“Supposing you brought the light inside the body”

On 23 April 2020, the US President Donald Trump delivered more medical insights on how to treat and prevent COVID-19, during a White House pandemic task force briefing. After having previously endorsed the malaria medicine chloroquine, the presidential advice now offered to use bleach and other highly toxic disinfectants for internal therapy against virus infection. That Trump later explained to have been a joke, misinterpreted by the lying press. Some Americans took it seriously anyway and did as told.

The other approach which apparently remains viable, would be to illuminate the body with UV light, from the inside. These are the kakistocratic times we live in, but if you think there is no science behind Trump’s teachings: WAIT!

The “light inside the body” therapy against COVID-19 is exactly what the US startup Aytu Biosciences offers to do for you, in collaboration with the research hospital Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. Their scientists already developed a UV light rod to shove up your bottom in order to treat bacterial infections in the intestine, only that nobody was interested to buy it until now. Or to invest. Even Aytu’s COVID-19 antibody test kit was not really desired. But the bizarre offer of curing COVID-19 by shining light up the arse, that has made it.

The company’s stock which rightly fell to near-worthless, now gained manifold in value and made some people lots of money.

The question is now: did the company readily re-purpose their product after Trump’s unreal press conference? Or did Trump intentionally advertise for Aytu’s business, for some reason?

This was what Trump said, verbatim:

So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful, light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it — and then I said suppose you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting.

Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside? Or almost a cleaning, ‘cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors but it sounds interesting to me, so we’ll see but the whole concept of the light. The way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful.

Scientists at Cedars-Sinai are developing an ultraviolet light that is inserted into the lungs of coronavirus patients to kill the virus living there.

Trump was right again about "inserting UV light."

It's called the #Healight

Watch
pic.twitter.com/naGETF2Mfo

— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) April 25, 2020

Aytu’s product is the so-called Healight. It is an LED catheter emitting UV-A light; before the coronavirus pandemic came along as a business opportunity, it was supposed to go into the anus. There, it would kill the bad bacteria, the proof of concept is ascertained according to the company by the fact that they submitted an abstract at a conference:

“An abstract led by the team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was published in the United European Gastroenterology Journal, October 2019, titled “Internally Applied Ultraviolet Light as a Novel Approach for Effective and Safe Anti-Microbial Treatment.” Here, the authors show that UVA light exhibits significant in vitro bactericidal effects in an array of clinically important bacteria. Additionally, this is the first study using intracolonic UVA application, which reports that UVA exposure is not associated with endoscopic or histologic injury. These findings suggest that UVA therapy can potentially provide a safe and effective novel approach to antimicrobial treatment via phototherapy on internal organs.

So, now that we assumed that UV-A light kills bacteria on a dry surface, we assume it does exactly same and just as efficiently in vivo, without damaging the host. Having assumed that, we can proceed by assuming that the Healight rod also kills viruses because both bacteria and viruses are microorganisms, so there. Right? All you need to do now is to pull the Healight rod out of your bum and shove it down your throat. Maybe wash it in between.

Aytu proposes in their commercial video to push it into the trachea of COVID-19 patients under mechanical ventilation, where Healight will illuminate the lungs and destroy all the viruses. Just as President Trump said it would.

Normally this grifting idiocy would not be taken seriously by anyone. Because peddling fake cures for COVID-19 is also dangerous, first YouTube and then Vimeo deleted the Aytu video; Twitter suspended their account (which was later however restored).

But in this case, there are some US professors behind the invention, which lends credibility where there should be none. The company is owned by two entrepreneur brothers, Josh and Jarrett Disbrow, but their inventors and directors are four Cedars-Sinai professors of gastroenterology, who developed this, shall we say, bottom-up approach.

The four quacks who should be first to feel the power of the light inside, are: Mark Pimentel, Ruchi Mathur, Gil Melmed and Ali Rezaie. In a press release, Pimentel declared:

“Our team has shown that administering a specific spectrum of UV-A light can eradicate viruses in infected human cells (including coronavirus) and bacteria in the area while preserving healthy cells“

In same press release and a newspaper article, Rezaie was quoted with this:

“Our lab at Cedars-Sinai has extensively studied the effects of this unique technology on bacteria and viruses. Based on our findings we believe this therapeutic approach has the potential to significantly impact the high morbidity and mortality of coronavirus-infected patients and patients infected with other respiratory pathogens. We are looking forward to partnering with Aytu BioScience to move this technology forward for the benefit of patients all over the world.“

How can we not trust these American scientists and doctors, especially if their only wish is to help COVID-19 sufferers. It seems, the Aytu quackery is not the private commercial side-activity of these 4 professors, but a proper partnership of Cedars-Sinai, just as Aytu press releases insist. Politico reported in this regard:

“In a statement, a spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai said the technology was in the preclinical phase: “The technology has not been tested or used on patients.””

