15 ms·

Doctors and pharmacists ramp up calls for Americans to stop using ivermectin

55 points by rolph 5y ago

rolph 5y ago
full title == [Doctors and pharmacists ramp up calls for Americans to stop using ivermectin to treat COVID-19]
aurizon 5y ago
This is a byproduct of the arcane US medical system. The rich see a doctor and get drugs and are warned off ivermectin. The poor see doctors with meters attached, insert $$, get advice, follow advice to pharmacy = another meter, insert $$. Even an ambulance can cost $1000. In Rest of world the state pays health, so the first doctor visit kill the ivermectin myth and they get the proper medication at a fraction of the US price.
- fny 5y ago
  This is a byproduct of vaccine hesitancy and politicization of the pandemic.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. It's not like the US doesn't have a history of lying about medical procedures performed on misinformed citizens... Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee]. Fool me twice, shame on me [MKULTRA]. Fool me three times...
    - Ansil849 5y ago
      > Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee] I am so tired of seeing Tuskegee trotted out as an argument by anti vaxxers. The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans and was an overtly racist program. COVID vaccines on the other hand are not targeting a specific sample group, they are being given to virtually everyone. There's no sample group. The two are not remotely comparable.
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        It’s not the method, it’s that the government lied about medicine before. No reason they can’t do it again.
        Ansil849 5y ago
        What kind of reasoning is this? Even if the government had not lied about medicine, or any other topic before, there is equally "no reason" that they couldn't lie going forward about anything and everything. Everyone and anyone could lie to you at any given moment. What's your point? How do you go on living your life?
        seattle_spring 5y ago
        "the government lied about vaccines a couple times a few decades ago so they are forever untrustable. Far right wing talking heads like Alex Jones lie on a daily basis, but they're inexplicably trustworthy for medical advice because reasons!"
        moistly 5y ago
        So let’s run with that thought: the governments of almost every nation are outright lying about the vaccines. Also, a supermajority of folk have been vaccinated in most of the advanced nations. Now what? The government lied and… the plan is to have 80% of the population die? How does that benefit those in power? The economy would crash. Production of everything—food, cars, houses—would cease. Healthcare, education, policing, infrastructure maintenance—all would collapse. First-world society would disintegrate. It makes no sense to believe the powers that be are lying about the vaccine. Oh, and also: the unvaccinated make the vast majority of hospitalizations. Now the lie is even more crazy: the vaccine is obviously great at keeping people out of the hospital, but also the governments are all lying about the vaccine. It’s just sheer crazypants conspiracy thinking, through and through.
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        > The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans. Ah, and if they did that (and a thousand other things, many of which were not limited to African Americans, including the aforementioned MKULTRA) and suffered no repercussions for it whatsoever, well, I'm sure they still learned their lesson and would never dream of doing something like it again.
    - junon 5y ago
      > You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. Sure you can. People spend their entire lives studying this shit, dedicating their entire careers to saving people who sit on facebook all day and post nonsense they hear on podcasts and other credit-less sources. It's not "vaccine hesitancy". It's stupidity. Domain experts know more than your conspiracy-theorist crazy Facebook aunt. There is no conspiracy here. It doesn't benefit big pharma by giving it out for free, essentially. There are a handful of other pharmas that did want to rush the vaccine and as a result did not make it to manufacturing because they didn't pass the regulatory process. So no, vaccine "hesitancy" has not been "well earned".
      - rajin444 5y ago
        Do the experts have any long term studies on efficacy (5+ years out)? It seems like they figured out the 6 month (or is it 5? or 8?) window only recently. It also seems learning the vaccine is non sterilizing is new as well. I don't fault them for any of this. Science takes time and iteration. Nobody can account for unknown unknowns - the only solution is time.
        junon 5y ago
        What is the alternative?
        rajin444 5y ago
        Based on current data? I have no idea. It's an absolute mess: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-silenced/ https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-sil... For a start, we could stop making claims that we don't know to be true. Replace "the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all get the vaccine the pandemic will be over" with "the vaccine is the best tool we have to prevent serious disease and death".
        junon 5y ago
        But people at e.g. RKI are saying the latter. It's the media that is saying otherwise.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - dundarious 5y ago
    Exactly, I have no reason to doubt that the vast majority of ivermectin users are taking it as an alternative to and not in tandem with a free vaccine, and vaccine inaccessibility is way down in the list of justifications unvaccinated people give in polls.
