew this for Hepatitis C. We knew this for all the other fatal viral infections. We use drug combinations, never single drugs. And the only thing we could do at that time is look at studies of single drugs and find signals of benefit, acceptable safety, and then assemble them into regimens. The clinical trials testing a four-to-six-drug regimen, those haven't even been planned yet.

He published The Pathophysiologic Rationale ,,,

0:32:31.7 DM: The mortality rate would have been astronomical if somebody didn't step forward and have the courage to publish the concepts. And I guess that's what my role is in world's history for this. I pushed a paper called The Pathophysiologic Rationale for Early Ambulatory Treatment of COVID-19, and it was published in the August issue of 2020 of American Journal of Medicine. To this day, that's the most widely downloaded paper from that journal of all topics. And it went viral. And literally, it went viral because the world was thirsting for an approach to COVID-19.

0:33:11.1 DM: Now, quickly after that was published, I was managing all different types of communications regarding the paper, scientific and then also media-related. And we had supportive data now coming in strong for ivermectin, for colchicine, for inhaled steroid. And Operation Warp Speed had delivered monoclonal antibodies directed against the spike protein, the pathogenic part of the virus, and they included a product from Lilly and another one from Regeneron. So I needed to update the algorithm, and I put that together and published that in the journal that I edit Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine, but with a separate issue and a separate, unbiased editor that I didn't have influence on to make sure that was fully peer-reviewed and vetted, and which it was. And that was published in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine in August of 2020.

0:34:00.6 DM: By that time, there was 100,000 papers in the literature. And outside of my first paper, there wasn't a single other paper that actually proposed a regimen or a protocol to treat patients with COVID-19. It was almost extraordinary that we were over nine months into a fatal pandemic influencing the world, and no one could come up with an original idea of how to put drugs in combination to treat the virus? We didn't have the Harvard protocol, we didn't have the Johns Hopkins protocol. We didn't have UCLA, we didn't have a World Health protocol. So this was extraordinary that all the firepower we had in academic medicine couldn't... They just drew a blank. Matter of fact, if you look at these centers across the United States and across the world, they never opened up COVID treatment centers. They didn't have outpatient COVID treatment centers. They didn't attempt to study or help a single outpatient with COVID-19.

0:35:06.0 DM: My contribution was, I think, the ability to publish the ideas.

0:35:11.8 Speaker 2: Okay.

0:35:12.0 DM: This is very important. Others had the ideas. Vladimir Zelenko in New York City, Orthodox Jew, stepped out of the box. He said, "Listen, we need to treat this. We can use some drugs in combination: Hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, steroids, other drugs." And he started putting drugs into combination. Richard Bartlett in West Texas. Brian Tyson and George Fareed, former NIH scientist, George Fareed came out of retirement. They went to, really, the crucible of COVID-19 down in the California-Mexico border, and just opened up a clinic and had opened up a tent. People started walking up and they started treating them. Didier Raoult in Southern France said, "Listen, we can treat this." Him and a group of courageous French doctors opened up a large clinic in Southern France and started treating patients. We had Ivette Lozano in Dallas. She took her general practice building by White Rock Lake and turned it into a COVID treatment center. She converted all her rooms to treating patients with COVID, oxygen concentrators, had all the drugs. There's pictures of patients lining up on the sidewalk to receive treatment.

0:36:22.8 DM: So it was interesting how the innovators were all independent, courageous doctors; and the academic medical centers drew a blank. They couldn't even pitch a tent to help people. And to me, it was stunning that the academic medical centers or even the large community centers couldn't help a single outpatient. They couldn't even provide a patient brochure of what should be done. The CDC offered guidance like, "Take some Tylenol. And if you get really sick, go to the hospital." The response to a treatable outpatient problem, they gave us two weeks of opportunity to do something. The lack of that response was stunning. And it had to do, in my view, because of a whole timeline of events that put a chill on the attempts to treat COVID-19. Doctors in health systems and others, I think, in a relatively short order, became actively discouraged from treating COVID-19.

No positive feedback from his paper

0:37:23.5 DM: I can tell you I never got an encouraging email or phone call saying, "You know what? Do the best you can for your patients. Try to help them. These hospitalizations are terrible. Please, we support you in using your best judgment." Or, "Here's a few suggested things that you could do." I never got any of those emails from medical societies, from others. In fact, there was only one medical organization; just like there's a few courageous medical doctors, there was one courageous medical organization, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, that saw what was going on. And interestingly, that organization is an organization that represents independent doctors; not those employed by hospitals or big medical groups or medical schools, but independent doctors. And they saw what was going on, and the first thing that they attacked was the stockpile of hydroxychloroquine.

0:38:12.4 DM: So what happened was the US had an ample supply of hydroxychloroquine, and the only issue was, "Start using it and start putting it into combination with other drugs to treat COVID-19. It seemed terrific." And the first event in the timeline was the FDA emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine. So the listener should understand that an emergency use authorization would be for a brand new drug or product where there is a great unmet need, there's not enough time to do all the testing, and that we would do an EUA for that. There's a government mechanism for that, and it's under emergency circumstances. That wouldn't apply the hydroxychloroquine. It was already fully FDA-approved, it was out for 65 years, it was safe. We had used it in pregnancy. We knew all of its safety profile. Doctors knew how to use hydroxychloroquine. I use it in my practice. It was just not a big deal, it didn't need an EUA.

Emergency Use Authorization for hydroxychloroquine

0:39:06.2 DM: But so the EUA went out on hydroxychloroquine and said, "You know, this EUA," with language, and it says, "Restricting hydroxychloroquine to inpatient use." Okay. And so one of the first big studies out of the block was done in thousands of patients out of Henry Ford. And it was great news that hydroxychloroquine was associated with a large reduction in mortality if applied early. But the later it was applied in the hospital stay, it didn't look like... Patients were too far gone. I wrote the response to that in several publications across the United States, and one was an op-ed in The Hill. 'Cause as I saw this, I basically made the case that that emergency use authorization was an effective restriction. It should be lifted and we should use hydroxychloroquine wide open.

0:40:01.7 DM: And then something really terrible happened. Keep in mind that the Henry Ford data was very positive. We had the EUA, the US had stockpiled it. The National Institutes of Health, the Allergy and Immunology Branch had commissioned a several thousand prospect of double-blind randomized placebo controlled trial of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in outpatients with COVID-19. They had funded the trial. They got the drug supply. They got the placebos. They set up all the study centers in the United States, we were all ready to go, that was in the spring. Terrific! Everything's coming together. And then what happened was a fake paper was published in Lancet. A fake paper.

Fake paper published in Lancet

0:40:46.9 DM: Now, Lancet, the listener should understand that Lancet is like the New England Journal of Medicine. It's one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. When a paper is submitted, there are so many checks on validity. Where is the paper coming from? Where are the data coming from? Validating the data. Then it's sent out to peer reviewers who are independent. They check everything in the paper. They give comments about, "Was this reported? Was that reported?" What have you. There's so many checks on papers. And then it comes back, and then there's an editorial decision made on a paper, and then it's published. That's called peer review. That ensures to the public that papers are not fake. It's very important. And it ensures to the public that things are not falsified.

0:41:31.7 DM: Well, this paper had authors from Harvard. It came from a company called Surgisphere that no one really understood what this company was about. And the data was a large data set of inpatients with COVID-19 from all over the world that had in-depth drug exposure data. We didn't have that back then. That was from December, January, February. This was just emergent. We didn't have this. The average age in that paper was 49 years old. And the paper implied that use of hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. And Lancet published this falsified paper. Somehow, it fell through all the other peer review... And how could they possibly publish it? And as soon as it came out, I knew in two seconds that it had to be wrong. We don't hospitalize people in their 40s. And hydroxychloroquine, in fact, is associated with benefit, not harm.

