Journey

I want to thank all of you all for the privilege of speaking up for medical freedom for both physicians and patients in this state. You all have heard a lot of information today, and you’ve been very attentive, and you’ve asked great questions. I don’t know that I have a whole lot more to say than what has been reiterated already, but I’m going to try to make this personal.

My name is Karen DeVore. I have been practicing dermatology in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for over 30 years. I have a high-volume practice. I see about 50 patients a day. ^{(01) DeVore Dermatology https://devoredermatology.com/}

I have been prescribing hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. They’ve been safe. They’ve been effective. They’ve been affordable, and I’ve been prescribing them for over 30 years. Every time I’ve written the drug for 30 years, it was off label. I have not treated malaria in the state of South Carolina nor river blindness in the state of South Carolina. So why? ^{(02) All Things Ivermectin https://pennybutler.com/ivermectin/}

I mean, I had no pushback from pharmacies or insurance companies for 30 years. Everything I did was technically off label. Why in 2020? All of a sudden, the FDA was calling Ivermectin horse medicine? Physicians were not allowed to write the medicine. Pharmacists would not fill it for you. Where were the FDA, CDC, medical boards, pharmaceutical boards to be truth tellers in all this?

Because I had a long experience writing these safe and affordable drugs. And I knew that there were trials that showed in SARS-CoV-1. That was the virus. You remember a lot of Asians wearing masks in 2002? And I knew we had no FDA-approved early interventions. Patients were basically told, they weren’t even seen by a lot of their primary care doctors. They were basically told to go home and if you can’t breathe and you turn blue, go to the emergency room and then we’ll give you Remdesivir and maybe put you on a ventilator. ^{(03) Remdesivir—Run! Death Is Near… https://pennybutler.com/remdesivir/}

And this was occurring by many doctors across the United States, and other countries were having great results with repurposed drugs: Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.

I was noticing that my long-term patients on hydroxychloroquine for autoimmune diseases like lupus, they were not getting COVID in 2020. So why wouldn’t you try writing these drugs? Why wouldn’t you do vitamin D and zinc? What did you have to lose?

And really, ironically, somebody already alluded to this. South Carolina is a ‘right to try’ state. But because these drugs were already FDA approved for human use, even a terminally ill patient on a ventilator at the end of life was not allowed to try these drugs. How many lives could have been saved?

And physicians have always had the ability to write off-label drugs. I mean, that just means writing an FDA-approved drug for a disease other than the FDA originally approved it for. Simple example, I’m a dermatologist. I could not treat cystic acne with tetracycline if I had to say on FDA approved labels. ^{(04) Baldwin H. Oral Antibiotic Treatment Options for Acne Vulgaris. J Clin Aesthet Dermatol. 2020 Sep;13(9):26-32. Epub 2020 Sep 1. PMID: 33133338; PMCID: PMC7577330. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7577330/}

Could it be that these safe and effective and readily available drugs would have meant there would have been no emergency “vaccine” development, no coercion, no propaganda, no fear, no control, no cash cow for big pharma?

I know you’ve heard today the PREP Act and various other legal reasons that vaccine manufacturers are immune from any liability. Why would they spend time and money improving their product? I mean, that would hurt their bottom line. What other industry is exempt from liability if their product fails, proves dangerous, or is other than advertised? ^{(05) Project Bioshield & PREP Act https://pennybutler.com/project-bioshield-prep-act/}

You’ve already heard the swine flu vaccine in 1976 was pulled after only 32 deaths. I don’t mean only; those were deaths, but now we’re over 1,000 times that many deaths. How many is it going to take? How many hospitalizations? How many disabilities before we recall these vaccines? ^{(06) Déjà Vu… Swine Flu https://pennybutler.com/deja-vu-swine-flu/}

So I began writing Ivermectin for COVID-19 patients almost immediately. To my knowledge, not a single patient that I treated with Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine was hospitalized or died from COVID. Not only were there zero side effects, patients amazed me. They called me back. They told me how overnight they felt normal again. Within eight hours, their fever was broken, their rigors were gone. It was unbelievable. If I had not been witnessing such impressive clinical results, I don’t think I would have continued to fight for my patients with the insurance companies and the pharmacies. Why would you deny this for anyone?

But you know, patients couldn’t get the meds I was writing. I was practicing medicine within the bounds of my medical license, and both I and my patients were being harassed. Pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions. And unknown to me until COVID, South Carolina has a law, Section 40-43-86, that allows pharmacists to have the authority to refuse to fill any prescription for any reason at any time. I just want to repeat that: pharmacists in South Carolina can refuse to fill any doctor’s prescription for any reason at any time. Are pharmacists liable for withholding treatment? Pharmacists haven’t been to medical school. They do not have the right to see and examine and treat patients with prescription drugs. I don’t know how that’s legal. ^{(07) SC Code § 40-43-86 (2021) https://law.justia.com/codes/south-carolina/2021/title-40/chapter-43/section-40-43-86/ (08) Section 40-43-86 (2020) https://law.justia.com/codes/south-carolina/2020/title-40/chapter-43/section-40-43-86/}

So supplies of Ivermectin became limited. Prices were elevated. Patients used to get Ivermectin for $20 before COVID. At the height of the pandemic, it was three or four hundred dollars. And you know what that did? It drove patients to Tractor Supply. You know what? It did work. It worked just as well.