- ipnon 5y ago
  The United States government already pays 2/3rds of healthcare costs.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Another fact along those lines, government spending per capita in the US is on par with European nations. We just receive vastly less services for the same and often more money.
- mattigames 5y ago
  Are you sure extremely poorly educated population isn't also a major factor in this matter? I bet good money that these are the very same people that believe in creationism over evolution, that bush did 9/11, on bigfoot and the illuminati, et al.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  I agree that our medical system is fucked, but what exactly are you referring to here? The process seems the same from when I was poor and now that I'm rich. Make appointment -> pay money -> see doctor -> get prescription -> go to pharmacy -> pay money -> get drugs. And the advice I get from doctors doesn't seem to be any better now. It's not like doctors that poor people see are intentionally giving bad medical advice.
  - dboreham 5y ago
    Perhaps they don't even see a doctor, at least not in the official manner. I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper (and in some ways more convenient) than the proper medical-industrial-complex way.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      > I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper How does this work?
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    They're saying the upfront costs of healthcare put poor people off going to the doctor at all and leads to distrust of doctors as just being in it for the money. At least that's the way I read it.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    I think the point was that those who can afford it can see better doctors, particularly those who are less likely to be swayed by pharmaceutical company incentives. Case in point would be, when you were poor did you go to the same doctor in the same neighborhood now that you are rich? Kind of like those who can afford them can receive better lawyers than overworked public defenders.
    - godsfshrmn 5y ago
      As a doctor, someone tell me where I can sign up for some of these pharmaceutical incentives. I guess I am out of the loop as after a decade of practice, no one has come knocking
- glogla 5y ago
  We have universal national healthcare here, and people still take ivermectin because (someone on) Facebook told them to. Before that it was Hydroxychloroquine including one major newspaper running articles on how it helps with COVID (which not only it doesn't but it is illegal to run advertisements on pharmaceuticals around here). So I dunno if US medical system has much to do with it. It seems more like someone weaponized Facebook and other social media to get gullible people to commit mass murder-suicide by refusing vaccinations, masks and taking poison. Or it's an emergent phenomenon with no master behind it, who knows.
  - beaner 5y ago
    Why do you mention hydroxychloroquine as if it were snake oil? At least some hospitals here administered it as part of their covid routine, ostensibly because they believed it helped according to the science.
    - glogla 5y ago
      As far as I understand, they were using it before we had the vaccine as "it might work, it might not, better than nothing". But I don't know the details. I think the practice was discontinued later? But the space it occupied in the public debate (at least around here) was the same Ivermectin does now - not "better than nothing" but "use this instead of the vaccine because evil media and pharma and gubmint is lying to you".
      - beaner 5y ago
        The other side of it is that it was unnecessarily lambasted and made to seem unscientific when it was being administered by our hospitals. People would go in Twitter and shout "people promoting HCQ are idiots!" while their grandpa was in the hospital on that very drug as administered by doctors. Neither side has been entirely rational.
    - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
      Unfortunately, hydroxychloroquine, like Ivermectin, has become politicized. Although a Gilead shareholder with a bias towards Remdesivir, I know that the cost and infusion method (IV) makes Remdesivir much less likely to be used and contraindicated for home use. I hope this rampant politicization of drugs stops before it hits the important drug classes like ACE2 inhibitors, bronchodilators or anti-inflammatories.
kevinconroy 5y ago
It'd be a real shame if someone were to take the Pzifer COVID vaccine, slap a ivermectin label on it, and then sell it to people searching for ivermectin. Real, real shame.
deleted 5y ago
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redmaverick 5y ago
Wonder how much of this is due to Joe Rogan. he apparently took a bunch of things and his covid is negative.