0:42:24.1 DM: This paper in Lancet frightened the entire world. It was like a shockwave. And there was a whole series of reactions. People started publishing papers, "Oh, hydroxychloroquine could be dangerous. All these academic doctors, case closed. Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work, stop using it." Hospitals started pulling it off their formularies. It was extraordinary what happened with hydroxychloroquine. In fact, the US FDA put out language that said, "Hydroxychloroquine shouldn't be used, period. We're cancelling the EUA for inpatient use, and it shouldn't be used, period." So that FDA language then went to the AMA. And the AMA says, "Well, don't use hydroxychloroquine, period, inpatient or outpatient." That went to the pharmacy boards. Pharmacy boards said, "Oh, doctors shouldn't be using this."

0:43:08.3 DM: So as doctors were treating patients in the community, prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the next thing you know, patients would show up to the pharmacy and the pharmacist said, "Sorry, I can't dispense it. My board says that I can't," and then doctors' licenses started to become threatened, and then all of a sudden there was a cascade of events, hydroxychloroquine being the lead that put a chilling effect on anybody's attempt to treat COVID-19 as an outpatient.

Hydroxychloroquine - the most studied and used therapeutic

0:43:41.3 DM: Hydroxychloroquine, I think the fair statements are, it's the most studied and utilized therapeutic in the world for COVID-19 today. There are hundreds and hundreds of studies. And hydroxychloroquine was appropriately acquired and stockpiled by the US Government. President Trump, who I personally think was very weak in the response, he could not articulate that hospitalizations and deaths were a serious problem. He could not assemble a team of doctors who were learning how to treat COVID-19, neither could the NIH or the CDC or FDA. We had gross failures from US Presidents and the major agencies. Can you imagine to this day, we still have not had a doctor in any position of authority in the United States who's actually ever seen a patient with COVID-19 and treated them? None. It is extraordinary what's happened. So, President Trump mentioned hydroxychloroquine, let's try to give it a shot. And then immediately he was bashed down by his detractors. I thought it was a very weak statement to begin with, but he was bashed down and people have always held him up as, "Oh, it was Trump. If he hadn't mentioned hydroxychloroquine none of this would have happened."

Enormous effort to suppress early treatment. Hydroxychloroquine

0:44:51.3 DM: I disagree. I think that there was an enormous effort to suppress early treatment. Hydroxychloroquine was the initial lightning rod. Remember I mentioned that NIH trial? You know what they did after 20 patients, disingenuously, they said they couldn't find COVID-19 patients, and they shut down a several thousand patient trail. They shut it down after 20 patients. That never happens. They purchased the placebo, they found the study centers, they had the binders, they had the nurses hired, they had everybody ready to treat Americans with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and they gave up after 20 patients. That was extraordinary. The false paper published in Lancet was extraordinary. We started to have an array of incredibly flawed papers publishing exaggerating cardiac effects of hydroxychloroquine. Oh, it could cause dangerous arrhythmias.

Hydroxychloroquin not cause scarring of the heart

0:45:43.8 DM: There was one that I mentioned in my US Senate testimony came from the Mayo Clinic, it said hydroxychloroquine can cause a scar in the heart, they actually... They had a heart and they showed a huge white scar. In fact, I ultimately hunted down that paper, hunted down the authors and the publisher, and I demanded a retraction, and ultimately I got a conciliatory letter published saying, you know what, we're sorry, it doesn't really cause a scar in the heart. So people started to intentionally try to damage hydroxychloroquine so it would not be used in COVID-19. Yet other countries held with it steadfast. I mentioned all the countries to this day that use hydroxychloroquine, and now we have studies, for instance, a study from Iran in 30,000 patients, a massive study, and they treated about 25% of people appropriately, hydroxychloroquine in combination with other drugs, and it has a massive reduction in mortality.

Hydroxychloroquin is useful, but not as a single drug

0:46:35.7 DM: So, hydroxychloroquine is a mainstay, the prospective randomized trials, we just isolate on them, pre-hospital studies are all positive. Now, is it a game changer? No, I'd say it's about a 25% reduction in endpoints, but it's a very useful drug to get started early. It's not a single drug, I wouldn't rely on it alone, but hydroxychloroquine itself I think is a poster child for what happened. You know, early on in this I became of national attention, I received calls from the White House. I was contacted by the US Senate. I became known on social media, which I was never on social media before, I'm not an immunologist, I'm not a virologist, I'm not an infectious disease doctor, but I'm a good clinical doctor, and I understand drugs, and I understand drug safety very well. Hydroxychloroquine had a single benefit, acceptable safety. I was contacted by doctors in Africa that anonymously told me, Dr. McCullough, there are some bad guys raiding the pharmacies at night, and they're coming in and burning the hydroxychloroquine.

ivermectin and FLCCC

0:47:41.3 DM: I said, Who are these bad guys? They say, We don't know, but they look like there's some type of mercenaries or operatives. Mysteriously, the second largest hydroxychloroquine producing plant outside of Taipei burned to the ground. So, hydroxychloroquine as a simple, safe, and effective drug to this day seems to be a poster child for worldwide comprehensive efforts to suppress early treatment. And of interest, as the data came out with ivermectin, ivermectin became the next drug. Now, of interest with ivermectin, there was an associated group that formed called the Front Line Critical Care Consortium, FLCCC, it was led by Pierre Kory. I identified him and Dr. Paul Merrick, I communicated with him. We had teleconferences and I recommended Dr. Kory testify at the second US Senate hearings in December. Also, Dr. JJ Rajter from Florida.

0:48:42.9 DM: Dr. Rajter had tried hydroxy... Had tried ivermectin in all of his sick patients in Florida hospitals and was enormously successful in reducing mortality. Published his paper in Chest one of the best pulmonary journals, so I gave him tremendous credit for that. And so, Dr. Kory and Dr. Rajter presented what became a very compelling case for ivermectin. If people were sufficiently turned off by hydroxychloroquine, we could focus on ivermectin. Dr. Tess Lawrie, who is considered one of the world's most prominent analysts in the UK, published, and Dr. Andrew Hill as well, published incredible analyses demonstrating that ivermectin reduced mortality in-patient and out-patient. So a little different than hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine takes a little time to work and probably doesn't work at the very end of the illness, but ivermectin miraculously work through the range of illness.

hydroxychloroquine and Ivermetic used for prevention and early treatment

0:49:37.6 DM: And so, the data started coming on for ivermectin and there was enough push power for emphasis on the National Institutes of Health guidelines where they made a specific statement regarding ivermectin. They said, You know what, we understand the data with ivermectin, we can't be for it, and we can't be against it. It's the same statement that they made for the emergency use of Regeneron and Lily antibodies. If the... NIH, we understand the data, we can't be for it or against it. But at least we got a neutral statement out of them. Hydroxychloroquine still to this day has a series of negative statements on this, and doctors have literally had to fight for their medical licenses in order to prescribe hydroxychloroquine. One by one by one, all of those licenses have been restored, all of those state rulings have been overturned, all the medical societies has been overturned and hydroxychloroquine is used today. Ivermectin is widely used today. Both drugs can not only treat the infection early, but they can prevent the... There's prophylactic studies, they can prevent, if patients take these drugs periodically, typically once a week or so, they can prevent COVID-19 from becoming an illness, they are preventive.

0:50:45.9 DM: In fact, I led one of the very early studies of hydroxychloroquine here in Dallas to protect our healthcare workers. That these drugs are about 90% effective, they are about as effective as the vaccines in preventing acquiring COVID-19. When someone's ill, I never prescribe these drugs alone, but I prescribe them in what I call sequence multi-drug therapy. But that is the approach that independent doctors have taken in the United States and uniquely, not a single academic medical center today or a community medical center today treats COVID-19 patients as an outpatient with the goal of reducing hospitalizations and deaths. Why would these centers not wanna help their patients?

