An unorthodox Houston doctor-minister whose promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 earned a retweet from President Donald Trump and a rebuke from medical experts is passionately defending her dispensing of the medication.
“It’s not a joke,” Dr. Stella Immanuel said during a brief interview outside her office with The Houston Chronicle. “The people that are saying that it doesn’t work, they are lying.”
Among those she has targeted is Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts. She tweeted this week, “Fauci you are lying. You know it. Americans are dying and you are playing Russian roulette with their lives.”
Fauci and other medical experts have noted that multiple clinical trials have found hydroxychloroquine doesn’t benefit those who have become infected, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that it can trigger heart rhythm problems.
“The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating the] coronavirus disease,” Fauci said.
Immanuel, 55, who holds medical licenses in Louisiana and Texas, gained national attention when she and others on Monday touted the drug’s benefits on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. A video of the event went viral, and Trump retweeted it to his 84 million followers.
Social media platorms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter classified the video as misinformation related to the coronavirus and removed it. The ensuing media focus on Immanuel revealed that she is also a preacher with a long history of making bizarre claims.
Immanuel leads a church in Katy called Fire Power Ministries and she focuses on deliverance, or using rituals to cleanse people of evil spirits or demons. She has said she believes in alien DNA, and in 2013 she shared a video saying that certain women’s diseases are caused by sex with demons in dreams.
“They are responsible for serious gynecological problems,” she said in the 2013 video.“We call them all kinds of names — endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts. But most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband. They are responsible for miscarriages, impotence, men that can’t get it up.”
Outside her office Thursday, Immanuel confirmed her eccentric beliefs.
“Yes, I’m a demon buster. Yes, demons sleep with people,” said Immanuel. “Yes, if you pray for them they get better.”
Immanuel said she was invited to speak Monday at the gathering of “America’s Frontline Doctors” in Washington, D.C. after a tweet of hers started to go viral this month. Immanuel tweeted “I refuse to be chained by fake science,” and tagged Trump. It has since been retweeted 30,000 times.
“I have successfully treated over 250 COVID patients with HCQ, zpack and zinc. No deaths. All these double blinded studies sponsored by big Phama is fake science,” Immanuel posted on July 17, referring to Big Pharma.
Speakers at the Monday event that masks and government shutdowns were not needed to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.
The Washington Post reports that pop star Madonna shared the video of Immanuel, calling the Houston doctor “my hero” and asserting “some people don’t want to hear the truth.” Madonna deleted the post after Instagram blurred the video and classified it as “false information,” the newspaper reported.
Still, on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Tyler, said that he would take hydroxychloroquine after testing positive for coronavirus.
Outside her office in Houston, Immanuel repeated the same message that she did in the nation’s capital: hydroxychloroquine works.
Immanuel, who has called the medication a “cure” for COVID-19, noted that her medical practice has been “inundated” with patients and has so far treated more than 400 people with the drug, including elderly people, asthmatics and diabetics. She encouraged her patients to come forth and speak publicly.
“We have not lost a patient yet,” said Immanuel.
Immanuel is not the only local doctor promoting the drug.
After a COVID-19 outbreak at a Texas City nursing home, Dr. Robin Armstrong, the medical director and a state GOP officer, began providing the tablets to 35 residents who had tested positive but not yet shown symptoms. He said in mid-May that three died but most were no longer showing symptoms.
Born in Cameroon, Immanuel graduated in 1990 from the University of Calabar in Nigeria and completed a residency at a Bronx, N.Y., hospital.
The Texas Medical Board licensed Immanuel in November 2019 for pediatrics and emergency medicine with an address associated with the Rehoboth Medical Center. She has no documented disciplinary actions or known complaints in Texas or Louisiana, where she was first licensed in 1998.
Court filings reveal she was sued in January in Louisiana for medical malpractice in a case involving a woman who died in 2019 after being treated by Immanuel at a medical center. The woman complained of a broken needle in her arm after doing methamphetamine. Immanuel and another doctor prescribed Norvell medication but did not order a closer look at her arm through an X-ray or other medical tests, the woman’s family alleged. She later developed a flesh-eating disease from the wound and died, according to documents provided by the family’s lawyer.
The family’s lawyer was surprised to learn that Immanuel had left Louisiana to work in Texas.
Some of the videos on Immanuel’s YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pages hint at her medical background. In a March 26 video, she appeared to be at her medical practice while singing, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” altering the lyrics to pray for doctors and nurses.
Other videos on her personal pages show her praying outside of her clinic with a megaphone, especially after the death of longtime Houston resident George Floyd and the protests that followed. On June 20, she shared a video that equated Black Lives Matter founders with Marxists.
Immanuel has said that people don’t need masks to protect against the coronavirus, despite wearing them in her videos. In a Facebook post this week, she clarified that she does wear a mask because it’s “the law of the land and it makes me a good example.”
She said she is on hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis, making her unconcerned about catching the virus.
Asked about specific studies that show hydroxychloroquine is not a cure for COVID-19, Immanuel said there are many studies that prove it works.
“Whenever we have two or three studies that show it works,” said Immanuel. “There’s always studies that come out and knock it down. It’s fake science. They’re going to allow people to die so that they can sell vaccines and sell $5000 drugs. It’s diabolic.”
Immanuel cut off the interview after about nine minutes and headed to the parking lot, saying she needed to go.
Nicole Hensley contributed to this report, which contains material from the Associated Press.
brooke.lewis@chron.com
samantha.ketterer@chron.com
The Link LonkJuly 31, 2020 at 08:39AM
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'It’s not a joke': Houston doctor Stella Immanuel defends use of hydroxycholoroquine for COVID-19 - Houston Chronicle
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