Vladimir Zelenko, a self-described “simple land doctor” from the state of New York who rose to prominence in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when his controversial treatment for coronavirus received support from the White House, was on Thursday in Dallas dead. He was 48.
His wife, Rinat Zelenko, said he died of lung cancer at a hospital where he was receiving treatment.
Until early 2020, dr. Zelenko, also known by his Hebrew name, Zev, spends his days caring for patients in and around Kiryas Joel, a village of about 35,000 Hasidic Jews about an hour northwest of New York City.
Like many healthcare providers, he was scrambling when the coronavirus started appearing in his community. Within weeks, he ended up on what he insisted was an effective drug: a three-drug cocktail of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotics azithromycin and zinc sulfate.
He was not the first doctor to promote hydroxychloroquine. But he began attracting national attention on March 21 – two days after President Donald J. Trump first mentioned the drug in a press briefing – when Dr. Zelenko posted a video on YouTube and Facebook showing a 100 percent success rate with the treatment. I have mr. Trump begged to adopt it.
A day later, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, to dr. Zelenko issued for more information. So do talk show discussants. Over the next week, dr. Zelenko made the rounds about conservative media and spoke on podcasts hosted by Steve Bannon and Rudolph W. Giuliani. Fox News’ Sean Hannity named his research during an interview with Vice President Mike Pence.
“At the time, it was a brand new finding, and I regarded it as a commander on the battlefield,” said Dr. Zelenko told The New York Times. “I realized I needed to talk to the five-star general.”
On March 28, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization to physicians to prescribe hydroxychloroquine and another antimalarial drug, chloroquine, to treat Covid. Mr. Trump called the treatment “very effective” and possibly “the biggest game changer in the history of medicine.”
But, as fellow medical specialists began to point out, Dr. Zelenko only had his own anecdotal evidence to support his case, and the little research that was done painted a mixed picture.
Yet he has become something of a national hero on the right, someone who not only offers hope amid the pandemic, but also an alternative to the medical institution and dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who insisted that months of research would be needed to find an effective treatment.
Dr. Zelenko continued to text and with Mr. Meadows, mr. Giuliani and several members of Congress to speak. But he clashed with leaders in Kiryas Joel, who said his talks on treating hundreds of Covid patients gave the impression that the community was overwhelmed by Covid, potentially fueling anti-Semitism.
Over the next few months, researchers raised further doubts about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found no benefit from the treatment, and other studies highlighted a risk of dangerous cardiac arrhythmias in some patients.
These results and others led the FDA to revoke its emergency authorization on June 15, 2020.
A quiet, modest man, Dr. Zelenko appeared unprepared for the attention he received, which included harassing phone calls and even death threats. In May 2020, a federal prosecutor opened an investigation into whether he falsely claimed FDA approval for his research.
That same month, dr. Zelenko announced in a video that he is closing his practice and leaving the Kiryas Joel community. He accused several of his leaders of launching a campaign against him.
After the FDA withdrew its approval of hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment, I set up a company, Zelenko Labs, to promote other unconventional treatments for the disease, including vitamins and quercetin, an anti-inflammatory drug.
And while claiming to be apolitical, he embraced the image of a victim of the establishment. He founded a non-profit organization, the Zelenko Freedom Foundation, to state his case. In December 2020, Twitter suspended its account, saying it had violated standards prohibiting “platform manipulation and spam”.
Dr. Zelenko was born on November 27, 1973 in Kiev, Ukraine, and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3, settling in the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn.
His father, Alex, drove a taxi, and his mother, Larisa (Portnoy) Zelenko, worked in a fur factory and later, after studying computer programming, for Morgan Stanley.
In a memoir, “Metamorphosis” (2018), dr. Zelenko wrote that he grew up non-religious and entered Hofstra University as a corrupt atheist.
“I enjoyed debating with people and proving to them that Gd did not exist,” he wrote. “I studied philosophy and was attracted to nihilistic thinkers like Sartre and Nietzsche.”
But after a trip to Israel, he began to change his mind. He was attracted to Orthodox Judaism, and especially the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
He graduated from Hofstra in 1995 with a degree in chemistry, and received his medical degree from New York State University in Buffalo in 2000. After returning to Brooklyn for his residence, he moved to Monroe, a town near Kiryas Joel’s neighbors, in 2004.
Dr. Zelenko worked for Ezras Choilim, a medical center in Monroe, for three years, advising the local Hatzolah ambulance service. He opened his own practice in 2007, with offices in Monroe and Monsey, another upstate town with a large Orthodox Jewish population.
In 2018, doctors found a rare form of cancer in his breast and, hoping to treat it, removed his right lung.
Dr. Zelenko’s first marriage ended in divorce. Together with his second wife, he is survived by their two children, Shira and Liba; six children from his first marriage, Levi Yitzchok, Esther Tova, Eta Devorah, Nochum Dovid, Shmuel Nosson Yaakov and Menachem Mendel; his parents; and a brother, Ephraim.