INTERVIEW: U.S. doctor in viral video touting hydroxychloroquine as virus cure doubles down on claims

Stella Immanuel, a medical doctor, touted hydroxychloroquine as the cure for coronavirus in a press conference in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The video of her press conference was shared by President Donald Trump and one of his sons before Twitter and Facebook took it down for violating their misinformation policy. She spoke to KPRC 2′s Joel Eisenbaum Thursday.

KPRC-TV, a virtual channel 2, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Houston, Texas, United States. The station is owned by the Graham Media Group subsidiary of the Graham Holdings Company. PREMIUM TIMES has its permission to republish this interview.

Here’s what Dr Immanuel said:

Joel: You’re an old hat at this already. I mean you had such an impassioned; on Monday that was pretty incredible how impassioned you were. Did you practise that speech?

Answer: No I’m upset. I’m upset. This is not, I’m not acting up, I’m not putting this up, people are dying. Do you understand? People are dying. Like we just had news that Herman Cain died. He didn’t have to die. People saying he should’ve worn a mask. Yes, he should have if he didn’t have hydroxychloroquine. But he should’ve worn a mask.

Joel: You’re saying Herman Cain died, he just died. He didn’t need to?

Answer: If someone would’ve given him hydroxychloroquine it’s most likely he wouldn’t have died. Just like every other people, just like every other person that has died from coronavirus did not have to die.

Joel: But, you understand the World Health Organization, the FDA, they don’t agree with you?

Answer: Of course they don’t agree with me.

Joel: They think you’re dangerous?

Answer: Of course they think I’m dangerous because I’m speaking the truth. I said it many times. Number one: Ask Dr. Anthony Fauci, when was the last time he saw a patient?

When was the last time he put a stethoscope on a patient’s [inaudible] and I’m willing to ask him that. Number two: I’m still waiting for him to come and give me a pee sample to find out whether he’s on hydroxychloroquine to treat himself. The studies that we did on hydroxychloroquine were done without Anthony Fauci.

This is craziness, I have treated right now, over 400 patients. This is Houston. My patients are going to speak up. You’re going to talk to them. You can, you can interview. Put something on the news and call and tell people that have been treated to call. We’ve treated diabetic patients, we’ve treated pregnant women, we’ve treated old people, 87 years old.

This is craziness. I don’t know what they are doing and somebody needs to tell me FDA, Anthony Fauci, WHO — why are you… why do you want people to die?

Joel: They think it has side effects. The efficacy there was that thing in the New England Journal of Medicine that came out today, that says it didn’t work.

Answer: Okay.

Joel: Yet another study says this doesn’t work.

Answer: There are many studies that say it works. There are many studies that say it works. People, I just had something on Facebook, that somebody, ‘Dr. Stella, we badly want to see your data.’ I say, ‘no you don’t. You don’t want to see my data.’

Joel: Why not?

Answer: There are over 50, there are over 100 papers that have been published over the world. In India, in Turkey, in France. Each time these papers come out (that) this thing works, they do a smear campaign, because if they’re not… Do you know how much hydroxychloroquine costs? $20. By taking hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, Vitamin C and Z-pak, tops, maybe $50-$ 60. You have a whole treatment for COVID.

Joel: You called it more than a treatment. You called it a cure.

Answer: It is a cure! What is, okay, what is a cure?

Joel: A cure means it’s eradicated.

Answer: YES! It eradicates the symptoms, it eradicates the virus… We see patients, day one, we put them on hydroxychloroquine. They come back day seven, day 10 and they’re negative. It eradicates the virus. It is a cure. I don’t know why people are getting crazy about this.

Joel: Well that’s a minority view on whether or not it’s a cure.

Answer: Okay, let me tell you something. When you have some 300-400 patients and none of them has died, it is not a minority view… I say this all the time. The doctors are saying this thing don’t work. They, most of them, don’t see patients. They’re, you know, dermatologists, or… listen I’m not knocking their specialties. They don’t see patients. And they’re like well, she’s a pediatrician. I’m a pediatrician and I worked in the emergency room. I’ve done that for years. When I trained in Africa, we train as general practitioners we don’t train as pediatricians or orthopedics or whatever. We train as general practitioners.

