Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd just like to congratulate the member for Makin on that fine speech. I concur with every single word about the endurance, courage and resilience of the Vietnamese people who came to settle in Australia. Thank you, sir.

Over recent weeks, I've been vilified, smeared and slimed by the prejudiced, the ignorant and the ideologically biased. All I have done is try to act within the principles of what is known as the Declaration of Helsinki, the ethical principles for medical research, and especially clause 37, which is titled 'Unproven Interventions in Clinical Practice'. It reads:

In the treatment of an individual patient, where proven interventions do not exist or other known interventions have been ineffective, the physician, after seeking expert advice, with informed consent from the patient or a legally authorised representative, may use an unproven intervention if in the physician's judgement it offers hope of saving life, re-establishing health or alleviating suffering. This intervention should subsequently be made the object of research, designed to evaluate its safety and efficacy. In all cases, new information must be recorded and, where appropriate, made publicly available.

My entire objection to this debate is that we have denied Australian doctors that ability. We have many state governments that have acted contrary to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki and in fact have violated it by preventing physicians using an unproven intervention if in the physician's judgement it offers hope of saving lives. That is simply what I have done. I have simply continued to post information upon the most recent studies of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

I can report to the House that over the last week another four studies into ivermectin have been published. The first one, a peer-reviewed study out of Mexico, was a prospective trial involving 768 COVID patients. Its findings were that treatment with ivermectin lowered the risk of death by 77.7 per cent and lowered the risk of hospitalisation by 67.4 per cent. A second study in the last week was a double-blind randomised controlled trial out of Israel. The lead author was Professor Eli Schwartz. This study found that ivermectin was associated with an 80.7 per cent lower risk of hospitalisation. The third one was a prophylaxis study from India that involved 3,523 healthcare workers. It found that ivermectin was associated with an 83 per cent lower risk of COVID infection. The fourth study, a peer-reviewed study out of Egypt, was a non-randomised controlled trial of 62 mild and early moderate patients, which found an 86.9 per cent lower risk of there being no virologic cure.

All up, that now takes the number of ivermectin studies published in the medical literature to 41 trials involving 304 scientists and 14,830 patients, and that includes 20 randomised controlled trials. We have 41 out of 41 trials concluding the same result. The probability of an equal or greater percentage getting such positive results from an ineffective treatment is one in two trillion. I'll repeat that: in 41 out of 41 studies it is one in two trillion, and yet people in this country are running around the place saying that this is misinformation and that there is no evidence. I call on the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce to please—for God's sake—look at the evidence. (Time expired)