- nkozyra 5y ago
  It long predates Rogan's diagnosis. A few countries used it regularly in their treatment as far back as last year, including India. But it was more of a spaghetti as the wall thing, and it was removed from the protocol back in May. It has been the cure-they-don't-want-you-to-know-about du juor, overtaking HQC since about March
haswell 5y ago
Disclaimer: I am not implying I buy into the theories about ivermectin being an effective treatment for COVID. This feels like another situation where the attempts to quell disinformation are having the opposite of their intended effect. Depending on where these people first learned of this drug, there is some pretty confusing information floating around. When someone like Bret Weinstein points out that ivermectin is used widely and safely to treat river blindness, but most media sources are focused on “it’s a horse dewormer”, people stop listening. Censoring most information about the human use of the drug is driving conspiracy types to decreasingly reputable sources and I’d argue that this is more responsible for the overdoses than anything.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  It's like when the CDC first said that masks are ineffective to try to keep people from hoarding them. People are wise to the game now, and expect that the CDC is saying things to influence behavior, rather than because they are true. Nobody trusts a salesman.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    > It's like when the CDC first said that masks are ineffective to try to keep people from hoarding them. The way I remember it was more like, the CDC said: - They don't know yet if surgical (and in general, non-N95) masks are effective against COVID-19 spread. They never denied this for N95. - Hospitals are running out of surgical (and N95...) masks, and given the above, people should stop hoarding them. That seemed... pretty reasonable to me? In fact here's a link [1] where Fauci literally said: > When we get in a situation when we have enough masks, there will be serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjmKc2D0Mg&t=1m4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjmKc2D0Mg&t=1m4s
    - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
      We can see from this and other examples how the CDC lying to the public has backfired immensely. Not that the CDC is incentivized much to care. The bigger the crisis the bigger the funding.
gorwell 5y ago
Conflating veterinary horse paste ivermectin with the human version of ivermectin is one of the most brazen lies I've ever seen from the American media, who is actively pushing pharmaceutical industry propaganda. Just one of many examples this week: "Joe Rogan has told his Instagram followers he has been taking ivermectin, a deworming veterinary drug formulated for use in cows and horses, to help fight the coronavirus." https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033485152/joe-rogan-covid-ivermectin https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033485152/joe-rogan-covid-iv... That's framed as though he took a drug for cows and horses! He certainly did not. Meanwhile, this is the human version of ivermectin, the one Joe Rogan took: "In 2015, William Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for its discovery and applications. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines... Between 1995 and 2010 the program using donated ivermectin to prevent river blindness is estimated to have prevented seven million years of disability whilst costing US$257 million." Re-read that. It's on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It prevented seven million years of disability for less than $300M. Is that anything remotely like the way it's being portrayed by the media? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin It's a cheap, Nobel Prize winning medication that is proven safe, having been used billions of times in humans. Oh, but you can overdose on it? Just like most drugs? As for its use with regard to Covid, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't personally seek it out, but here's a meta analysis of 63 studies https://ivmmeta.com/ https://ivmmeta.com/ which would suggest it's worth looking at. If doctors are prescribing it, such as in Joe Rogan's case, I don't see why that should be a problem.
- fourstar 5y ago
  Of course it is. The media is the enemy and they always will be. Also see: https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overseas-guidelines.html https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overse... EDIT: LOL. Uh oh the downvote brigade has started! Keep trying to silence the truth. Also feel free to google Bilderberg group for more enlightment ;)
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  The one that Americans would have access to for self treating COVID would be the horse variety unless they found doctors to prescribe them some.
dboreham 5y ago
Note for readers like me inside the liberal media bubble: the Ivermectin craze isn't 100% nonsense where hillbillies take their horse medicine. As the article notes, it's been seriously studied in various countries and so far afaik hasn't been proved to not be effective.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  thats a really weird way of saying "hasn't proven to be effective"
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Also hasn’t been proven to be not effective. Half empty or half full?
