The Virginia Health Enquirer

 

The Virginia Health Enquirer

Enquiring minds want to know – how to improve their health.

Retrieving the gems of effective therapies that fell through the cracks in the rush for excess profits.

The Voice of the Voiceless in the Dismal Swamp of Medical Research.

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Quote of the day: “No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe when the legislature is in session.” - Gideon Tucker, 1866

 

The First Clinical Trial in History Discovered the Value of Vitamin C.

            Dr James Lind, ship’s surgeon aboard the HMS Salisbury, conducted the first modern clinical trial on May 20, 1747. Dividing twelve sailors who suffered from scurvy into six groups, he gave each group a different supplemental treatment in addition to their regular diet. The group that received two oranges and a lemon daily quickly recovered. That established the value of vitamin C. That clinical knowledge became a military secret that gave the British Navy a significant advantage over competing navies. Today, May 20 is celebrated as International Clinical Trial Day.  

How Many Corona Viruses Exist? Way Too Many!

          Since they were discovered in the 1960s humans have been infected by seven different corona viruses. The first four corona viruses only caused cold-like symptoms. In 2002, SARS-1 emerged from a wet animal market in Southern China, infected 8,000 people and killed 800 (10%) before being suppressed. In 2013 Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome – MERS – emerged from camels, infected 2,627 and killed 947 (36%). SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, from a wet animal market in Central China, and has killed 1.23 million Americans, scoring a 1% case mortality rate.

            Covid-19 currently kills almost as many Americas annually as influenza does, but it has a much higher mortality rate than flu. Over 3,200 corona viruses exist in bats but have not yet jumped the species barrier into humans.

Bats, Bats, and More Bats! No Batman or Robin in Sight.

Most infectious diseases originate in animals as zoonosis and are passed on to people through contact with them. It is much easier for a virus to pass from a mammal to a mammal than from a bird or reptile to a mammal. Ebola, Zika, SARS-1 and SARS-2 (Covid-19), MERS, Nipah, Marburg, Hantavirus, and rabies, all originated in bats. Over 1,400 different bat species exist, constituting over 20% of all mammals. They are essential for the environment because they control insect pests. More novel viruses will emerge from bats in the next few decades, each with its own case morality rate – high or low. It behooves the medical community to learn how to inhibit viruses using broad-spectrum antiviral drugs. If they learn that, we will not lose as many lives as we did unnecessarily with Covid-19. VICHR would help.  

Selenium – Key to the Immune System - Strongest Immune Booster

            Scientists call selenium “the miracle mineral” and “the universally protective element”. It is as essential to life as water. Most antioxidants that keep every cell in the body healthy and detoxified are selenium based.

            Selenium concentrates in the cells and organs of the immune system - white blood cells, the liver, kidney, thymus, lymph nodes and thyroid. It is especially important for the brain, testes, and red blood cells. Many viruses genetically encode selenium proteins as part of their protective outer envelope. As viral replication increases, viruses cause illness by depleting cells and organs of selenium. Supplementing selenium increases CD4 white blood cell count, the basic measure of immunity. In 2014 in Liberia, doctors showed that adding 1.2mg of selenium could reduce Ebola deaths by 43.6%. The NIH and CDC ignored those findings because they were developing a new Ebola drug. Coverup?   

            In 2004, at the Montreal AIDS Conference, researchers reported that adding just 200mcg of selenium daily to a three-drug antiviral cocktail more than doubled the increase in CD4 count compared to the three antiviral drugs alone. Not surprisingly, the manufacturers of those three drugs blocked publication of that impressive result for selenium. The results were never published in a medical journal – just at the conference. That is how life-saving science is sometimes covered up. Selenium is safe and not contraindicated to any medications. Ask your physician about selenium.

 

The Nobel Prize in Medicine and NF-kB – Nuclear Factor-Kappa B

            David Baltimore won the Nobel Prize in 1975 for discovering the reverse transcriptase (RT) enzyme in 1970. That became the basis of the first class of AIDS drugs – reverse transcriptase inhibitors (RTIs). More importantly, in 1986 Baltimore and Ranjan Sen discovered the human protein NF-kB, the primary stimulant to both inflammation and viral replication. That discovery finally explained how anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin and other NSAID drugs work. NF-kB has been described as the “master regulator of the immune system, inflammation, and cell survival.”  