Drs. unable to get consensus when they could not meet during COVID-19

0:51:45.2 DM: You know, doctors clearly have a groupthink, and doctors want intellectual support for what they do. That's the reason why we meet all the time, that's the reason we go on rounds together, that's the reason why we have conferences every day, we want to intellectually support each other for making decisions on patients for the assurances we're making the right decisions. And what happened was with the pandemic, all of our meetings were dissolved, we could not meet with each other anymore, there wasn't a chance to have much intellectual support, and each doctor one by one had to make a decision. When the next patient called and said, "Listen, I'm sick with COVID-19, can you help me?" There was a binary choice, the choice was, No, "I'm not gonna help you, nothing works, there's nothing I can do, just wait until you get hospitalized," or the answer could be, "You know what, let me try."

His father got COVID-19 and was treated by zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, quercetin, etc.

0:52:37.9 DM: And what we found is that binary choice was the biopsy of who really had courage and who really had excellent clinical judgement. And doctors who are not confident in their clinical judgment quickly said, You know what, there's nothing you can do, and they got into that groupthink and that could have been 90% plus of doctors had A, a lack of clinical judgment and a lack of courage. And what I found in this whole thing is, those two things are rare. And for me, it was just very natural. It was very natural. My father was one of the first nursing home COVID-19 patients in Dallas, he was the very first one at Presbyterian Village. He got COVID-19, he had pelvic fracture, he's flat on his back, then a scared PA says, Your dad's got COVID, he's in a unit. We don't know what's gonna happen. His mortality, being completely bedridden with dementia, and now COVID, I can tell you, he was facing an 80% mortality of just having COVID just ravage him.

0:53:44.1 DM: So what did I do? Did I make that binary decision of doing nothing? Of course not, of course not. If I could ever message any American doctor or any doctor in the world right now, have some courage and trust your clinical judgment. I did, and that's what real doctors do, and I will never apologize for that. Of course, my dad was treated with hydroxychloroquine, he was treated with azithromycin, he was treated with aspirin. We put him on Lovenox, it's a blood thinner. The full nutraceutical bundle, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, quercetin, open the windows, get that virus aired out there. And he got really sick, as expected. He had dementia, his wishes were to not go to the hospital, not go on a mechanical ventilator, we treated him right there. It took 60 days and it was a long illness, but he survived.

0:54:42.4 S2: Impressive.

0:54:43.2 DM: And that was early. And that taught me that if I'm willing to do that for my father, I have a Hippocratic Oath, and I have a fiduciary responsibility to my patients. And I refuse to let my patients die of this illness. And when I testified in the US Senate, I told the American people, I have always treated my high-risk patients, always. And at the end of my opening statement, I held up the protocol and I told the American people, I'm not asking for permission to do this, I'm not, but I'm asking for your help. That's a very, very important statement, because my patients were appropriately treated to the best of my ability, and we have 600,000 dead Americans that were not treated appropriately and not treated to the best of the ability of their doctors, and that will go down in historical shame for our country. I think it's a travesty that we have 600,000 dead Americans, vast majority of them didn't get an ounce of treatment.

our methods could reduce hospitalization and death by 85% - We're treating 10,000 to 15,000 patients a day.

0:56:00.4 DM: In fact, there were medical groups that adopted policies that they weren't gonna even answer the calls of COVID-19 patients, and there were millions of patients needlessly hospitalized. We had data that came in later from Dr. Zelenko, New York City, Dr. Proctor here in Dallas, who did the same exact thing, showing that our methods could reduce hospitalization and death by 85%. And I'm sorry, there are no prospective randomized trials of four to six drugs, there are none planned, so therefore, without any large trials, there were not gonna be any guideline statements, and without any guideline statements we'll never have any agency support for this. But this is about courageous doctors saving Americans, and I would go farther than this, this is about courageous doctor saving the world. So now we have the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, we have FLCC in the United States, we have 250 treating doctors, we have four national telemedicine services, 15 regional telemedicine services. We're treating 10 to 15,000 patients a day.

0:56:57.2 DM: Forget the US Government, forget what anybody says about this, Americans are getting treatment, that once our message on early treatment came with two US Senate hearings headed by Senator Ron Johnson, the hospital started clearing out in the end of December, early January, because early treatment markedly reduces spread and dramatically reduces hospitalization and death. It's the only thing that does that. The hospital doesn't save all the patients. I'd say the hospital honestly has a very modest impact on anything with COVID-19, it's all about early treatment. The hospital started clearing out, the curves came way down in the United States, that's before anybody was fully vaccinated. And I testified in the Texas Senate on March 10th, I said listen, by standard CDC equations, we're at herd immunity. By March 10th, no vaccine effect. That's actually just treating patients.

South Africa success customizing treatment to each patient

0:57:46.2 DM: In Texas, we had 35 treatment centers, our protocols and methods work, and I have learned over time, there are so many ways to treat the virus. I've had a seminar with Dr. Shankara Chetty in South Africa. He said that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, just like in the United States have become so politically charged, doctors were losing their licenses, in fact, some doctors were jailed in trying to help patients with COVID-19. He gave up on them. He's treated 4000 patients. Fewer than 10% got hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. He treats them, he times the illness, he waits to day eight and then he starts inhaled on oral steroids, he starts aspirin, other anti-inflammatories, montelukast, and the hybrids patients who uses anticoagulants on the backend, and he saved virtually everyone outside of a handful of patients out of 4000, sick patients in South Africa.

0:58:34.1 DM: So what I've learned about this virus is if doctors do anything to try to help patients, they can reduce hospitalizations and death, and the only reason why this is such a horrible thing in American history is because doctors failed to act.

40% of drug use is "off label"

0:58:56.1 DM: The US FDA puts out thousands of drug warnings per year. In fact, Americans know this, 'cause they see a drug advertised on TV and it says warnings, may cause death, may cause whatever, so we get thousands of warnings per year. FDA recalls drugs, put black box warnings on drugs, doctors still use these drugs, they understand the warnings. About 40% of drugs are used off the advertising label, so once a drug is older, its original advertising label doesn't really apply, so we use drugs "off-label" all the time, that's common. But what happened in COVID-19 is because of the tremendous fear that settled in over our country, whatever statements came up by the US FDA, the NIH and the CDC, started to take more weight than they ever would in the past. So, if those agencies said something like, Don't use hydroxychloroquine, that emanated down through the AMA and each of the pharmacy boards where they actually denied patients hydroxychloroquine. In fact, there are probably patients who died because the pharmacy did not dispense the hydroxychloroquine to patients, and/or the ivermectin.

1:00:05.4 DM: There are doctors who started getting warning letters, stating Dr. Richard Urso from Houston, another doctor stepped out of his role like I did to treat the virus, got warning letters from the Texas Medical Board, we're gonna examine your license, we understand you're prescribing hydroxychloroquine, trying to help COVID patients. Okay. These doctors, Dr. Robin Armstrong. Dr. Robin Armstrong in Texas saved dozens of nursing home patients with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, steroids, and blood thinners. The families think he's a hero, the Texas Medical Board tried to take away his license. And so, he had to go through hearings and reviews, and ultimately he was restored, although his practice was just damaged, if not destroyed. Email started coming down through big medical organizations, don't use hydroxychloroquine. They later on came down said, don't use ivermectin.

Drs being told to not treat COVID-19 with drugs

1:00:55.2 DM: In fact, there was... You know, flat out, don't do it. We were getting official messages that basically said, Don't take care of COVID-19. These are codified in policies and emails by major medical organizations, and it went counter... Can you imagine getting an email saying, Don't treat pneumococcal pneumonia, just let him die, don't treat meningitis, let him die? Can you ever... We've never seen this... This is the term that applies to what's going on is wrong doing by those in positions of authority, it's called malfeasance. We don't put down a chilling negative message that's gonna result in harm. We don't do that, we don't do that in a civil society, it happened from the NIH, the CDC, the FDA, major medical groups, these chilling messages. But at the same time, you had AAPS saying, No, this is wrong, treat patients. You had FLCC, a group that became very strong saying, No, treat patients. In the UK, we had the Bird Group, that said, You know what? Treat patients, use ivermectin-based protocols.