When I came here, I did a residency in pediatrics because that is what, that was the specialty, the Residency I got into. But once I finished residency, I got done with residency, I work in pediatrics, I’m working in emergency rooms, seeing adults, intubating people — I’ve done that for years.

Joel: Why not to silence your critics, publish your data?

Answer: And what would that do? I have the data, I’m going to publish it, but what would that do? How about Dr. (Didier) Raoult’s data? Dr. Raoult, a renowned virologist published the data for over 4,000 patients and they vilified him. Although I hear… France now has agreed for patients (for people) to use hydroxychloroquine. Recently… there is a doctor at Yale, that published data —

Joel: I saw that. It was in Newsweek.

Answer: So there is enough data. The minute one of those comes down then [inaudible] few doctors —

Joel: Then why is everybody not on-board with you?

Answer: They can’t be on-board with me because of Big Pharma. I can tell you, exactly what is going on. There are different layers here. There are people that are just opportunistic. They figured out if this virus drives people crazy and everybody is afraid and schools are locked down they lose, somebody will lose the election. Somebody will win the election. That’s stupid.

Because the virus doesn’t care Republican or Democrat. Those are the opportunistic people. Then there are people that don’t have no clue. Doctors that are scared of this medication because they hear this narrative. They’ve never taken hydroxychloroquine. They don’t know it. I keep saying, dermatologists speak up. You put patients on this, 15 years, they take this twice a day for 15 years and nothing happens. Speak up. They’ve never taken patients off hydroxychloroquine because they had some kind of issue. Speak up. You know what I’m saying? They know that… I’m comfortable with this medication because I took, [inaudible] flavoquin, [inaudible] we took it growing up.

Joel: You’re taking it right now? Aren’t you?

Answer: Yes! I take two pills twice, twice a month. I see, you saw our clinic. Are we social distanced in this clinic? We can’t.

You know something? I work with a surgical mask. This is my mask that I work with. I wear this mask so my patients can be comfortable.

Joel: You don’t buy the whole mask thing?

Answer: Listen, no. If you’re not on prophylactic, wear a mask. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m not one of those anti-mask… I’m not anti-vaxxer… I’m not anti all those things. I’m just saying all this vaccine, mask and everything, if they put everyone on hydroxychloroquine, schools would open back up. If they put the vulnerable.

Joel: Like preventatively?

Answer: Yes sir.

Joel: You don’t even have to be diagnosed?

Answer: You don’t even have to be diagnosed.

Joel: You’re going to run afoul (of) your medical license if you start doing that, aren’t you?

Answer: My medical license?

Joel: Yeah?

Answer: So you think I should defend my medical license over people dying? Over people dying?

Joel: Aren’t you worried about losing it?

Anwser: Medical license?

Joel: Your medical license, yeah.

Answer: Really. Let TMB come after me. I should let people die because I’m scared of TMB. Or I should let people die because I’m scared of Anthony Fauci? I should let people die because I’m scared of the WHO? I’m not scared of any of them. I’m not going to let people die. And if they come after me, it’s going to be on! I’m not going to let people die. They can take my license, then do it. I don’t even have a license to defend. It’s going to be on. If they come after my license because I did something wrong that would be one thing. If they come after my license because I saved people… because every patient I have seen has lived. There are doctors out there talking smack. And I’ll tell these doctors say go see your patients. I had a young man drive almost 2-3 hours to get here. Because he went to the ER, he had COVID, he had pneumonia in the chest and they refused to give him hydroxychloroquine. He asked for it, and they refused. My question is that everybody has a right to try. If I want to try a ‘dangerous’ drug, let me try it.

Joel: You think?

Answer: Of course. There is a right to try it in America, it’s the law.

Joel: But I can’t walk into a doctor’s office and say I want to try this drug.

Answer: No.