Incidentally, former member of the Board of Governors at Cedars-Sinai is Steven Mnuchin, now Trump’s Secretary of Treasury. For now, Trump-supporting media is mostly silent about the healing light cure (except of the fascists of Breitbart and the like). Maybe all this is too stupid even for them?

Update

Today’s announcements. A manufacturer for the magic UV lightning rod has been found: Sterling Medical Devices. Company’s president Dan Sterling is quoted:

“Sterling has been working with the Cedars-Sinai team for the past several weeks on a very accelerated schedule to develop this much needed device“

Cedars-Sinai issued this press release:

“A Cedars-Sinai research team is in the pre-clinical stages of developing a technology that harnesses intermittent ultraviolet (UV) A light for treating viruses and bacteria. The technology has not been tested or used on patients. Cedars-Sinai has filed for patents related to the technology and has signed a licensing agreement with Aytu BioScience with the aim of potentially enabling near-term use as a COVID-19 intervention for critically ill, intubated patients.”

It now also becomes clear why the sudden creative repurposing of the illuminated anal probe by Aytu. The company is namely being investigated by its own investors, over the aforementioned COVID-19 antibody blood test. A law firm issued this press release:

“Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP (“GPM”), a leading national shareholder rights law firm, today announced that it has commenced an investigation on behalf Aytu BioScience, Inc. (“Aytu” or the Company”) (NASDAQ: AYTU)  investors concerning the Company and its officers’ possible violations of the federal securities laws.   

[…] On March 10, 2020, Aytu reported that it reached a license agreement for the exclusive distribution of a point-of-care rapid test for certain COVID-19 antibodies in the U.S. for three years, with three year auto-renewals moving forward.

Then, on April 17, 2020, pre-market, NBC News issued a report entitled “Unapproved Chinese coronavirus antibody tests being used in at least 2 states.” [link here, -LS] Citing health officials and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) filings, the article stated that the Company has been distributing unreliable COVID-19 tests from unapproved Chinese manufacturers, which were shipped to the U.S. after the FDA relaxed its guidelines for tests in mid-March.  

On this news, the Company’s share price fell $0.12 per share, or 8%, to close at $1.38 per share on April 17, 2020, thereby injuring investors.

Whistleblower Notice: Persons with non-public information regarding Aytu should consider their options to aid the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower Program.“

Update 31.10.2020

A clinical trial with five COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilation with the Aytu UV-A technology began at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Center at Cedars-Sinai, titled:

“Respiratory application of a novel ultraviolet light delivery device for patients infected with COVID-19: A Pilot Study”

The trial’s principal investigator is the pulmonologist George Chaux, Medical Director of the Lung Transplant Program at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The ClinicalTrials.gov identifier is: NCT04572399, the intervention is: “Endotracheal UV Light“, “administered while patient is mechanically ventilated“. The trial declares “Device Product Not Approved or Cleared by U.S. FDA“. Trial sponsors listed are:

• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
• Aytu BioScience, Inc.

I am informed that the trial has already started and patients are being treated.

Update 9.03.2021

And the results of 5 ventilated patients are in, as preprint!

Ali Rezaie, Gil Y Melmed, Gabriela Leite, Ruchi Mathur, Will Takakura, Isabel Pedraza, Michael Lewis, Rekha Murthy, George Chaux, Mark Pimentel Endotracheal application of ultraviolet A light in critically ill severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 patients: A first-in-human study medRxiv (2021) doi: 10.1101/2021.03.05.21252997

“One subject died 17 days after enrollment due to intracranial hemorrhagic complications of anticoagulation while receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The remaining subjects clinically improved and scored 2, 4, 5, and 7 on the WHO scale at day 30.“

WHO scale 7 is just above 8 (death, patient 1) and means ventilation or ECMO. Scale 5 means oxygen supplementation.

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