1:02:00.6 DM: We had PANDA develop in South Africa, we had the COVID medical network develop in Australia. We had treatment domiciliary develop in Italy. So listen, the counter-argument to this of no, we should treat the virus, that counterweight was there. And it's one of the reasons why you're talking to me today. You're not talking to some FDA official who basically wanted to throw cold water on things, you're talking to me today, because you're getting a sense of truth, you're getting a sense of reality that this virus is treatable. Everything that we've done for this virus, we've made it far worse by not treating it, keeping patients in fear, isolation. We've done multiple things that have promoted hospitalization, and we've done multiple things that have actually promoted excess mortality, and it's a shameful time in America and in the world.

FDA, etc say what not to do, but does not say what to do

1:03:00.5 DM: Under the dark cloud of fear, the medical administrations defer to the FDA, the NIH and the CDC, our three governmental agencies, they defer to that. In fact, they will state, we're following the policy. So let's pick something less charged, like wearing masks. What sets the mask wearing policy? What the CDC says, Well, they say this, let's follow it. Same thing is true, if the agencies say, Don't use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, if that's what they say, that quickly gets down to medical administration and they'll float out an email saying, Don't do it. In fact, in a country, we can pick on at Australia, they have the TGA, that's the equivalent of the FDA, they have guidelines where they literally have dozens and dozens of negative statements, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that.

1:03:55.0 DM: Interestingly, none of these groups actually say what to do. So if you're to take any major hospital and ask them what email or what policy came down that tell doctors what to do? You gave warnings on what not to do, but what did you tell them to do, to take care of clinic patients with COVID-19? Most of them would say, Nothing. We don't have... In fact, I testified in the Texas Senate on this topic, and within March 10th and within 48 hours there was draft legislation, to at least give patients some information. So listen, if the hospitals and doctors aren't gonna do anything, we're gonna give you some information. Here is some... When you get your positive test result, here is some information on what you can do, here are the treatment protocols, here are the EUA monoclonal antibodies. And again, if hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin is controversial.

monoclonal antibodies - emergency use authorized, big money, but no updated information

1:04:46.1 DM: Okay, but what about the monoclonal antibodies? We haven't talked about these. These are high-tech, they're produced by big pharma, it's big money. It was all NIH-funded. They're emergency use authorized by the US FDA. How come America has no window to that? How come there's no updates on how we're doing with that? How come there's no 1-800 numbers, how sick patients can't find out where these antibodies are? So it is a global suppression of early treatment, whether they're generic drugs or newly-approved drugs. There is a global suppression on early treatment.

1:05:19.6 DM: Americans will know, they watch the TV every night. The initial dialogue was, "We're scared. Wear a masks, go on lockdown, hand sanitizer. Okay." Then there were some reports about terrible things going in the hospital. Then the reports later on were, "Wait for a vaccine." There were never regular reports or updates from any local or national TV source that gave regular updates. "This is what you should do when you get COVID-19 at home. Here are the drugs that work. Here are the protocols. Here are the hotlines, so you can get an antibody infusion, which is approved by the FDA. Here are the hotlines so you can get in research." Research is important. There's still no hotline for Americans to get in COVID-19 research at a state or a Federal level. Stunning! There's been no updates.

1:06:10.8 DM: When I've dealt with multiple congressional and senate offices, I say, "Listen, weekly updates to the American people so they know what to do, so they're not so in fear when they're getting these results. Weekly updates through all public channels. Weekly updates on treatment, and then monthly updates to the guidelines." We have none of that. We are over a year of this and the Americans have been absolutely let down by the government agencies, by the media. The media, why wouldn't it come in to any local broadcaster's thought process to give their listeners an update on early treatment? It's a stunning oblivion.

[pause]

1:07:04.7 DM: For products to actually be officially advertised, they have to have somebody who's gonna pay for the ad, which is a drug company, and they have to be FDA-approved, and they actually have to have an FDA advertising label. And because of the monoclonal antibodies, as an example, don't have an advertising label, they can't be... Lilly and Regeneron can't go out and advertise for them. But because they're EUA from a public health messaging perspective, they should be equally featured as vaccines.

Extensive "advertising" for vaccines, but nothing else

1:07:37.9 DM: Now, vaccines are emergency use authorized. All we hear about is vaccines morning, noon and night. Why do we hear a massive messaging about vaccines? Americans ought to think about this. Why are vaccines featured by the CDC, NIH and FDA morning, noon and night; by the media, morning, noon and night; by every medical center, morning, noon and night. I can tell you as a doctor in a medical center, all our emails are about vaccination. Why are they featured in every single public health communication, needles and all the arms? In fact, shockingly, in a Dallas area in October, this is long before the vaccine trials were ever completed, if you were to call CVS or Walgreens, the answering machine would say, "We're proud to offer the COVID-19 vaccine when it comes available." We have never advertised for a product before it comes available. In fact, it's against US laws regarding drugs and biological products.

1:08:40.9 DM: So things started to go off the rails very early on, and it seems like there was a playbook. The playbook was to suppress any hope of treatment, a complete oblivion to treatment through all the entities that we've mentioned, and at the same time, prepare the population for mass vaccination. These two are very tightly linked. And now with mass vaccination, we have... We see things we have never seen. Advertising the vaccine before it's even available. Massive messaging for the vaccine far out of proportion to treatment.

monoclonal antibodies being squashed, vaccines promoted

1:09:20.4 DM: You have two EUA products, one you never hear about. Americans are starved of these monoclonal antibodies. In fact, they're grossly underused. They could have saved probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives, and they're being squashed. The Lilly and Regeneron products are being squashed. But the Pfizer, Moderna and J&J products are being massively promoted and advertised. Americans ought to be wondering, "Why is that happening? Why are we defocusing on the sick patient and focusing on well people? All the messaging about contagion control and vaccines are about well people. Why can we not focus on the sick COVID patient?" That was my message to the Department of Health and Human Services in Texas. But it goes further than that. It goes further than that.

Vaccines were not tested on pregnant women, but they are vaccinated anyway

1:10:08.8 DM: The vaccine registrational trials strictly excluded pregnant women, women of child-bearing potential, COVID-recovered patients, patients who had prior COVID antibodies; strictly excluded them. By regulatory science, if all the registrational trials excluded a group of patients, we would never use that product in that group once it gets on the market, never. Never, we never violate that. Why? 'Cause we don't know if it's gonna work, and we don't know if it's gonna be safe. We never do that.

1:10:40.0 DM: There's another level. With pregnant women are a special group in research and medicinal products. Very important for Americans to know this. In pregnant women, for vaccination, we only vaccinate with safe, inactive products; inactive flu, tetanus, diptheria and pertussis. That's it. We would never inject a biologically-active substance in a pregnant woman's body, that could be dangerous. Never! And with the vaccines, as soon as they came out, the CDC, FDA, media, everybody said, "Vaccinate them. Vaccinate them."

[pause]

Previous vaccines had 48 months of testing, this one had 2 months before getting EUA

1:11:29.3 DM: Well, the US FDA regulatory guidance and vaccines, and there have been modern vaccines, you don't have to pick the old ones. We've had modern vaccines. Shingles vaccines, hepatitis B, meningococcal vaccines demand a minimum of two years of safety data, two years, by regulatory. In fact, these are kinda written and codified into the regulatory rules for the manufacturers. That was all thrown out and said, "Two months. For COVID, two months." So two months of observational data.