And then doctors and pharmacists started to be audited, including myself, by Blue Cross Blue Shield. Doctors were threatened with the loss of their licenses and jobs. Our own South Carolina DHEC sent letters to physicians encouraging them to push the vaccine that was safe and effective and really discounting Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. And then we get to the issue of privacy and HIPAA laws. ^{(09) HHS HIPAA Laws https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-regulations/index.html (10) CDC HIPAA Act https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/publications/topic/hipaa.html}

How can employers ask your vaccine status? I can’t ask about a person’s medical conditions when I’m hiring or firing them. Pharmacists started interrogating patients. If they thought the prescribed Ivermectin was for COVID. I had seen and examined the patients. I had discussed the risks and benefits of the drugs with the patients. I had told them it was off label. Pharmacists acted like that never happened. And isn’t it a privacy issue for them to be questioning patients? Like, are you on Valacyclovir for a cold sore, or is it for your genital herpes? Is it Doxycycline for acne or a sexually transmitted disease? And a pharmacist has the right to decline one of those and not the other, and insurance companies can pay for one of those and not the other?

You know, if that wasn’t enough, doctors were harassed and vilified for writing FDA approved drugs that I knew how to administer. I knew how to dose. I knew how to handle side effects. But I wasn’t promoting the emergency use vaccines that had no long-term clinical data and that were given to pregnant women and children down to the age of six months. I can assure you no patient was forced to take an off label drug that they considered dangerous or horse medicine. I cannot tell you people were not coerced and forced to take an emergency use vaccine.

And I don’t understand why if you chose to take the vaccine and you put your own life jacket on, I don’t understand why you cared so much that someone else chose to make a different decision. Your life jacket and your vaccine that works and is safe and effective should protect you regardless if your neighbor puts their life jacket on or not.

Well, some patients trusted the government agencies. Let me tell you how that’s turned out so far. In the last two and a half years since the vaccine has been widely promoted and many patients have taken it out of fear and isolation. The patients who took the vaccine still get COVID.

And now I see patients, and I could not believe the attorney who spoke earlier said he had heard the same thing because in 30 years of practicing dermatology, I’ve never heard people describe their symptoms this way. I am itching from my bones out. I am on fire from the inside. I see the most unusual rashes and they don’t respond well to treatment and they last for months or years. I see previously well-controlled autoimmune diseases like psoriasis and eczema and lupus now totally out of control. I see aggressive, severe shingles. It is more painful. It is lasting longer, and this is even in those who have had the shingles vaccine. I see rapidly growing skin cancers, including basal cells that are just supposed to be traditionally very slow-growing. I see cutaneous squamous cells that are metastasizing much more often than they ever did before. And melanomas have become so unusual and much harder to diagnose. They are much more advanced at presentation. And I have to biopsy more and more things, and it’s all in vaccinated patients.

And then beyond my field, patients that I have seen regularly for six to 12 months, every six to 12 months for 30 years, they are aging more rapidly. They have got unhealthy weight loss, their balance is bad, they are falling, they are black and blue, they can’t get on the exam table. And you see their medical updates since they were in, and they have had atrial fibrillation, pacemakers, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, DVTs, pulmonary embolism, Parkinsonism, ALS, tremors, nerve palsies, miscarriages, infertility. Did I mention aggressive, new-onset cancers, recurrent stage 4 cancers after 20 years of remission? I know four people in one small zip code in Spartanburg that have rare leukaemia’s, three of four of them are dead now.

In over 30 years of medical practice, I’ve probably only known one or two people who had Lou Gehrig’s or ALS disease, and they were distant and not really third or fourth contacts. I now know three people in my immediate range of contact.

I know a small middle school in a little part of the state where three 14-year-olds are struggling for their life with cancer. I went through med school before I had a classmate that died of cancer. I’ve got four kids who went through school and college and graduate school, and not a single one of them knew of a classmate that died of cancer.

A week ago, I saw a 60-year-old man who’s previously healthy working full time, got the two vaccines, one booster, three months later diagnosed with his first cancer, bladder, second cancer, prostate, third cancer, stage 4 lung. Am I to believe that’s just coincidence?

I can’t turn a blind eye to this and pretend I don’t see it. I can’t ignore the elephant in the room these past few years. The vaccines have changed the whole medical landscape. People are suffering, and I think they’re dying needlessly.

The medical field, its boards, hospital protocols, pharmaceutical industry, CDC, FDA, D-HEC, NIH, all have been publicly discredited. I don’t know if we can regain public trust, I pray to God we can.

I urge you today to stand up for medical freedom, for patients, for physicians. Please do not allow vaccine mandates that have little safety data while harassing patients who have other effective treatments. Remember, it is our Hippocratic oath to first do no harm. Thank you for your time and attention.