    - cultofmetatron 5y ago
      > hasn’t been proven to be not effective. yes but thats grammatically obtuse so as to avoid conveying clear information. its very easy for someone reading that to come away with the wrong info due to the redundant negation.
    - deleted 5y ago
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- cbg0 5y ago
  > it's been seriously studied in various countries and so far afaik hasn't been proved to not be effective. It also hasn't been proven to be effective. Edit: to further show why this is a ridiculous approach towards using something that is unproven to treat a disease: cat urine has also not been proven to not be an effective Covid treatment.
  - haswell 5y ago
    I'm on board with the argument that it hasn't yet been proven to be effective, and should be judged as such. The argument about cat urine no longer seems in good faith, though. There are multiple studies evaluating ivermectin as a COVID treatment, but there are no such studies about cat urine. I understand what you're trying to say; however, there's at least enough interest in ivermectin to warrant real trials. I'm not optimistic that it'll be some miracle cure, but let's not pretend it's cat urine.
gherkinnn 5y ago
How is this even a thing? Why does this have to be pointed out? I've been convinced that the world is beyond parody for years now. And yet it keeps on giving.
antattack 5y ago
I think it's possible that ivermectin could have positive effect (less hospitalizations) on people with parasites who contracted Covid-19. After-all a lot of people die not from Covid-19 but from complications from it. I think the main issue with it's use is, similar to antibiotic resistance, (note that it's not antibiotic or antiviral) overuse will lessen it's effectiveness when needed the most.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  Do you have any evidence that doctors are withholding access to anti-parasitic medication for patients who test positive for parasitic infections?
  - lostapathy 5y ago
    Parent's claim doesn't really require that. I believe they are just theorizing that some people carry unknown parasitic infections and taking anti-parasitics clears that which happens to put them in a batter place to clear covid as well.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- sto_hristo 5y ago
  And i think Chtulu is possible. Haven't seen it, can't prove it, but it has go to be true, just because i think it.
  - choward 5y ago
    They said that it's possible and not that is has to be true. A big part of science is ruling things out. Ivermectin hasn't been ruled out yet.
    - sto_hristo 5y ago
      Neither has been cyanide. And since i've always wanted to be a cult leader, I say that it's possible that cyanide cures wuhan virus disease if you ingest minute quantities of it. Don't forget to smash that like button, hit subscribe, and click on the bell icon.
nikanj 5y ago
I love how they forgot about hydroxychloroquine. Wasn’t that one supposed to be the silver bullet that big pharma was hiding?
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Fun fact, the clinical trials for hydroxychloroquine were basically shanked by data which made it appear dangerous that turned out to be completely fabricated. https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scandal-what-went-wrong--67955/amp https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scand... As a standalone medication or one administered late in the disease hydroxychloroquine has not shown any real promise. When paired with TMPRSS2 inhibitors it may have some promise: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009212 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Well there was that study published in the Lancet dunking on HCQ using manufactured data that even made it past peer review. This despite the data failing the most basic of smell tests: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
epx 5y ago
Let's suppose ivermectin has a weak positive effect. I am fine with the possibility. My doctor believed in that, he prescribed it, me and my family took it (my kid would take it anyway for other reasons). The big problem (in Brazil at least) is, the bozo president and his entourage elected this medicine as a silver bullet, saying that we didn't need vaccines, didn't need any social isolation (let alone lockdowns), etc. These bozos created a false dichotomy: one thing is to take a chance and swallow some medicine as last-ditch attempt when you have no other known option. They use this reasoning to say nothing else was needed.
azalemeth 5y ago
If, like European me, you're wondering how in the nine hells of Baator the US ended up in a situation whereby what a doctor prescribes has somehow become political, I found this primer (on Twitter) by the US Journalist Ben Collins to be highly informative: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1431040456364810242.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1431040456364810242.html If, on the other hand, you live in the US and just want some comedic relief from an excellent medical professional comedian, try this: https://twitter.com/DGlaucomflecken/status/1432776080104951810?s=20 https://twitter.com/DGlaucomflecken/status/14327760801049518...
