Pierre Kory

In 2002, Kory graduated from St. George's University with an MD and completed residency and fellowship training in critical care and pulmonary medicine.[5] He did clinical rotations at the Weill Cornell School of Medicine.[5]

Kory first practised in Madison, WI at UW Health, which is the academic medical center at the University of Wisconsin. He served there as the medical director for the Trauma and Life Support Center, in the outpatient pulmonary medicine clinic, and performed bronchoscopic and pleural procedures.[5]

Kory is an expert in critical care ultrasonography. In 2015, along with his co-editors Kory won the British Medical Association’s 2015 President’s Choice award in medical textbooks for their work on "Point of Care Ultrasound".[5]

Kory was in May 2020 "Critical Care Service Chief" at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.[1]

In May 2020, Kory resigned from UW Health after his public participation as a guest of Senator Ron Johnson at a hearing in which he called for use of steroids in COVID-19 patients.[1][2]

Kory then joined Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center in Milwaukee, WI. After his participation in a 8 December 2020 meeting[6] of the Senate Homeland Security Committee in which he expounded the benefits of ivermectin for COVID-19,[7][3][4] he resigned from Aurora St Luke's, telling a reporter the hospital wanted to limit his freedom to speak.[2]

Kory participated in a 6 May 2020 hearing of the Homeland Security Committee, which was chaired by Johnson. At the time, a little over three months since COVID-19 was declared by the World Health Organization to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, Kory said: "The lack of steroids may be a critical absence in the treatment strategies of these patients." Kory said that the current national medical directive at the moment "is solely focused on supportive care." and that "he and a group of critical care specialists" named Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance "recently released their own recommendation." Johnson later said "I sent it to (White House Chief of Staff) Mark Meadows today with the text: ‘I pray somebody will pay attention to this.'"[1][2]

In June 2020, was published the RECOVERY trial which "showed that dexamethasone reduced the risk of dying in people with COVID in the hospital", at a time when the WHO and NIH "were cautioning against" steroid use.[2]

On 17 July, the National Institutes of Health issued treatment guidelines initially entitled "Corticosteroids (Including Dexamethasone)".[8]

In October 2020, Dr Sean Conley prescribed for President Trump the dexamethasone medication for his bout with COVID at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Conley initiated the treatment on 3 October when the President's oxygen saturation dropped to 93%, saying "the potential benefits early on in the course" outweighed any downsides. Controversy erupted because the NIH guidelines called for this treatment only in critical care patients, with San Francisco cardiologist Ethan Weiss saying "you can’t say he’s fine and he’s going home tomorrow and by the way he’s getting dexamethasone, which was shown in [a clinical trial] to be helpful in only the sickest patients."[9]

The FLCCC Alliance, which was co-founded by Kory, has produced a protocol for treatment of COVID-19 which they call MATH+, whose components are: "methylprednisolone, ascorbic acid, thiamine, and heparin, plus a statin, zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin, and magnesium."[2] Kory was lead author in the article that described the rationale for the MATH+ protocol.[10] The group was composed of five doctors from five different US states.[10]

The author of one peer-reviewed paper opined that "the MATH+ protocol has received scarce attention due to the World Health Organization advising against the use of corticosteroids in the beginning of the pandemic... The MATH+ protocol correctly predicted the benefits of corticosteroids and anticoagulants, being ahead of its time in the first half of 2020... The adoption suffered due to a mismatch with WHO guidelines."[11]

The FLCCC Alliance, which was co-founded by Kory, has produced a protocol for treatment of COVID-19 which they call I-MASK+, whose components are: ivermectin, vitamin C, vitamin D, quercetin, zinc, melatonin and aspirin.[2] Dr Paul Marik, who co-founded the FLCCC and who is a professor and chief of the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said that ivermectin "is a safe drug that is exceedingly cheap... what is truly remarkable — this was a gift to us — ivermectin has high activity against COVID-19."[12]

In a historical review article, Turkia observed that: "In October 2020, ivermectin was upgraded from an optional component [of the MATH+ protocol] to an essential component of the protocol. According to the authors, ivermectin is considered the first agent effective for both prophylaxis (prevention) of COVID-19 and for treatment of all phases of COVID-19 including outpatient treatment of the early symptomatic phase. Therefore, at the end of October 2020, a separate ivermectin-based I-MASK+ protocol for prophylaxis and early outpatient treatment of COVID-19 was published."[11]

Turkia concluded that "adoption of ivermectin prophylaxis and early outpatient treatment might significantly reduce the need for lockdowns and other societal restrictions, easing also the financial burden of COVID-19."[11]

• Soni, Nilam J; Arntfield, Robert; Kory, Pierre, eds. (2015). Point of Care Ultrasound. Elsevier.