            Sadly, the medical community has ignored the basic science that shows that almost all anti-inflammatory drugs also act as broad-spectrum antiviral drugs. That led to the tremendous loss of life of hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions worldwide from AIDS and Covid. NSAID drugs vary greatly in their ability to inhibit NF-kB, from aspirin at the low end, to two or three hundred times as strong as aspirin, as with tamoxifen at the upper end. During Covid-19, dexamethasone, a steroid NF-kB inhibitor, fifty times as strong as aspirin, became the mainstay for treatment of patients hospitalized for Covid. Tragically, the many less potent NF-kBs were not used as early therapy to prevent hospitalization and death. The Virginia Institute for Clinical Health Research – VICHR - could quickly determine which NF-kBIs work best against which viruses and save innumerable lives. This should be done now, before the next pandemic strikes.

 

Tragic Mistake with Covid-19 – Ignoring Sound Science

            Mistakes in wartime can result in hundreds, even thousands of excess deaths. Strategic mistakes made during deadly viral pandemics can result in hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, just as they did with Covid-19. After SARS-1 in 2002, scientists went to work to discover ways to protect people against future corona viruses. When SARS-2/Covid-19 arrived seventeen years later, that research was ignored. In January 2020, Chinese scientist reported that Ebselen, a selenium-based drug, was the most effective out of 10,000 chemicals tested against the SARS-2 virus. That also was ignored. In March 2020 researcher Howard Armistead sent three emails to Tony Fauci’s assistant at the NIH suggesting that selenium and aspirin-like NF-kBIs could slow the progress of SARS-2 infection. That was ignored. As any physician knows, early therapy is the best therapy. That basic principle was ignored. Instead, authorities told the public there were no drugs to treat early Covid-19 infection. That was incorrect. They misled the public so a new drug could be developed to treat Covid. That drug was developed – two years and almost a million American deaths too late.      

 

The Greatest Drug of All Time

          Robert Gallo was chief of the Tumor Cell Laboratory of the National Cancer Institute at the NIH for over twenty years. As a result, by 2000 he was the most referenced scientist in history. When asked about aspirin at the 1994 International Conference on Virology in the Moscone Center in San Francisco Dr Gallo replied, “Aspirin? Aspirin? Aspirin is the greatest drug of all time. I take it every day for the heart.” Many people should consider taking low-dose aspirin to reduce their chance of heart attack and stroke. Always speak with your physician first.  

            Aspirin works through multiple mechanisms in the immune system. It reduces pain, fever and swelling, prevents platelet aggregation and thereby inhibits the cytokine storm. It helps prevent and slow viral infection, and retards cancer. In 1990, Donald Kotler of Columbia University reported that an aspirin analogue, 5-ASA, could reduce HIV replication about 60% as well as AZT. That line of research was quickly suppressed, much to the detriment of all people with HIV worldwide. In 1992, at the Amsterdam AIDS Conference, Howard Armistead reported for the first time that aspirin could increase CD4 count in people with HIV. Then in 2002, Zimbabwean immunologist Elopy Sibanda and Howard Armistead showed that aspirin alone could increase CD4 count twice as high and for twice as long as AZT alone could.   

            If research had been conducted properly on how stronger NF-kB inhibitors could retard HIV progression, tens of thousands of American lives and millions worldwide could have been prolonged. Enquiring minds would like to know why research that can save lives repeatedly is ignored, and too often disappears. As a result, medical – and funeral costs are much higher or sooner than necessary. Failing to conduct this research now is pennywise and pandemic foolish.

      

Penny Wise - Historically Pound Foolish – and Hurtful to Women

          Approximately 500,000 women in Virginia currently suffer from symptomatic uterine fibroids (UFs) that can cause severe pain and suffering, lost time from work, infertility, miscarriage, Cesarean section birth, pre-eclampsia, still birth, and premature birth. UFs often result in hysterectomies that cost $20-30,000, and even up to $100,000 when complications occur. Who pays those astronomical costs? Women pay in more ways than one, families do, insurance companies and governments do. Who benefits? Physicians and hospitals? Yet UFs can probably be reduced by 50% or more using a low-cost therapeutic combination that would cost in the range of $100 annually. Why must women and society pay for the immense burden of UFs when the government fails to fund an affordable research infrastructure such as the Virginia Institute for Clinical Health Research – VICHR - that would quickly determine a combination therapy that will prevent and/or reduce the tremendous cost of UFs to women’s health and well-being, and to society. Failing to establish VICHR to confirm existing low-cost, effective preventatives and treatments for numerous diseases is not penny wise. It is the opposite of government efficiency. It is fiscally irresponsible pound-foolishness.

 

CloserToaCure.com                                        March 2026                           Howard Steel Armistead, IAS   03/01/26