1:12:03.3 S2: This idea that we could vaccinate people that were not even tested in the trials, that has never been done before. We have never just thrown a vaccine at somebody without having any data. None. So the very first pregnant woman that was vaccinated here in the United States, it was done with no knowledge of safety and no knowledge of efficacy. And the argument that we've heard is, "Well, COVID-19 is a bad illness; 600,000 people have died. The vaccine could help them, we should give it a shot. Come on, we should just give it a shot." Well, that 600,000 died, I've already told you, 85% of that was preventable with early treatment, which was actively suppressed and squashed. And not only that, is if this vaccine can help them, the vaccine better be safe. It better be safe. And my comments on the vaccine are, "Safety, safety safety, let's see it, let's see it."

1:13:03.9 DM: And Americans ought, just like the Americans should have been getting weekly updates on treatment innovations, Americans should have been getting weekly updates on vaccine safety. Very important. Weekly updates from our Federal officials on safety. Super important. Those two things are probably the two largest acts of malfeasance in all of medical regulatory history. It will go down in the history of malfeasance, wrongdoing by those of authority. How come there was no updates on treatment and no promotion of early treatment to reduce hospitalization and death? And now, when we release the vaccine, why are there no safety updates? Why are there no attempts for risk mitigation in terms of making the vaccine program safer? How do we have all these vaccines? How do we know we can vaccinate pregnant women? We know because of years and years and years of safety data. Before a vaccine has ever been injected into a pregnant woman, it's probably been tested for decades before we try it in a pregnant woman.

1:14:06.0 DM: We would never, out-of-the-box, take a brand new technology that's never been tested before, ever. And we know that the vaccine technology produces the dangerous spike protein. It produced the Wuhan spike protein, the spicule on the ball of the virus itself, which damages blood vessels and causes blood clotting, and all of them do. We would never unleash that into a pregnant woman's body. Americans have to understand something is very wrong. What's going on? What's going on now in the world? These are examples, are clear-cut examples of wrongdoing that is at such a high level, the groupthink is in the wrong direction in such a consistent and overwhelming way that people are being harmed in an extraordinary fashion.

[pause]

1:15:05.2 DM: Well, when I published the first paper in the American Journal of Medicine, taught doctors how to treat COVID-19. Now, it could have been somebody else. If Dr. Zelenko had the publication power, he could have done it, or Dr. Procter could have done it, or Dr. Didier Raoult could have done it, or Brian Tyson or George Fareed. It turned out that I was the person who had sufficient academic authority to do this. And I have authority, I take complete responsibility for doing this. I did it uniquely. The only person in the world to do this.

1:15:40.0 DM: Others actually may have been trying, and those papers may have been suppressed by editors, they probably were. 'Cause we found suppression of early treatment literature all over. It became impossible to publish papers. It was really hard. I may have just been the strongest and the most courageous doctor in the world to do that, but I did it, and the feedback I was getting was tremendous. It's like, "Of course, this makes sense. I'm so glad this got into the literature." It came out in electronic print in August, and then it came into hard print in January. When it hit January and it landed in all the medical libraries in the world, that's when things really heated up.

Feedback to his paper - do not try treating, we do not have published studies

1:16:18.0 DM: And I do have to tell you that I got letters to the editor that came in to the American Journal of Medicine, and Joe, Dr. Joe Alpert out of Arizona is the editor, Joe has let every one of those letters come to me for a response. The tenor of the letters is quite interesting, and they've come from Duke University, they've come from McGill, from Monash University in Australia. They've come from Brazil. The tenor of the letters is, "Dr. McCullough, you can't do this. You can't treat COVID-19 patients." And it's the most interesting. My response is, "Doctor, please have courage. Let's do away with therapeutic nihilism. Let's join together and treat COVID-19 patients compassionately to reduce hospitalization and death, and we can do this, and I can do it, and we even have more supportive data."

1:17:13.0 DM: So every time they say, "Oh, this drug doesn't work," and I'll say, "Well, here's five more studies that do. Hydroxychloroquine, we're up to hundreds of studies that shows that it works. Ivermectin, hundreds of studies. Steroids, dozens of studies. Anticoagulants, at least a dozen studies." We are so well supported in the concepts of treating COVID-19 that every time one of these letters comes in, I have a little fun with it because the position of strength is enormous. My thoughts and my positions and my statements, over time, are becoming progressively stronger and progressively more powerful. And the detractors sense that, the feeling of fear. Intellectual fear from my adversaries is palpable. I feel it every day.

1:18:02.0 DM: And when that first paper came out in the American Journal of Medicine, my daughter said, "Daddy, why don't you make a YouTube video?" I said, "Ha! Ha! I don't wanna do social media. That's for kids. I just, I don't have time for this." She taught me how to do it. It was PowerPoint. I literally just recorded my face down the lower corner. I wore a tie, four slides. Said, and listen to this, it's Americans, it's Italians. We looked at safety, we looked at efficacy. We looked at all the available data. We think this is the best way to put together the drugs. We had four slides on this, it got up on YouTube, it went absolutely viral, went absolutely viral.

1:18:31.4 DM: And then I got a message. It said, "You violated terms of the community," and it was struck down. Then I got a call from the US Senate. So I told you, I knew something was going on because I've never been called by the White House before, I've never been called by the Senate before. People in Washington were following this. They were stakeholders in Washington, who, in a sense, knew that something is going wrong here, that this viral infection could be treated, but they were waiting for someone in the academic community to step forward and literally say it can be treated. I was the first one to say, "We can treat this! We can do this!" It's very important to be able to make this statement, we can do it. Based on what? Based on my judgement. Based on my judgment, supported by the available science, but more importantly, based on my judgment.

He and his wife got COVID-19 in October

1:19:20.2 DM: And so I ended up contracting COVID-19 myself in October. My wife came home with it, she got sick before I knew I got sick. It got into my lungs. I was in approved protocols. I quickly got into a protocol. It's hard, but I was able to find a protocol. I was on hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, nutraceutical bundle per the protocol. And later on, I needed steroids 'cause of lung involvement. But I wanted to show America that you could get COVID-19 and have some medical problems, which I do, and be able to get through it without being hospitalized. So on treatment day six, illness day eight, beautiful, sunny day in Dallas, Texas, I went out far away from anybody else, and I went jogging. And I was really short of breath. I'm telling you, I'm a pretty strong runner. I was short of breath 'cause of the COVID involvement in my lungs. But I ran all the way to a park. I made a video in the park, and then I made it all the way home. And I had fun with it.

early treatment doctors started to become scrubbed

1:20:20.0 DM: In fact, I played that Eminem music that said... The Recovery video, if any of you watch Eminem, and I said, "I'm not afraid." And I just... Video of myself, I was, "I'm not afraid of COVID-19," video. That video was struck down and then ultimately had to get restored. I said, "Wait a minute, YouTube is playing a role here, in addition to all the other stakeholders in suppressing any early treatment." In fact, the early treatment doctors started to become scrubbed from Twitter, from YouTube, from social media. And then ultimately, YouTube came out with a very clear message. They said, "Listen, we are only gonna have information that is in line with the CDC, NIH and FDA, which state, 'Do nothing,' and everything else is gonna be considered misleading, and we're making the judgment. It's our call on what's misleading and what's not, but if it's... " It's pretty easy to be in line with the CDC, NIH and FDA because they say to do nothing.

1:21:20.1 DM: So if the social media platform is to do nothing for early treatment and suppress early treatment, which it is, the major media is to suppress early treatment. So I still go back and say, "Who's responsible?" I'd say the government agencies. In this period of crisis, if we're gonna revert to our government agencies and our task force, and if our presidents can't be wise enough to even choose doctors who have ever even seen a patient and know how to treat it, if they're not wise enough to pick doctors who can treat COVID-19, we'll never have agencies that say, "We can treat COVID-19," and if we don't have agencies to do that, then nothing else is gonna follow. If the doctors and people we pick have never seen COVID-19, they're scared of it, they don't know how to treat it, and the only thing they can comment on is wearing masks and social distancing and vaccination, that's all that America's gonna have.