- mach1ne 5y ago
  Read the whole thing and it wasn't very informative.
willcipriano 5y ago
A interesting observation I had recently was that some people who tend to have views around recreational drugs that can be described "live and let live" are up in arms about ivermectin. I know a guy who uses horse tranquilizers recreationally who posts on Facebook everyday about the "morons who are taking horse medicine". Personally I don't care if you use either, it isn't my body. We are in a age where you no longer must be remotely logically consistent in your arguments and it's fascinating to watch.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- h2odragon 5y ago
  "My body my choice" but we have to have vaccine mandates. Are we at war with East Asia today?
- Bertio 5y ago
  People are frustrated with the resistance to vaccines from people willing to take a lot less sound medicine and like it or not, vaccines are a social issue. It's actually very logical.
- littonlamb 5y ago
  On the one hand: Some people abusing drugs: - to successfully get high - more or less safely at home On the other: Some people abusing a drug - that doesn't have the effect they're using it for - when there's a better alternative - which is freely available - AND the knock-on effects are harming other people - ODs using up hospital capacity - continued spread of coronavirus I don't see much comparison, nor any contradiction in being okay with the former and not okay with the latter.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    To my read, the arguments you are making are not different from the ones made about marijuana legalization, and medical marijuana. > that doesn't have the effect they're using it for Similarly, the FDA claims that marijuana has no legitimate medical use. > when there's a better alternative Many people consider alcohol or tobacco to be alternatives to marijuana. Further, all of the conditions treated by marijuana have alternatives for treatment of some kind. > which is freely available Alcohol and tobacco are freely available. All of the alternatives to marijuana are available via a prescription. > AND the knock-on effects are harming other people Watch Reefer Madness. Take a look around the moral panic where marijuana has been legalized in regards to driving. "Since we can't tell accurately how high someone is, they could get stoned and be a risk to everyone on the highway!". Or what about "You are funding terrorism/organized crime!". I can't also neglect to mention the "think of the children" card that is often played, "If the drug was more available, children might get their hands on it!". If I had chosen a less benign drug at the start of this, I could talk about people overdosing, or the harms of addiction, or people accidently killing themselves while having drug induced hallucinations, and so on and so on.
pseudo0 5y ago
This is a bizarre stat: > By mid-August U.S. pharmacies were filling 88,000 weekly prescriptions for the medication, a 24-fold increase from pre-COVID levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, U.S. poison control centers have seen a five-fold increase in emergency calls related to the drug, with some incidents requiring hospitalization. So despite prescriptions going up x24, and some unknown number of people taking veterinary versions of the drug, emergency calls have only gone up x5? Wouldn't we expect it to be around x24 or greater? Also, the lack of stats on hospitalization is interesting, in that there aren't any. From another article on the same subject, Mississippi at least has apparently had zero (https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf). This whole thing just seems like a manufactured story that gets clicks because it plays into prejudices about rural Americans.
- redisman 5y ago
  I mean it is FDA approved for humans for various ailments so it’s not that surprising that everyone isn’t dying from taking it
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  > So despite prescriptions going up x24, and some unknown number of people taking veterinary versions of the drug, emergency calls have only gone up x5? Wouldn't we expect it to be around x24 or greater? Presumably most of the hospitalizations are from the non-prescription use and less people are likely to take medicine "off-book" and some of those are at least clever enough to work out a safe dosage.
