Surviving Healthcare
Surviving Healthcare Podcast
318. CIPRO, LEVAQUIN, AND OTHER FLUOROQUINOLONES ARE NOTORIOUSLY TOXIC. YOU MUST NEVER TAKE THEM UNLESS IT IS LIFE OR DEATH...
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318. CIPRO, LEVAQUIN, AND OTHER FLUOROQUINOLONES ARE NOTORIOUSLY TOXIC. YOU MUST NEVER TAKE THEM UNLESS IT IS LIFE OR DEATH...

Their chemistry puts them in a chemotherapy drug class, and their adverse effects reflect it. Despite this, they are marketed as antibiotics and carelessly prescribed.
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Doctors are men who pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into human beings of whom they know nothing. —attributed to Voltaire

Rick, the author, is anon except for his first name. Thank you for your service.

Yoho: This topic is well-known but suppressed. Many of the references Rick gave me have been scrubbed off the internet.

Rick’s introduction

I’m at a loss to describe how honored I was to have Dr. Yoho suggest that I put together a post on the criminal phenomenon known as floxing. I loved his book Butchered by “Healthcare.” When I first read its synopsis, I nearly danced around the room. He had such courage and guts.

Later, I was scanning Cassandra’s Memo and read, “My standard is kaizen and praxis.” These mean continuous improvement and action. I stopped and realized that I was guilty of Sloth, a cardinal sin. I knew then that I had to get off my floxed ass and write this post.

This is about the phenomenon colloquially known as “floxing,” and my message might save your life or that of a relative or friend. My knowledge is firsthand—I was poisoned with IV Levaquin without my knowledge for a bogus diagnosis of pneumonia; I had a heart condition, not an infection. It has been 21 months since the onset of the toxic reaction, and I still battle with symptoms. During this time, I have read all I could about it.

What I went through was atrocious, and yet a walk in the park compared to others. The friend who supported me through my initial shock spent six months in a wheelchair; his muscles had dissolved. Another victim, David Melvin, was a powerful 6'3" and 240 pounds but was rendered a disabled wretch for life after nearly dying. He is the author of myquinstory.info and still battles with week-long flares.

A quinolone adverse events specialist told one of us that vaccines and fluoroquinolones (FQs) are the two pharmaceuticals currently causing the most harm.

This must stop. If we prevent one person from getting injured, it is a big step.

Key facts

  • Fluoroquinolones are a group of medications falsely and misleadingly touted as antibiotics. Their chemical structure puts them into a class of chemotherapy drugs, “topoisomerase interrupters.” These are all classified as chemotherapy agents except the FQs. This has been going on a long time; Norfloxacin, the first FQ, was FDA-approved in 1986.

  • Ignorant or complicit doctors have been killing and disabling people with these for the last 40 years. A recent victim, Rhythm and Blues legend Bobby Caldwell, was murdered with Levaquin when he took it for a runny nose. A video describing this was censored off YouTube a few months before this post dropped, but another is still up.

  • These chemotherapy agents are marketed as “broad-spectrum” antibiotics. They are so broad that they kill everything in their path, including healthy human cells. Sometimes they kill the patient.

  • FQs are touted as “live-saving” medications that are a vital “weapon” in the medical “arsenal.” This military terminology is inappropriate for healthcare, and its use graphically demonstrates why prescription drugs now rank as the leading cause of death.

  • Although FQs are called a “medication,” they are synthetic, deadly, cytotoxic chemotherapy poisons. They often turn good health into chronic disease.

  • The FDA admits that “delayed adverse events” after FQ use may occur for up to 18 months. Severe injury was first reported in 1972 involving an original, first-generation FQ, nalidixic acid. (Reference: What you must know about the hidden dangers of antibiotics: how the side effects of six popular antibiotics can destroy your health, by Dr. Jay S. Cohen.)

  • Severe fluoroquinolone syndromes may go off like bad-health bombs five, ten, or more years after the drugs are taken. This makes the true cause of fluoroquinolone reactions difficult, if not impossible, to trace. Millions of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia, Lyme, chronic fatigue, multiple sclerosis, Guillian Barre, and other diseases may be suffering from a fluoroquinolone-associated disability (FQAD). These may have been caused by an FQ that was prescribed years before. The FDA itself defined this syndrome.

