“In his July 4, 2020, Message entitled The Criterion, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan used his global influence to issue a Divine Warning: ‘Don’t take their vaccines. There are fourteen therapies that are in the world today that we can use to fight against the COVID virus.’ One of those 14 therapies is Ivermectin,” stated Ava Muhammad, Official National Spokesperson for Minister Farrakhan.
She continued: “We have profiled Ivermectin several times in The Final Call newspaper over the past two years. It is a medication which won its discoverer a Nobel Prize. It has been approved for human use since 1987 and is one of 3 medications listed by the World Health Organization as Essential, along with penicillin and aspirin. Early in 2021, death rates from COVID-19 plummeted in heavily populated nations such as India and Mexico after the governments distributed Ivermectin to the people.
“The U.S. Government gave Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, in December 2020. But even at the onset of the pandemic, before their vaccine was even available, there was an unprecedented effort by the U.S. Government, through its Federal Agencies, Big-Pharma, mass media and social media to mandate the vaccine as the singular, exclusive treatment for COVID-19. Anyone who attempted to treat patients using traditional approaches to severe respiratory illnesses faced intimidation, persecution, and threats of retaliation, including loss of their jobs or professional licenses. Ivermectin was being used as a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19, long before the existence of a vaccine, despite efforts to suppress it.
“At the root of the specific attack on Dr. Safiyya Shabazz is the U.S. Government’s policy of Depopulation, which includes the deadly mRNAvaccine,” continued Sister Ava Muhammad, who is also an attorney, researcher and editor of the special section in The Final Call entitled, COVID-19 and the U.S. Policy of Depopulation. “Because the so-called ‘vaccine’ is experimental, it never would have been permitted unless certain legal requirements were met. One such requirement is there must be no other accessible treatment or therapy for the pathogen. Ivermectin is one of several highly effective, safe and affordable treatments. Thus, there was and is a deliberate suppression of it.”
It is against this backdrop, that Dr. Shabazz, a board-certified and University of Pennsylvania trained doctor, and registered member of the Nation of Islam, owner and director of Fountain Medical Associates, was initially sent a threatening letter from one of her insurance providers, in November 2021 ordering her to stop prescribing Ivermectin.
Any time spent in conversation with Dr. Shabazz about health and wellness clearly reveals the Philadelphia-based physician is a careful practitioner, with a dedicated, commitment to her patients.
She is also deeply concerned with the health care needs of people in general. The The Philadelphia-based insurer demanded she stop using Ivermectin. But in the end, her faith, her concern for properly treating patients, and the unwavering support of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam produced a solid wall that allowed her to stand up to the corporate giant and Allah (God) granted us a victory. It was a vindication for Ivermectin as part of a treatment regimen for the coronavirus.
“I felt that the initial letter that I received from the insurance company back in November was a response to the media frenzy and kind of parroted some of the language that was being regurgitated in the media that didn’t really reflect accurate medical information,” said Dr. Shabazz.
She had no desire to stop using Ivermectin as part of the coronavirus treatment protocol for her patients. “I didn’t want to change when I knew it was safe and our patients had been doing fine,” Dr. Shabazz said. Her regular patients and many who wanted alternatives to vaccines sought her out for treatment during the pandemic. She started using Ivermectin early in 2020.
In response to this assault, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan assembled a team that included attorneys Abdul Arif Muhammad; Ava Muhammad; Sa’ad Alim Muhammad, National Secretary of the Nation of Islam and Certified Paralegal Aminah Muhammad, Executive Assistant to Minister Farrakhan. They were tasked to form and develop the strategy and defense for Dr. Shabazz. The legal team are all members of the Nation of Islam Executive Council. Dr. Shabazz expressed her gratitude to the Minister saying, “there was no way I could have fought these people without the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the team he assembled.”
Attorney Abdul Arif Muhammad was selected as lead counsel in defense of Dr. Shabazz. He told The Final Call, “The insurance company sent her a letter, in November 2021, directing her, ‘do not prescribe Ivermectin for COVID-19.’ It was essentially an order to cease and desist.”