- TOMDM 5y ago
  > So despite prescriptions going up x24, and some unknown number of people taking veterinary versions of the drug, emergency calls have only gone up x5? Wouldn't we expect it to be around x24 or greater? Why would we expect excess emergency calls due to doctor prescribed levels of ivermectin? Ivermectin is used to treat humans for other things, and unless it's a particularly dangerous treatment I doubt we'd see many hospitalisations due to it. There's little evidence it helps treat COVID, but I doubt doctors are prescribing dangerous levels of ivermectin like those found in animal treatments. 5x emergency calls for people taking animal treatments sounds reasonable.
mrfusion 5y ago
Methinks the lady doth protest too much (regarding the media reaction to this)
almost_usual 5y ago
Triage children before anyone at hospitals and health service centers. Any adult should treat themselves with their best decision making. If that results in their death so be it. Time to stop babysitting adults.
whiddershins 5y ago
What I don’t understand about ivermectin is… is the horse paste version different from the human version in any meaningful way other than concentration?
- toxik 5y ago
  Yes, in the purity. It’s okay to give slightly contaminated medication to horses, not to humans. The human Ivermectin is purer.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    I agree, just a doubt: Do the very expensive race horses take the human version or the veterinarian version?
armagon 5y ago
This is so interesting to me. Perhaps what is most interesting is that people seem to have an opinion already and are not willing to change that opinion, and worse that the opinions seem to coincide with political leanings (at least in Canada and the US -- no idea about the rest of the world.) The anti-ivermectin side seems to say: we have vaccines. We don't know if this is good enough until large-scale randomize controlled trials are done -- so don't go trying it. There aren't any peer-reviewed, published studies that show it has a positive effect, and, two high profile studies were pulled because they were done poorly. The pro-ivermectin side says: the drug is cheap -- which means we can easily ramp up production and get it to everyone who needs it, and also means there's no one standing to make a profit to pay for large-scale randomized controlled trials. There are many studies showing a positive effect, some peer reviewed, and others "languishing on pre-print servers are no journals will print them." If you meta-analyze the studies, ignoring the ones that have been retracted, the results are clearly positive. It is so frustrating. https://c19ivermectin.com https://c19ivermectin.com says that are 113 studies of using 73 peer reviewed studies, and they all tend to show good results. That sounds convincing to me, but not anti-ivermectin people. Someone told me he read some of the studies and they were garbage. I really should try reading some of them, but it isn't my field, and even if I can understand what they did, I can't gauge the quality. It seems to come down to "which experts do you trust?" ---- Last night, I was skimming through a book my wife got out of the library on diets called "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II. I flipped at random to a chapter called "Science: The Dark Side", and will share a few excerpts here. "Scams, tricks ... are as old as history itself... Very few experiences are as personal and powerful as those of people who have lost their health prematurely. Understandably, they are willing to believe and try just about anything that might help. They are a highly vulnerable group of consumers. "In the mid-1970s, along came a prime example of a health scam, at least according to the medical establishments. It concerned an alternative cancer treatment called Laetrile. [A woman who was sick was told by all her friends about this treatment, which was not available in the states.] 'There are at least a dozen people in this area who were told they were going to be dead from cancel who used Laetrile and are now out playing tennis.' [The lady went to Mexico for the treatment -- they treated 20 000 Americans each year -- and it didn't work.] "[One of the authors joined a committee on health and nutrition.] [I]n the spring of 1980, I had discovered that, of the eighteen members on that committee, I was the only individual who did not have ties to the commercial world of food and drug companies and their coalitions. "The committee was a stacked deck; its members were entrenched in the status quo" "[In their second meeting, everyone was passed a copy of an intended press release, which] listed examples of the kind of nutrition frauds that our committee intended to expose. "As I scanned the list of so-called frauds, I was stunned to see the 1977 McGovern dietary goals on the list. [A senator McGovern had convened experts on health