America has offered nothing to the sick person.

1:22:13.6 DM: So America's response to COVID-19, the official response has basically been to well people. Wear masks and be vaccinated, and America has offered nothing to the sick person. When I get in the hospital, we haven't seen much feature on that. The drugs are pretty weak, remdesivir, convalescent plasma, tocilizumab, steroids, anticoagulants, you don't hear much about it and it's honestly too late. Recently, a Harvard group, the Stop COVID Group, had published those sick enough to get in the ICU the 28-day mortality is 38%. Unacceptably high. Going into a hospital is a nightmare. I get desperate calls from all over the United States. Thank goodness for the major telemedicine and regional telemedicine networks that basically have taken over. They're the real heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospitals are empty now. Hospitals here in Dallas used to have 200, 300 patients at a time. Now, they've got 10, five. The other day in Texas, we hit zero deaths, zero.

1:23:17.4 DM: So early treatment is gonna be one of the great, great stories that historians, and they'll reach out to Ben Marble, who started MyFreeDoctor.com. Ben Marble, that whole telemedicine is run strictly by charity. People donate money, and they get patients their drugs, and they prescribe hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, steroids and other drugs, and put them into combination, they follow protocols. Terrific! They're seeing thousands of patients by telemedicine every day. So Americans are getting treated. And so the word is out, people talk to each other.

Early treatment without hospitals

1:23:48.9 DM: Americans, it's interesting. They understand that the media and our agencies are not leveling with them. They understand that. I did a seminar early on because I had treated a very prominent African-American minister here in Dallas. And him and his wife were sick, he didn't tell me about his wife, and she was testing negative, she wasn't a patient of mine. He got what's called sequence multidrug therapy. He got really sick. He's got heart failure, diabetes, emphysema, obesity, kidney disease; survives at home sick for about 10 days. I'm not saying the drug therapy's perfect, but I saved him from being hospitalized or dying. His wife, no treatment. Hospitalized, diagnosed late, was in the hospital for five weeks. Came home on oxygen, the virus ravaged her lungs. It was awful! They had the same illness. And so he became active and he said, "Dr. McCullough, can you do a webinar for African-American churches nationwide?" I did a webinar and I presented my approach. And you know what the comments were? They said, "Dr. McCullough, we knew the government was lying to us. We knew this was treatable. We knew it all along." People know this.

[pause]

international Dr. group called C-19

1:25:06.7 DM: It's the individual finance way. There are practices that I've come on. I've gotten calls in Dallas, "Dr. McCullough, can you share your protocols? We wanna do this." The treating doctors really have interdigitated, and we informally called, formed a group called C-19, where we get about four to five email updates a day of really critical updates on treatment. It is international. We have former heads of state involved in C-19. We have Nobel prize winners involved in C-19, hundreds and hundreds of American doctors. There now is a published list of treating doctors, and I assist 250 across all 50 states. Texas has 35 of them.

• c19study.com/d Summary of Vitamin D and COVID studies (the following is updated automatically)
• 

1:25:48.1 DM: So Americans are finding their way, despite suppression of early treatment. It's one of the great stories. And I'll never forget when I testified in the Texas Senate on March 10th, myself and Dr. Richard Urso, another leading early treating doctor in Houston. The Chairwoman of the committee at one of the side conversations said, "Yeah, my husband got COVID-19, and he got really sick, and I'm so glad he got early treatment. We found a doctor that was willing to prescribe ivermectin and the other drugs." And I didn't throw out the zinger in front of the Texas media.

1:26:25.0 DM: But I felt like saying, "You know, do you have to be a chairperson of the Department of Health and Human Services to get some treatment? What about these poor people in South Dallas, in San Antonio, in Houston? What about people who are not so privileged? Do you know that 85% of some of our patients hospitalized here are Black or Hispanic? Who's helping them out?" We should be having early treatment centers. They've been denied treatment. It's heartbreaking. Hispanics and African Americans have double the mortality of Caucasians.

[pause]

Combination therapy works, rarely wil a single drug work

1:27:07.4 DM: We have actually a law in America, it's called the 21st Century Cures Act, and what this says is that the FDA and doctors and others trying to decide on treatment, evaluate the totality of information, including that little anecdote about your mom and the caretaker, as well as case series, large prospective cohort studies, retrospective cohort studies, hospital studies, outpatient studies, and then large prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials, but any virus, single drugs themselves are very difficult to prove. If we required that for HIV, we'd have no treatment. HIV, we quickly realized we need three or four or five drugs. Everyone understands this. With COVID-19, I never thought a single drug was gonna work. Hydroxychloroquine? No, not alone, but in combination. And it was that thinking, it takes kind of superior thinking that somehow doctors just lost their ability to think. Think a cancer doctor would say, "Oh, there's one pill that cures cancer"? Never. It's always combination cancer therapy.

1:28:10.8 DM: So with hydroxychloroquine, we're now at the stage, obviously, we have hundreds and hundreds of trials. We even have large randomized trials. I've published Dr. Joe Ladapo, only prospective randomized controlled trials show benefit. So at every level, we meet the evidence grade to use hydroxychloroquine. At every level, we meet the evidence grade to use Ivermectin, not so much evidence, but good enough in the monoclonal antibodies. We have the same for steroids. The biggest and best trial in all of COVID-19 is COLCORONA.
[1:28:42.0] I mentioned in the culture scene, shockingly, COLCORONA, the best trial, 4000 patients, double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial, the best quality that exists, rejected by New England Journal of Medicine, rejected by JAMA, rejected by Lancet.

1:28:58.0 DM: There is a global suppression on any early treatment. I want the listeners to understand how global this is. If we were to go north into Canada, doctors are threatened that their licenses will be examined or taken away if they attempt to treat an outpatient with COVID-19. They are told this in Canada. In Northern EU, the same is true. Dr. Didier Raoult, who was trying to innovate with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in France

Drs. being penalized for prescribing treatments

[1:29:30.3] in period times has been under degrees of threat of arrest or partial arrest or house arrest, almost as if we're back in the Dark Ages. In Australia, in April, they put on the books in Queensland, Australia. A doctor who tries to help a patient with hydroxychloroquine could be penalized up unto the point of going into jail for six months for helping. South Africa, they put some doctors in jail for trying to help patients with Ivermectin.

1:30:00.6 DM: Listen, the powers that are out there that wanna suppress early treatment and cause as much fear, suffering, hospitalization and death are not by happenstance. These are powerful forces that have created such fear among doctors. People are fearful they're gonna lose their careers, their livelihood, their medical license. People are afraid of going to jail in just helping their fellow men get through COVID-19. This is extraordinary. Historians should go look through the course of time.

This is not new - The first Dr. using lung machine for polio was thrown off the staff

1:30:34.9 DM: You know the very first doctor who tried to help a polio patient survive polio with the iron lung machine, which became really a stable ICU device, was thrown off medical staff. Throw him off staff.

[pause]

Book: "COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are The Prey",

1:30:58.1 DM: I'd look very carefully at the work building upon other investigative reporters. So Dr. Peter Breggin has a book called "COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are The Prey", and it has a living document, he's already pre-released the manuscript and he's releasing updates. Now, he's older and he's kind of worried the story won't get out at his age, but I believe he's up to 900 documents. The whole story is not put together, but it is substantial and shows the interconnections of the stakeholders involved. Dr. Nicholas Wade, who was featured on a recent Tucker Carlson as an investigative reporter, he has assembled quite a story. And then Whitney Webb, who's a young investigative reporter, has published some striking things. All three of these, and as well as many more, are linking two important concepts: The suppression of early treatment, and even probably the soft attenuation of in-hospital treatment, to make the problem worse than what it is, many methods to make the case count look higher than what it is, make the mortality numbers look worse than what they are, many methods to create the reaction out of proportion to the reality, so lockdowns, fears, economic suffering, what have you, all of these things making the pandemic way worse than what it is, okay, to have that occur, more fear, suffering, hospitalization and death, loneliness, lockdown, in order to promote mass vaccination.