He sent a response to the insurer in January 2022 arguing the company, which claimed Ivermectin was ineffective and prohibited for use by the federal government, apparently had a misunderstanding about the use of Ivermectin. His response offered scientific and medical research and extensive data showing Ivermectin’s powerful ability to shut down viral replication as well as its positive impact on patients.
The insurance company rejected the response and demanded assurances that Dr. Shabazz “cease and desist” prescribing Ivermectin. Attorney Arif Muhammad issued a final letter, declaring that “Dr. Shabazz would continue to use her best medical judgment to treat her patients.”
Atty. Arif Muhammad also serves as Nation of Islam General Counsel. He went on to say the insurer then summarily terminated Dr. Shabazz’s contract as a member provider, in a February 3, 2020, letter, saying she could no longer treat 600 patients stating, “As of this date you are prohibited from seeing any … (plan) members … . (We) will not be responsible for the payment of any claims for dates of service from February 3, 2022, forward.” It also threatened to negatively report her to a national practitioner’s database, a clearinghouse where doctors are evaluated by insurance carriers or others seeking to determine whether a physician is competent.
A negative assessment, or insurance company claim she was in competent “would be very injurious,” he noted. The heavy-handed administrative response violated Dr. Shabazz’s due process rights and other constitutional protections at the federal and state level, he argued. “A person cannot be deprived of their rights and property without due process of law, meaning they have to have a fair hearing.”
He further explained that the Pennsylvania state constitution prohibits a person being injured without due process, or a hearing before adverse action is taken. The insurer “put the burden on her and us to now appeal the decision and to prove to them that their decision was wrong,” said Atty. Arif Muhammad.
“The insurance company had no right to take action against Dr. Shabazz without first examining her medical records to look at the outcome of her treatment protocol. Had they done so, they would have seen the safety and efficacy of Ivermectin. They didn’t do that. They never talked to Dr. Shabazz,” he explained.
Standing up to a corporate giant
The appeal was filed, and the team engaged a consultant, attorney Alan Dumoff. Mr. Dumoff, a private attorney who does work with the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and other organizations that work in integrative medicine, was recruited by Atty. Arif Muhammad. Atty. Dumoff also knew of Dr. Chris D’Adamo an expert witness, an epidemiologist with knowledge about Ivermectin, multi-purpose medications, nutrition and other lifestyle strategies for preventing and helping manage COVID-19. He met with Atty. Arif Muhammad, and the team brought him on to serve as an expert witness before the panel that evaluated Dr. Shabazz, to present scientific evidence on the effectiveness of Ivermectin.
Chris D’Adamo holds a PhD. in epidemiology and directs the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine which brings together conventional therapies like pharmaceuticals and surgeries with natural, wholistic treatments, such as nutrition and mind-body therapies.
Dr. D’Adamo pointed out where the insurer’s letter to Dr. Shabazz was off base: The CDC and FDA advisories cautioned against using veterinary forms of Ivermectin. Ivermectin had a great safety history over 30 years and was listed by the World Health Organization as an essential drug.
“There have been billions, with a ‘b,’ of doses that have been administered over that time,” he added. “We should really commend Dr. Shabazz for doing so much research on this topic. She used other therapies, too—it wasn’t just Ivermectin—to provide her patients with other tools. I thought it was a real shame that, for whatever reason, not much investment was made in the United States and other developed countries to research Ivermectin. Much of the research was done in other parts of the world and sometimes that was criticized, which I thought was kind of a xenophobic thing to be doing because research is research.”
Dr. D’Adamo referred the insurer panel to other studies about Ivermectin’s role in preventing covid infection and severe outcomes. “There’s over a hundred peer reviewed studies, 80 of which are controlled studies, meaning there’s some kind of control group, and over 30 randomized controlled trials, which is like the generally the highest evidence for Ivermectin (treatment) for Covid-19. So that’s a pretty large base of studies,” he noted. “We’ve seen across the world, countries that have supported or even promoted Ivermectin, such as Japan, Mexico, India, many countries in Africa. Those regions or those countries that had Ivermectin generally had better outcomes.”
