The evidence keeps piling up that we were right all along — the medical and scientific elite unfairly targeted the drug ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last week, former CNN host Chris Cuomo, who had openly mocked ivermectin users on the air in 2021, admitted that he is on a “regular dose” of the much-maligned drug to deal with the “lingering effects” of an infection.
In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed to delete several social media posts and other statements dismissing the use of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment after settling a lawsuit brought by three doctors, according to Newsweek.
The settlement required the FDA to remove claims that ivermectin is strictly a drug for animals and not fit for human use against COVID-19. This included retiring a consumer update titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19” from its website.
The agency also committed to deleting social media posts such as one that said, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” aiming to dissuade Americans from taking the anti-parasitic medication for COVID-19.
“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
Quip or command?
Judge Elrod challenges @US_FDA’s lawyer. pic.twitter.com/FSJDZYMaLa
— Mary Talley Bowden MD (@MdBreathe) August 13, 2023
The lawsuit was filed in June 2022 by Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Paul Marik and Robert Apter, who argued that the FDA’s statements interfered with their ability to practice medicine.
While a lower court initially dismissed the case, citing the FDA’s sovereign immunity, an appeals court allowed it to proceed, ruling that the “FDA is not a physician” and that even “tweet-sized medical advice” exceeds its statutory authority, according to Newsweek.
The FDA opted to settle the lawsuit rather than continue litigating statements that are now between 2 and 4 years old. However, it maintained that large clinical trials have not demonstrated ivermectin’s efficacy against COVID-19, and the agency has not admitted any wrongdoing.
Ivermectin’s proponents, including podcast host Joe Rogan, who sparred with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta after being accused of taking a “horse dewormer,” celebrated the settlement as a victory.
WARNING: The following post contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
Joe Rogan SNAPS on FDA’s Orwellian Lie About Ivermectin
“It’s for humans too, you f*cking idiot.”
This is in response to the FDA’s infamous tweet: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Serious y’all. Stop It.”
Other facts the FDA ignored:
• Ivermectin has one of the best… pic.twitter.com/VufGgGa6wh
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) April 9, 2024
FDA: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
FDA: We won’t admit we did anything wrong, but we will take down the infamous ad about the horse and the cow. https://t.co/hLBs9uHxXS— Dr My Le Trinh – Suspended because of ivermectin (@myletrinh123) April 6, 2024
Major medical organizations such as the American Pharmacists Association, American Society of Health System Pharmacists and American Medical Association, which had issued a joint statement condemning doctors who prescribed the drug for COVID-19, retracted it.
With the FDA now backpedaling on its opposition to the drug, they were left without any evidentiary backing for their position, according to a column by Dr. David Gortler published Saturday on the website of the Brownstone Institute.
“In the wake of the FDA settling a lawsuit brought against it for wantonly and aggressively smearing ivermectin, the agency has deleted its postings,” he wrote. “That’s good, but we shouldn’t forget how egregiously it mischaracterized the drug, ignored copious evidence in its favor, and portrayed its proponents as dangerous crackpots.”
According to his author’s bio, Gortler, a 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is a “pharmacologist, pharmacist, research scientist and a former member of the FDA Senior Executive Leadership Team who served as senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner on matters of: FDA regulatory affairs, drug safety and FDA science policy.”
“He is a former Yale University and Georgetown University didactic professor of pharmacology and biotechnology, with over a decade of academic pedagogy and bench research, as part of his nearly two decades of experience in drug development,” it says. “He also serves as a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.”
The retractions might be vindication for many who supported more research into the drug they believed could save lives during one of the world’s worst pandemics, but it is too little, too late.
Who knows how many lives could have been saved if doctors had been allowed to consider an “all of the above” approach rather than being vilified for even considering ivermectin.
Ivermectin has been long approved for various human applications both in topical form — to treat conditions such as lice and rosacea — and as an oral tablet prescribed for parasitic worms, intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis, according to Newsweek.
Doctors who defied the orthodoxy were vilified as conspiracy theorists and hucksters. Many saw their careers and reputations shattered through online harassment, job losses and licensure threats simply for exploring ivermectin and other alternatives, such as hydroxychloroquine.
While we are not declaring ivermectin or any other drug to be a miracle cure, the choice should have been left to patients and doctors, especially in cases where the patient was facing death.
According to Gortler, the anti-ivermectin rhetoric also conveniently aligned with the promotion of lucrative new pharmaceutical products such as the exorbitantly priced, taxpayer-funded Paxlovid and Remdesivir.
Remdesivir was deemed so supposedly “safe and effective” that hospitals received a staggering 20 percent bonus payment on the entire hospital bill from the federal government as an incentive for nurses, doctors and administrators to push its use.
However, Remdesivir quickly gained the nickname “run-death-is-near” among nurses and others because of doubts about its actual clinical benefits, Gortler wrote.
Do you believe money played a role in the elite’s attempts to discredit ivermectin?
“The past and current record on ivermectin needs to be set straight. We know there is an important (but untransparent) list of who is responsible for misrepresenting published data, but will anyone be held accountable?” he said in conclusion.
Merely taking down some social media posts doesn’t answer the question of why federal agencies and professional medical organizations chose to take such a hard stance against a drug that has been widely used in the past.
It may take another administration to seriously look into these failures and hold those who caused them accountable.