  • The fact that FQs are chemically chemotherapy agents explains their pathogenic mechanisms. These include oxidative stress, mitochondrial toxicity, musculoskeletal damage, collagen disruption, neurotoxicity, and neuropsychiatric effects. These are adverse events, not side effects. (Ref: Fluoroquinolone-Associated Disability (FQAD) - Pathogenesis, Diagnostics, Therapy and Diagnostic Criteria: Side-effects of Fluoroquinolones 1st ed. 2021 Edition by Stefan Pieper).

  • FQs carry multiple FDA Black Box warnings, which is the most severe warning a drug can have. The next sanction is withdrawal from the market. These warnings include the following: tendinitis and tendon rupture (2008), worsening symptoms for those with myasthenia gravis (2011), and permanent nerve damage (2013). Later, Black Boxes included disabling and potentially permanent side effects of the tendons, muscles, joints, nerves, and central nervous system (2016), increased risk of ruptures or tears in the aorta (2018), and risks of mental health and low blood sugar adverse reactions (2018). For each FDA Black Box warning, there is a corresponding European Medical Agency warning.

  • After reviewing all this, you might think that the FQs are one of the most “controlled substances” on the planet, even beyond Schedule 1 (e.g., heroin) or 2 (morphine). Not at all. In fact, for the last 40 years, doctors have been handing them out like candy for everything from runny noses to sore throats. Yoho note: I was guilty of this but never identified a reaction.

  • These Black Box warnings instruct that FQs should never be used as a first-line treatment but rather ONLY SITUATIONS WHEN ALL OTHER TREATMENT ALTERNATIVES HAVE BEEN TRIED AND HAVE FAILED, AND ONLY USED AFTER THE PATIENT HAS BEEN FULLY AND COMPREHENSIVELY INFORMED OF EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE RISKS, INCLUDING THAT OF LIFE-LONG, PERMANENT DISABILITY. This is abridged, and I use capitalization to show what the Black Box warnings look like.

Despite this, over the past 40 years, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people have been floxed. They have suffered deaths, severe permanent injuries, tendon ruptures, nerve damage, muscle wasting, and other issues. YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and every other social media, news, and personal website describe this.

The FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) relies on voluntary reports from physicians, pharmacists, patients, and others. Filling one out is a lengthy, intimidating process that does not invite participation. This can identify problems, but it cannot determine their incidence. The same limitation applies to the incident reporting systems used by many hospitals. Experts believe that AERS picks up only one to ten percent of adverse reactions.

Confounding factors that make FQ reactions less obvious:

  • FQ toxicity is diverse, poorly recognized, and grossly underreported.

  • Many sicknesses and disease processes caused by FQs are missed or misidentified by doctors and patients.

  • FQ may cause adverse reactions years after their use.

  • Symptoms due to FQs are often blamed on other health conditions.

  • The myth is that once these drugs are out of your system, their ability to damage you is over.

Tens of thousands of severe cases, established to be FQ-related and spanning several decades, have been reported from all parts of the world. They span every socioeconomic level and every age group. Most of the victims had good health before taking quinolones.

These drugs are unique from all other antibiotics in their method of action and are too powerful for routine use. They behave like chemotherapy agents and can cause “chemo brain,” a cognitive impairment affecting those receiving chemotherapy. It manifests at unpredictable intervals after treatment and can last years. This was initially ignored, but after years of patient complaints, it was finally recognized. Only recently have studies fully documented it.

FQ damage is imperceptible for some people and horrendous for others. Those who are symptomatic have taken a tremendous toxic hit. Even though some people recover and go on to live a fairly normal life, there may be permanent damage. Likewise, post-chemotherapy damage, such as late neurological effects, is expected.

Yoho note: I woke up to floxing when a fanatically athletic friend had a series of orthopedic disasters and was forced to take months of intravenous Levaquin for a knee infection. No other antibiotic would kill his drug-resistant staphylococcus. Although he knew the risks, he ended up with weakened tendons and multiple surgeries to correct his problems. I have not prescribed fluoroquinolones since.

FQs are one of the most prescribed medication classes; doctors hand them out promiscuously, and the victims keep piling up. Few of them were informed about the risks. Some did not have an infection.

Even after 20 years of constant regulatory warnings and reminders, those with FQ reactions are often dismissed and ignored by prescribing physicians. Here are some of the doctors’ “answers” that FQAD patients hear over and over:

  • “This is just so rare; we’ve never seen it.”

  • “It’s all in your head, and you need a psychologist for pain management.”