Dr. D’Adamo agrees there is a financial aspect to attacks on Ivermectin: Ivermectin is cheap and off patent, so drug companies don’t reap a windfall. “There are patented medications that are being heavily promoted, alongside the vaccines, which are also patented and highly profitable,” he noted. “And as a result, there’s not much investment in research into these, what we call, repurposed medications.” It was concerning that other tools, like vitamin D, Ivermectin, managing blood sugar, zinc, vitamin C, nutritional supplements, hydroxychloroquine treatments advocated by the Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance are not looked at, he said.
“The physician is, and their medical training experience, has the clinical judgment to be able to recommend the therapies that he or she thinks are appropriate. That’s the practice of medicine. That’s the way it works,” he said. “If we start to force them and restrict their ability to personalize their treatment to their patient’s needs, whether it’s an insurance company or anyone else who doesn’t know the patient that’s in front of them, that is a real problem. There’s some legislation in California right now that’s trying to do just that,” he continued.
Attorney Dumoff, who presented the expert testimony of Dr. D’Adamo, said while things have gotten better regarding integrative or non-traditional medicine, there is a lot of “push back” from pharmaceutical companies and others who benefit from current practices. “So, a lot of those same issues in the integrated medicine field really blew up around covid because of the public health issue around it,” he explained. The insurance company’s position on Dr. Shabazz was “fairly extreme.” “What was controversial here, in part, was the scientific basis and the agencies the insurer were citing as their reason was just off base,” he said.
The insurer was saying the FDA prohibited the use of Ivermectin, however, a reading of the issued FDA advisory was actually saying consumers shouldn’t be self-medicating with animal drugs, a clear misapplication of the meaning of the advisory, Atty. Dumoff explained. FDA had never looked at Ivermectin for human prescriptions, but the National Institutes of Health had, and they said individual doctors should decide whether or not the drug should be used.
“Part of the reason why this is important to push back on, is that there does seem to be an orchestrated campaign and the way studies are done and the way the public media is handled to downplay Ivermectin,” he argued. Real science was suppressed, and experiments skewed to show negative results as drug companies profited, such as a $700 drug treatment course versus inexpensive Ivermectin.
The insurance company “is known in the field to be very tough … to reverse a decision like that is really unusual. They had to somewhat reject their own quality management decision,” Atty. Dumoff said. “That was very significant. I think we’re probably going to see other cases around the country. This is showing up periodically in medical board cases where boards will investigate and sometimes charge doctors for using Ivermectin for covid.”
Divine guidance and an effective treatment
Sister Aminah Muhammad recalls speaking to the Minister about the attack on Dr. Shabazz as soon as she learned about it. Both she and Attorney Abdul Arif Muhammad said the Minister was adamant about providing strong support for Dr. Shabazz and referring to her “noble work” in helping people who were ill with COVID-19.
Sister Aminah Muhammad described Dr. Shabazz as a dedicated and skilled physician who has been a blessing to not only her patients in Pennsylvania, but other patients in different parts of the country she was licensed to treat. Among those patients were grateful members of the Nation of Islam who would not take the COVID-19 vaccine and had been warned against it by Min. Farrakhan.
“I think that it was our duty to defend her because she is a Believer and she was helping the Believers, free of charge, to the best of her ability,” said Sister Aminah Muhammad, who added that she herself had spent considerable time researching Ivermectin since 2020. Dr. Shabazz “hasn’t lost any patients nor have any of her patients, to my knowledge, in any way had any adverse effects from it. All Praise is due to Allah! We’re in the Time of Judgment and Truth will prevail. This is what we’ve been taught. And Dr. Shabazz was standing on the side of Truth.”