1:32:51.4 DM: These two are tightly linked. Mass vaccination at all costs, the world must be mass vaccinated. And human beings on Earth ought to understand at this point in time, what we're seeing is unprecedented. It became known the virus was gonna be amenable to a vaccine somewhere around April, May, and at that point in time, therapy was suppressed, nothing could be published, everything, the fake Lancet paper, squashed treatment, and then prepared the population for vaccination.

Why are we vaccinating pregnancies, why are we vaccinating young health care workers?

1:33:25.9 DM: Once the vaccines come out, they're short-tracked, there's all kinds of enthusiasm regarding it, needles and all the arms, trucks rolling, Americans cheering, and then the mass vaccination program starts off. And then before we know it, we're vaccinating pregnant women. Why are we doing that? That can't be safe. Now we're gonna vaccinate COVID-recovered patients. Wait a minute, they have complete and robust permanent immunity. No one's ever challenged the immunity of a COVID-recovered patient. Why are we vaccinating them? And then it keeps going and going. At first, we vaccinated high-risk people. I didn't really understand vaccinating young healthcare workers because they weren't at risk. There were never any hospital outbreaks in the United States. The only thing that was clear, nursing home workers gave it to nursing home patients. We knew that. So nursing home workers should have been vaccinated, and then may be high-risk people, and we should call it a day.

He had estimated maybe 20 million people would need to be vaccinated,

1:34:16.1 DM: I always estimated maybe 20 million people need to be vaccinated, but that didn't seem to satisfy the vaccine stakeholders, which are Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, AstraZeneca, and any others that come forward, the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH and the White House. Massive vaccine stakeholders. You could throw in Gates Foundation, World Health Organization. You can throw those in as well. Massive stakeholders. And they wanted everybody to be vaccinated without exception. No one will escape the needle. We've actually never had this before. And the vaccine process is extraordinary. There's a consent form, it says, "This is investigational. We don't know if it's gonna work. There's only two months of data. The side effects could be a sore arm all the way to death, and we don't know. Sign here. We need your identifying information, we need a barcode on the vial, we need you identified, and now you're in a database. You're vaccinated." And so this mass vaccination is extraordinarily concerning. We never vaccinate into the middle of a pandemic, never. We've never had an effective vaccine for respiratory virus including influenza; it's only modestly effective.

We knew from the clinical trials that it didn't stop COVID-19

1:35:26.7 DM: We knew from the published data that the attack rates in placebo in the vaccine arms were less than 1%. So we know that the vaccine can have a less than 1% effect in the population. Why would it be any different than the clinical trials? We knew from the clinical trials that it didn't stop COVID-19, so people can get COVID-19 anyway. What would be this incredible drive to vaccinate everybody? And now, all my Lord, now the vaccine within a few months has been completely weaponized. Now travel is related to the vaccine. People can't go to school without the vaccine. People are losing their jobs without the vaccine. Believe me, there is something very, very potent in this vaccine. It should be disturbing to everybody. The word "vaccine" ought to be the most disturbing word that they have seen.

He is pro-vaccine in general - but now 4,000 vaccine-related deaths
when Swine vaccine deaths reached 25, it was stopped

1:36:13.2 DM: Now we have 12-year-old children who are told they can decide on their own whether or not they could take a vaccine. So about 70% of my patients are vaccinated, I'm very pro-vaccine, I've taken all the vaccines myself about 70%, and they are all vaccinated in December, January, and February. But as we sit here today in May, we have over 4,000 vaccine-related deaths, and over 10,000 hospitalizations. The limit to shut down a program is about 25 to 50 deaths. Swine flu in 1976, 25 deaths, they shut down the program, it's not safe. All the vaccines in the United States per year, what AmbuLink has reported in the database is about 200. We're talking about vaccinating, probably 500 million injections. Here in the United States at 100 million people vaccinated, this is far and away the most lethal, toxic biologic agent ever injected into a human body in American history, and it's going strong with no mention of safety by our officials, with wild enthusiasm by our hospitals and hospital administrators, with doctors supporting it. Doctors are saying now they won't see patients in their waiting room without the vaccine.

1:37:28.0 DM: This problem, COVID-19 was actually from the very beginning, that's what Whitney Webb said, she goes, "COVID-19 is actually about the vaccine. It's not about the virus, it's about the vaccine."

[pause]

Marked in a database - but not if have nautral immunity?

1:37:50.4 DM: I think it's about what the vaccine means. And Whitney Webb gets credit for this back in April, she said, "A-ha, I figured this out. This is what globalists have been waiting for. They've been waiting for a way of marking people, that you getting a vaccine, you're marked in a database, and this can be used for trade, for commerce, for behavior modification, all different purposes. And you've seen it right here in Dallas, they've announced you can't go to a Dallas Mavericks game unless you're vaccinated. You've had people say, "Listen, you have passports." You had colleges today announced that they're not gonna give any credit to natural immunity. Every scientist in the world knows that the natural immunity is way better than the vaccine immunity. If it's about COVID, why don't we have COVID-recovered go to the Mavericks games? Why don't we have COVID-recovered people freely go to college? Why do we have to have faulty vaccine immunity be the priority, and have natural immunity not count?

1:38:47.5 DM: See, these types of things make me think that Whitney Webb is correct. This is actually about marking. The vaccine is a way of marking people, it's a way of starting to assert efforts to create compliance, behavior control. Don't forget, the vaccine is just a starter. Now there's gonna be updates, there's gonna be boosters, they're already prepping people for this, there's gonna be more... The vaccine manufacturers are all linked, they're all uniquely indemnified. What medical product is there indemnification, where something happens to you, you don't have any recourse? A woman gets vaccinated, a pregnant woman, she has no maternal fetal rights, if something happens to her or her baby, she's out of luck. This is extraordinary, what Americans are doing. It's absolutely extraordinary what's being thrust upon us now.

[pause]

1:39:44.1 DM: I think this whole pandemic from the beginning was about the vaccine. So I think all roads lead to the vaccine. And what it means... There are already places in Southeast Asia and Europe, they're laying the groundwork for compulsory vaccination. I mean compulsory, that means somebody pins you down to the ground and puts a needle in you. That's how bad stakeholders want vaccination. Listen, it's not of cost, you don't have to pay for it, it's all provided. There are people or stakeholders, they do want a needle in every arm. This needle in every arm's a very important moniker. Why? Why do you want a needle in arm... Let's take COVID-recovered, can't get the virus, can't receive it, it has nothing new, why would they ever want a needle in the arm of a COVID-recovered patient? Why? Three studies show higher safety events.

If the vaccine was like water ... who wouldn't take it?

1:40:35.6 DM: See, the tension that Americans are feeling right now as they're try and keep their jobs and go to work is they know they can die of the vaccine. That's the problem. If the vaccine was like water and we just got it and no side effects, who wouldn't take it? Say, "I'll comply. They got my social security number anyway in a database. I'm already marked. I'll just get marked." But no, there's something very unique about this vaccine. There's something about injecting something into a body that is so important to stakeholders, that doesn't matter. Kids, 12 years old, told they can make their own decision on this, and it could be their fatal decision? Think about that. North Carolina just passed that. "Oh, kids, 12 years old, can decide on their own." There are over 4000 dead Americans. There's over 10,000 dead people in Europe that die on days one, two and three after the vaccine. Why are we pushing this in a way where people's jobs and their education and their livelihood decide on a decision that's potentially fatal? The tension, you can cut it with a knife. There are parents that say, "Listen, I want my kid to go to college this year, but I don't wanna lose them to the vaccine." They know what's going on. The internet is full of these cases, blood clots, strokes, immediate death.