  • “You’re probably dehydrated.”

  • “Antibiotics cannot do this.”

  • “Have some steroids, NSAIDs, or NORCO.”

  • “Impossible. You’ve already excreted the drug.”

Follow the money

RFK, Jr. says that vaccine profits are not made by their original sales but later when the injuries and disabilities they cause must be treated. Fluoroquinolones appear to have the same business model.

In 2016, former FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg was sued for allegedly hiding evidence that proved the extreme toxicity/deadliness of Levaquin. Her husband was the co-CEO of a hedge fund that was heavily invested in its manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson. The case was dismissed, but Hamburg resigned anyway.

Here is an ad posted on LinkedIn by a company called "Analytical Market Research" Note: the pills are shaped like skulls.

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This company specializes "in delivering comprehensive market research solutions to meet your business needs." From the ad, you can click through to the website for Analytical Market Research (AMR), which offers a research report for the "FQ Toxicity Market.” I doubt if this is a spoof.

Market Overview:

• The Global Fluoroquinolone Toxicity Syndrome Market was valued at USD 5.52 Billion in 2022.

• It is expected to reach USD 7.98 Billion by 2030, with a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 4.71% during 2023-2030.

After 40 years of adverse events, including death, and 20 years of blood-chilling regulatory warnings, the FQs are not only still on the market but are still used casually. There is still time to invest in this "vibrant growth market."

Just imagine! Endless horizons to profit! Wheelchairs, crutches, canes, braces, supplements, drugs, myriad imaging tests (most of them useless), EMGs, EKGs, devices and apparatuses galore, physical therapy, hospice and palliative care... and don’t forget the treatments that can actually help and which are not covered by insurance: IV Vitamin C, methylene blue, NAD+, sundry aminos, alpha lipoic acid, and IV Myers cocktails with a glutathione push. Additionally, the one thing that actually might repair the damage—stem cell therapy.

The entire thing is in plain sight. HERE is the link to read the “Warnings and Precautions” on the Levaquin package insert.

Thirty-six years have passed, and an ICD-10 code was finally generated for quinolone injury. The FDA defined “Fluoroquinolone-Associated Disability (FQAD)” and its AEs (adverse events) nearly a decade ago.

Rick’s opinion is that visiting an allopath entails kamikaze risk levels

Being badly floxed was an ironic twist to my high awareness since young adulthood of iatrogenesis (doctor-caused disease) and the perils of Rockefeller “medicine.” In the early 70s, tetracyclines were all the rage for almost anything, and doctors gave them to me for sore throats and sinusitis. I ended up with the hallmark yellow teeth, but matured to a healthy 60 by staying drug-free and as far away from doctors as I could.

I already had an aversion to doctors before the plandemic. That was the beginning of the doctor-nurse execution teams in the hospital killing fields. Yoho comment: if you do not know about this, HERE and HERE are required reading.

I had sleep apnea for a decade. This is a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts, often with snoring. Because of what I knew, I never bothered to seek treatment for it. However, it was an early sign of problems, and I developed hypertension-induced atrial flutter in March 2022.

This produced an uncomfortable heart rate of 150, so I visited the ER at a major private Barcelona hospital. The fresh-out-of-med-school emergency doctor told me I had bronchitis, atrial fibrillation, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). All of this was wrong. Yoho note: a heart rate of 150 is an urgent issue or even an emergency and must be treated before a patient is released from care.

I had no infection symptoms, so I rejected the diagnosis, refused the antibiotics, and left with an appointment for cardiology seven days later. I spent that week at home with heart failure, barely breathing, and using inhalers because I believed the bogus diagnosis of COPD.

When I finally crawled to my appointment, the cardiologist rushed me to the ER again. I saw the same doctor who ignored my heart condition and mistook the atrial flutter for fibrillation. She misdiagnosed me again. This time she claimed I had community-acquired pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

I had neither diagnosis, but I did have atrial flutter, pulmonary edema, dilated cardiomyopathy, and congestive heart failure. My “left ventricular ejection fraction,” the amount of blood the heart pushes out with each beat, was found later to be only 35%. Normal is 50 to 70%.

I was admitted with an order for IV levofloxacin from the ER doctor. She may have continued her mistakes to save face after her original error. I was not told what was happening, and levofloxacin was not written on the ER report, only “IV antibiotics.” Yoho note: the usual custom in the US would be for the cardiologist to take responsibility, admit the patient, and write the orders. Anyone with that training would never have made this mistake.