and nutrition and they recommended decreased consumption of fatty animal foods and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables because of their effect on heart disease.] [Because of his dissent, they didn't release this message at this time, but he could tell 'he was the chicken who had wandered into the foxes den']. [The author talks about good science that was smeared by this group] "The majority of scientists are honourable, intelligent and dedicated to the search for the common good rather than personal gain. However, there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder. They may not be many in number, but their influence can be vast. They can corrupt the good name of institutions of which they are a part and, most importantly, they can create vast confusion among the public, which often can not tell who is who. You might turn on the TV one day to see an expert praising McDonald's hamburgers, and then read a magazine the same day that you should eat less high-fat red meat to protect yourself against cancer. Who is to be believed? "Institutions are also part of the dark side of science. Committees like the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the American Council on Science and Health generate lopsided panels and committees and institutions that are far more interested in promoting their point of view than debating scientific research with an open mind. If a Public Nutrition Information Committee report say that low-fat diets are fraudulent scams, and a National Academy of Sciences report says the opposite, which one is right?" ----- Anyways, to sum up, it is not clear to me who is who in this fight. I can see a case that the people promoting ivermectin are fraudsters or doing bad science, and our medical organizations are trying to save us, but it is also not hard to see that the people writing the papers showing ivermectin is effective are trying hard to save us, and the medical organizations don't like it as it disagrees with their predisposed view of the world. Who is to be believed, indeed?
tlogan 5y ago
Really crazy times: - doctors say: take a vaccine but people say “I don’t trust big pharma” - random guy say take ivermectin and people say “great I trust pharma”. Merck is marking tons of money now. So this is all about packaging of the message. I think the only way to convince people to take vaccine is that Binden (and democrats) starts telling people not to take one… This is just beyond stupid and this is all result of our nanny state. Im 100% for Florida approach: let’s god sort them out.
- haswell 5y ago
  To be fair, ivermectin is an old drug with a well established safety record ... when using proper human dosing. The COVID vaccines are only just getting their first full approvals. If someone is evaluating the drugs purely on their long term track record of safety, ivermectin wins by a long shot. But none of that really matters, because the problem is about efficacy. It might be "safer" to take ivermectin in a vacuum than one of the vaccines, but that doesn't matter if ivermectin doesn't protect you and you die of COVID anyway.
  - tlogan 5y ago
    > To be fair, ivermectin is an old drug with a well > established safety record But then why these crazy doctors are saying not to take it? Conspiracy? I guess we not should trust these "doctors"...
    - haswell 5y ago
      For the same reason a doctor would say you shouldn’t take penicillin to treat COVID. People are conflating safety with efficacy.
OneEyedRobot 5y ago
That's odd. A quick look at sci-hub shows a bunch of ivermectin papers that don't look half bad. I figure that if a physician wants to go off-label on a prescription they should go ahead. Plenty of warnings of course. Buying it at the feed store along with fish antibiotics is sketchy, but remember that it's your body after all. People forget that. God knows how many people are harmed by Tylenol overdoses.
- karaterobot 5y ago
  The issue is that there aren't any studies showing that safe doses are effective for treating this disease in humans. The studies on monkey cell cultures are what they are, but nobody seems to be noticing that the dose you'd have to use to get those effects in living humans is unsafe. As a rule, medicine should be more likely to treat the illness than to kill you. If my doctor prescribed Ivermectin, I guess I'd take it, but if my doctor prescribed it at this point, they should get their license revoked.
  - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
    >The issue is that there aren't any studies showing that safe doses are effective for treating this disease in humans. Actually I'm seeing a few, but they suffer from the typical lack of statistical rigor that I've come to expect in medical studies and fall into the 'further studies are needed' bin. As a side note, I'm always blown away by the poor quality of many medical papers. Publish or perish? Dunno.