He had vaccinated many, but "I can no longer recommend it."
- - patients are getting vaccinated to something that doesn't even exist anymore
"It's just like giving everybody a narrow spectrum antibiotic"

1:41:49.6 DM: Now, I'm fortunate, I have not directly lost a patient to the vaccine. I told you, most got vaccinated in January, December, January, February. Based on the safety data now, I can no longer recommend it. I can't recommend it. It's passed all the thresholds to being a safe product. It's not a safe product, none of them are. It's not just Johnson & Johnson, in fact, more of the safety events in the United States have occurred with Moderna and Pfizer. There are now papers written by prominent scientists, calling for a worldwide halt in the program. There are prominent virologists, many of them, including Noble Prize winners, who have said, "Listen, if we've vaccinate people and we create a very narrow incomplete library of immunity, which what the vaccine is, the vaccines are all targeted to the original Wuhan spike protein, which is long gone, that's extinct, patients are getting vaccinated to something that doesn't even exist anymore." That Wuhan spike protein is gone. We're hoping the immunity covers the other variants, but that narrow immunity is a setup. It's just like giving everybody a narrow spectrum antibiotic. If you did that, what would happen? We grow up super bugs.

1:42:52.1 DM: There are warnings out there saying, "Don't do this. Don't vaccinate the entire world. All we're gonna do is set ourselves up for a super bug that's gonna really wipe out populations." So for many reasons, the vaccine... Indiscriminate vaccination is a horrendous idea, it's a horrendous bio-weapon that's been thrust onto the public, and it's gonna cause great personal harm, which it already has, thousands of people lost their lives. I've never lost a direct patient, but I've had my patients lose their family members, lots of them. I've filled out a safety report on a patient who developed blood clots after one of the Pfizer, Moderna vaccine, and I'm telling you, it took half an hour to do it, there was many pages, and each page said, "Warning, federal offense punishable by severe fines and penalties" if I falsify the report. All those thousands of Americans that have died with the vaccine and hospitalizations in the database I think are real, and they are far beyond anything we've ever seen.

1:43:50.9 DM: And as a doctor, and as a public citizen, I am extraordinarily concerned about the vaccine. The vaccine center right down the street here is empty. I drive past it every day. Americans know, they're talking to each other, the vaccine is not safe, and now the effort is the vaccine stakeholders want kids without parental guidance, and now they wanna be in the church. Americans and people worldwide should be extraordinarily alarmed.

[pause]

1:44:25.4 DM: My personal situation, professional situation is a position of strength, and those who have attempted in any way to pressure, coerce, or threaten me with reprisal have paid an extraordinary price. And I think that's an important message to get out there. There is a position of strength based on principles, of compassionate care, and of the Hippocratic Oath, and of the fiduciary relationship that a doctor has to a patient, and a prominent doctor has to a population that supersedes all of those other ill intents. And what I say is, bring them on.

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Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection

• The American Journal of Medicine. Volume 134, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 16-22
•  Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki

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COVID-19 alternative treatments - real-time database C19
1170 vaccinations to prevent 1 severe COVID-19 case , vs 1.2 vaccinations to prevent 1 case of Measles

COVID-19 treated by Vitamin D - studies, reports, videos

• As of Sept 6, 2021, the page had:  34 trials,  6 trial results,   23 meta-analyses and reviews,   63 observations,   35 recommendations,   55 associations,  89 speculations,  45 videos   see related:   Governments,   HealthProblems,   Hospitals,  Dark Skins,   26 risk factors are ALL associated with low Vit D,   Recent Virus pages   Fight COVID-19 with 50K Vit D weekly   Vaccines

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Additional ways to prevent COVID-19

COVID-19 risks reduced by Vitamin D, Magnesium, Zinc, Resveratrol, Omega-3, etc. (auto-updated)

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Ivermectin

Ivermectin and COVID-19

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Vaccines

Many problems with Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine – Nov 9, 2020
Vaccine trials excluded pregnancies, but it is OK to be vaccinated while pregnant
329 COVID-19 vaccine deaths reported to CDC in a month – Jan 22, 2021
Vaccinations resulted in increased office visits for children 16 months later - Nov 2020
10X reactions to flu vaccine when vitamin D deficient
COVID-19 vaccines look good in the short term, but probably not good for the long term
COVID-19 cases increased in 26 countries soon after vaccinations - April, May 2021
Vaccination publications in VitaminDWiki 70 publications as of June 2021
Variants
Reasons why the virus might mutate and become immune to the COVID-19 vaccine – Nov 2020
Worrisome New Evidence That Vaccines Are Less Effective Against Variants - March 2021

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Virus videos or books

• Immune system - great 11-minute animated video - Aug 2021
• In-home testing of viral load, etc. Dr. Topol interview with transcript – Aug 11, 2021
• Initial efficacy of vaccines against COVID-Delta - July 20, 2021
• COVID-19 doctors not allowed to use treatments that work - Dr McCullough Video and transcript May 2021
• Vitamin D fights many health symptoms, including COVID-19: Dr. Mahtani video and transcript - April 2021
• COVID public health messages 1, 2, and 3 should be - vitamin d vitamin d, vitamin d (video and transcript) - Mar 5, 2021
• COVID-19 fought by Vitamin D or Heat - Drs Seheult and Patrick video - March 3, 2021
• Vitamin D Deficiency and Covid-19: Book by Drs Anderson and Grimes - July 2020
• Vitamin D and COVID-19 webinar - Feb 24, 2021
• Low-cost Ivermectin and Vitamin D fight COVID-19 – Marik video 1 hr – Feb 18, 2021
• Vitamin D and COVID-19: 1 hour simple video - Jan 31, 2021
• Vitamin D helps the immune system fight COVID-19 – video Jan 21, 2021
• Vitamin D, COVID - Campbell and Davis (Video with transcript) - Jan 18, 2021
• COVID 19 Video - Drs. Seheult and Campbell : Lessons Learned and a Look Ahead - Jan 4
• COVID-19 Vitamin D: Overview by Dr. in Sri Lanka (Video and transcript) - Dec 8, 2020
• COVID-19 Vitamin D: Overview of Evidence by Dr. Seheult (Video and transcript) - Dec 10, 2020
• Vitamin D and COVID-19: Video and PDF by Dr. Grant (includes recommendations)- Nov 25, 2020
• Vitamin D and COVID-19 - observational studies found it helps, never hurts - Campbell Oct 31, 2020
• Can vitamin D fight COVID-19 - interview of Dr. Matthews Oct 2020
• COVID-19 and high-dose Vitamin D - Video interview of Dr. Coimbra - May 2020
• COVID-19 prompts awareness of deficiencies of Vitamin D, C and Magnesium - April 6 2020

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Mercola interviewed McCullough: video and transcript (before July 3, 2021)

Mercola video
 Download the TRANSCRIPT from VitaminDWiki

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McCullough has weekly podcasts

https://americaoutloud.com/the-mccullough-report/

• Without Protection from Pharmaceutical Laws, Vaccines Will Do More Harm - July 5
• Regulation of COVID-19 Vaccines; Who is in Control? - June 23
• Gambling on Biotechnology on the Slope of a Pandemic - June 7

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Presentation at Commonwealth Club in SF, July 14, 2021

Early Treatment of COVID-19 and An Update on Vaccine Safety

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Rebutal

Vaccines are a safer alternative for acquiring immunity compared to natural infection and COVID-19 survivors benefit from getting vaccinated, contrary to claims by Peter McCullough June 4, 2021 Claim 1 (Inaccurate):, # 2 (Misleading):, # 3 (Inaccurate and Misleading):, # 4 (Misleading and Unsupported):. #5 (Inaccurate): ,# 6 (Unsupported):

Web

• Do the NIH and WHO COVID treatment recommendations need to be fixed? TrialSiteNews May 16, 2021
  • In-depth review includes: Fluvoxamine, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine,

Short URL = https://is.gd/mcc521