Five months later, a flox “bomb” of severe symptoms went off inside my body. I had radiating chest pain, then horrible electrical spasms from the top of my clavicle down my arm. I felt like a bug sprayed with pesticide, and it continued for two months.

I also had ulnar neuritis, skipped and irregular heartbeats (PACs and PVCs), mitochondrial dysfunction, and more. Except for residual neuropathy in my left foot and some joint discomfort in the right hand, I'm 99% recovered. Untold numbers of other victims have not been as lucky. Thanks to your sun podcast, I started heliotherapy, and it helps.

A more complete version of my story was HERE, but it seems to have been censored and is not even on the Wayback machine.

Michael Kaferly testified before the FDA about floxing

He also got the 2015 Black Box warning implemented, and popularized the FQAD term. Here is what these poisons did to him:

My father taught me to mistrust the medical system.

He was an immunology researcher with published papers who graduated from medical school at 22. He was awarded a grant to do research at Maimonides in NY, and he was a good man, very Catholic (not that the two necessarily go together). He was idealistic but ended up remorseful about the harm that some of his "research" (a euphemism for “experiments”) caused to patients. This included sterilized teenage girls, patients in his clinical trials who were killed by the drug and not the disease, etc. He once told my mother there were only five true medicines: penicillin, aspirin, warfarin, quinine, and one other that I do not recall.

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He was disillusioned by his 10 years as a researcher. He was yet another example of MDs who became jaded with the “Church of Modern Medicine,” as Robert Mendelsohn wrote in his book Confessions of a Medical Heretic (1979).

Growing up in a medical environment taught me early about medical brutality, incompetence, ignorance, and arrogance, as well as poison-based, non-curing “medications.” I read about allopathic medicine and its origins in the Rockefeller petrochemical empire with the Flexner Report. I tried to live by the formula, “Your level of health is directly proportionate to the distance you keep from doctors.”

Never let yourself get floxed without your knowledge and consent.

Yoho comment: in view of the censorship activities surrounding fluoroquinolones, how can anyone doubt that these were FDA-approved in order to purposefully injure, disable, and kill us? Does anyone in this room think these drugs are only about Pharma profits? For how this has been happening in other areas of medical care, see “Almost Everything Scares Me These Days HERE.

References

  • myquinstory.info

  • ciproispoison.com

  • Thencamemichael.com

  • The flox report

  • floxiehope.com says these drugs still generate 15 million US prescriptions a year.

  • BMJ article “Coroner asks drug regulator to review advice about ciprofloxacin after doctor’s death” is HERE.

  • Talia Smith is on Tiktok HERE. She nearly died and is on palliative care now.

  • “Floxed fox” is on Tiktoc HERE.

  • Other Tiktokers are HERE and HERE.

  • Tim Alexandar’s story HERE has more.

  • Search for floxing, Cipro, or levaquin. Floxie is also a good search term, but I avoid it because it sounds “warm and fuzzy.”

  • Warning - this is a harrowing video - the man subsequently took his life:

Ditto:

We must survive by our wits alone. Drag your friends along on our journey by signing them up below.

Parting shot #1: Encapsulated breast implants

Here is what they look like after removal:

These have contracted into unnatural hard, round balls that do not feel like breasts. They shed toxic silicone into the surrounding tissues and are often culture-positive for fungus or bacteria.

People with breast implant illness (BII) often get dramatic relief if their implants are taken out en bloc. This is the painstaking removal of the implant along with the surrounding scar. It requires patience, experience, and typically four hours or more of surgery.

See my post about Dr. Khan and his work HERE for how this is done and more about BII. He says that saline-filled implants can be as problematic as the silicone gel kind. He also notes that the product insert for breast implants recommends removal after ten years.

#2: the heavenly eclipse

#3

Volunteer English-speaking editors and writers wanted. No pay, dangerous working conditions, opportunity to save millions of lives, no chance of recognition. Anonymity is guaranteed if you want it unless your email is hacked. This is close to my job description.

“Legal” disclaimer: This is intended for entertainment purposes only and is not medical advice. I am retired, do not practice medicine, and no longer have a medical license. Everything I say is meant as “what I would do if I were you.” Although you should learn everything you can, books are not doctors. Seek advice from someone with a medical or dental license if you have a medical or dental problem.

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