Vladimir Zelenco, a self-proclaimed “simple country doctor” in northern New York, soared prominently early in the Covid-19 pandemic when his controversial treatment for the coronavirus gained White House support. He died in Dallas on Thursday. He was 48 years old.
His wife, Linato Zelenco, said he died of lung cancer at the hospital where he was being treated.
Until early 2020, Dr. Zelenko, also known by the Hebrew name Zev, cared for patients in and around Kiriyas Joel, a Hasidic Jewish village of about 35,000 people, about an hour northwest of New York City. Was there.
Like many healthcare providers, he scrambled when the coronavirus began to appear in his community. Within a few weeks, he set out to claim that it was an effective treatment. It is a three-drug cocktail consisting of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin, and zinc sulfate.
He was not the first doctor to promote hydroxychloroquine. However, on March 21, two days after President Donald J. Trump first mentioned the drug in a press briefing, when Dr. Zelenco posted a video on YouTube and Facebook, claiming a 100% success rate. He began to attract the attention of the public. process. He begged Mr. Trump to adopt it.
The next day, Mr. Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, contacted Dr. Zelenko for details. So was the talk show booker. The following week, Dr. Zelenko gave a round in conservative media and spoke in a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon and Rudolph W. Giuliani. Sean Hannity of Fox News promoted his work in an interview with Vice President Mike Pence.
“At that time, it was a whole new discovery, and I saw it like a battlefield commander,” Dr. Zelenco told The New York Times. “I realized I needed to talk to a five-star general.”
On March 28, the Food and Drug Administration urgently authorized doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine and another antimalaria drug, chloroquine, to treat Covid. Trump called the treatment “very effective” and perhaps “the biggest game changer in medical history.”
However, when fellow medical professionals began to point out, Dr. Zelenco had only his own anecdotal evidence to support his case, and the fact that little research was done envisioned a complex situation. rice field.
Still, he’s like the folk hero on the right, not only giving hope in a pandemic, but also acting as a medical institution, claims Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergic Infectious Diseases. It takes months of research to find an effective treatment.
Dr. Zelenko continued to speak and exchange texts with Mr. Meadows, Mr. Giuliani, and several members of parliament.But he Clashed with Kayas Joel’s leaderHe said his story of treating hundreds of Covid patients gave the impression that the community could be overwhelmed by Covid and fuel anti-Semitism.
Over the next few months, researchers further questioned the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found no therapeutic effect, and other studies highlighted the risk of dangerous cardiac arrhythmias in some patients.
These and other results have resulted in the FDA revoking the emergency permit on June 15, 2020.
Dr. Zelenco, a quiet and unpretentious man, seemed unprepared for the attention he received, including harassing phone calls and threats of murder. In May 2020, a federal prosecutor began investigating whether he falsely claimed FDA approval for his work.
That same month, Dr. Zelenco announced in a video that he would close his practice and leave the Kiriyas Joel community. He accused some of his leaders instigating a campaign against him.
After the FDA withdrew approval for hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment, he founded a company called Zelenko Labs to promote other non-conventional treatments for the disease, including vitamins and the anti-inflammatory drug quercetin. ..
And he accepted the image of the victims of the founding, claiming to be non-political. He established the Zelenco Freedom Foundation, a non-profit organization to claim his proceedings. In December 2020, Twitter said it suspended its account and violated the criteria banning “platform operation and spam.”
Dr. Zelenko was born on November 27, 1973 in Kieu, Ukraine, moved to the United States with his family at the age of three and settled in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.
His father, Alex, drove a taxi, and his mother, Larisa (Portnoy) Zelenco, worked at a fur factory, then studied computer programming and then at Morgan Stanley.
In his memoir “Metamorphosis” (2018), Dr. Zelenko writes that he grew up non-religious and entered Hofstra University as an atheist.
“I enjoyed discussing with people and proving to them that Gd doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “I studied philosophy and was attracted to nihilistic thinkers such as Sartre and Nietzsche.”
But after his trip to Israel, he began to change his mind. He was drawn to Orthodox Judaism, especially the Chabad-Lubavich movement.
He graduated from Hofstra with a degree in chemistry in 1995 and a degree in medicine from the University at Buffalo, New York in 2000. After returning to Brooklyn for his residence, he moved to Monroe, a town adjacent to Kayas Joel. In 2004.
Dr. Zelenco worked for three years at Monroe’s medical center, Ezlas Choilim, and advised the local Hatzalah ambulance service. He started his own business in 2007 and has offices in Monsey and Monsey. Monsey is another northern town with a large population of Orthodox Jews.
In 2018, doctors found a rare form of cancer in his chest and resected his right lung in hopes of treating it.
Dr. Zelenco’s first marriage ended with a divorce. Along with his second wife, he is surviving by two children, Shira and Riva. Six children from his first marriage, Levi Yitzchok, Esther Tova, Eta Devorah, Nochum Dovid, Shmuel Nosson Yaakov, Menachem Mendel. His parents; and his brother, Ephraim.