According to the U.S. Government’s VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System), there have been over 28,000 deaths and more than one million injuries directly attributable to the COVID-19 vaccines since their deployment at the end of 2020.
Sister Aminah Muhammad observed that the attack on Dr. Shabazz had nothing to do with the professional integrity of Dr. Shabazz or the well-being of her patients. It was tied to an agenda to obtain emergency use authorization and then mandate the vaccines. This necessitated lying about the availability and effectiveness of Ivermectin. The insurers “actually wrote in one of their letters to Dr. Shabazz that she needed to begin encouraging her patients to get vaccinated.” She continued, “We have to, number one, put our faith in Allah (God) and trust that the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is guided by Allah (God.) He told us from the beginning not to take the vaccine; that there were treatments and therapies that were available. And from the very beginning, one of those treatments was Ivermectin.”
Attorney Sa’ad Alim Muhammad, who serves as National Secretary of the Nation of Islam, explained that the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan was the catalyst behind the strong defense and offense on behalf of Dr. Shabazz. “He framed it in a way that went from looking for a lawyer to taking the lead on it,” he said.
“It was great to work with the others on the team, especially the Muslims, and Attorney Arif Muhammad did an excellent job in handling the matter and prepping Dr. Shabazz for the peer review hearing. What it represents to me is that our obligation and our duty is to fight, and Allah (God) determines the outcome.” He continued, “I felt it was an attempt to intimidate if not subjugate, a doctor who was willing to use Ivermectin as a viable treatment option, coupled with other medications and remedies for Covid-19. It was really a bully tactic to intimidate.”
Attorney Sa’ad Alim Muhammad added, referring to the insurance plan’s attack, “If the allegation was she’s putting her patients at risk, yet they could not identify one patient who was harmed by her treatment efforts, then they had absolutely no basis whatsoever to make the allegation in this case.”
Attorney Abdul Arif Muhammad also noted the hearing was conducted with Dr. Shabazz before her peers in the medical profession, not administrators or company attorneys who set policy. She testified that she had successfully treated over 800 people, and none had an adverse reaction to Ivermectin. One doctor on the peer review panel, said he understood why Dr. Shabazz acted as she did. When asked by the chair of the panel if he had anything more to add, he replied, “I said what I meant.”
The Peer Review Committee, after a few days, issued its’ decision. “After careful review and consideration of information and testimony presented by counsel and Dr. Shabazz, the committee reversed the earlier decision suspending, Dr. Shabazz and reinstated Dr. Shabazz as a participating provider.”
The Peer Review Committee further decided, “The Committee unanimously agreed that Dr. Shabazz provided good care to her patients at a time when there was a lack of protocols and treatment options at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic … The Committee specifically noted that Dr. Shabazz followed a methodical and well thought out prescribing method by incorporating ivermectin as a part of a patient’s overall treatment regimen.”
Lead counsel Arif Muhammad observed, “What this case represented was what is really going on all around the country in terms of the power of the government to force and try to mandate doctors as well as citizens get vaccinated. And the threat against doctors who refuse to persecute them, to threaten them with loss of their license, the threat to indicate that they’re not competent physicians. But we believe in a God who has Power over all things. And we follow a man in our midst, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, who has his complete faith and trust in Allah (God). And he inspires us. He teaches us to stand up and have the same spirit, to fight to establish the truth.”
Sister Ava Muhammad offered this view, “The peer review panel who decided this matter submitted to the Power of the Truth and proven integrity of this Black Muslim female physician who has saved so many lives.” The insurance company reversal “opens the door for the many members of the medical profession who previously sold us out to repent and be true healers rather than water carriers for Big Pharma. This represents a way for physicians to fight back against the chokehold the pharmaceutical industry has had on the practice of medicine for over a century. Dr. Safiyya is a soldier and a fighter whose love for her people has made her to stand up for Truth.”
(Legal team members Atty. Ava Muhammad and Atty. Abdul Arif Muhammad contributed to this report.)