AHappyCamper 5y ago
This article is ridiculous. It's claiming that Ivermectin is unsafe because people are taking the horse-intended version... . Really, they're screaming "We're losing money! We wanted to get paid for you taking the unproven vaccine instead of a safe drug that's been around for decades!" The wording in this article is highly dubious "The drug can cause... even death." Oh please! Then how come doctors are prescribing it???? Individual doctors, who have been to medical school, who understand pharmacy and anatomy, are prescribing this drug, and Pfizer is FURIOUS. Pfizer and Faucci likely paid for this article to be written, because one shred of critical thinking "debunks" this fraudulent article.
gHosts 5y ago
Back in the precovid 3rd world I met people who took very dubious / polluted / rotten stuff as a "purge". a. The placebo effect is real. A bout of induced vomiting and diarrhea makes whatever you are left with feel less worse than that... b. They couldn't afford 1st world doctors and medicine anyway. c. They were desperate. d. Scoundrels preyed on their desperation.

55 points by rolph 5y ago

full title == [Doctors and pharmacists ramp up calls for Americans to stop using ivermectin to treat COVID-19]

This is a byproduct of the arcane US medical system. The rich see a doctor and get drugs and are warned off ivermectin. The poor see doctors with meters attached, insert $$, get advice, follow advice to pharmacy = another meter, insert $$. Even an ambulance can cost $1000. In Rest of world the state pays health, so the first doctor visit kill the ivermectin myth and they get the proper medication at a fraction of the US price.

fny 5y ago
This is a byproduct of vaccine hesitancy and politicization of the pandemic.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. It's not like the US doesn't have a history of lying about medical procedures performed on misinformed citizens... Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee]. Fool me twice, shame on me [MKULTRA]. Fool me three times...
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee] I am so tired of seeing Tuskegee trotted out as an argument by anti vaxxers. The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans and was an overtly racist program. COVID vaccines on the other hand are not targeting a specific sample group, they are being given to virtually everyone. There's no sample group. The two are not remotely comparable.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      It’s not the method, it’s that the government lied about medicine before. No reason they can’t do it again.
      - Ansil849 5y ago
        What kind of reasoning is this? Even if the government had not lied about medicine, or any other topic before, there is equally "no reason" that they couldn't lie going forward about anything and everything. Everyone and anyone could lie to you at any given moment. What's your point? How do you go on living your life?
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        "the government lied about vaccines a couple times a few decades ago so they are forever untrustable. Far right wing talking heads like Alex Jones lie on a daily basis, but they're inexplicably trustworthy for medical advice because reasons!"
      - moistly 5y ago
        So let’s run with that thought: the governments of almost every nation are outright lying about the vaccines. Also, a supermajority of folk have been vaccinated in most of the advanced nations. Now what? The government lied and… the plan is to have 80% of the population die? How does that benefit those in power? The economy would crash. Production of everything—food, cars, houses—would cease. Healthcare, education, policing, infrastructure maintenance—all would collapse. First-world society would disintegrate. It makes no sense to believe the powers that be are lying about the vaccine. Oh, and also: the unvaccinated make the vast majority of hospitalizations. Now the lie is even more crazy: the vaccine is obviously great at keeping people out of the hospital, but also the governments are all lying about the vaccine. It’s just sheer crazypants conspiracy thinking, through and through.
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      > The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans. Ah, and if they did that (and a thousand other things, many of which were not limited to African Americans, including the aforementioned MKULTRA) and suffered no repercussions for it whatsoever, well, I'm sure they still learned their lesson and would never dream of doing something like it again.
  - junon 5y ago
    > You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. Sure you can. People spend their entire lives studying this shit, dedicating their entire careers to saving people who sit on facebook all day and post nonsense they hear on podcasts and other credit-less sources. It's not "vaccine hesitancy". It's stupidity. Domain experts know more than your conspiracy-theorist crazy Facebook aunt. There is no conspiracy here. It doesn't benefit big pharma by giving it out for free, essentially. There are a handful of other pharmas that did want to rush the vaccine and as a result did not make it to manufacturing because they didn't pass the regulatory process. So no, vaccine "hesitancy" has not been "well earned".
    - rajin444 5y ago
      Do the experts have any long term studies on efficacy (5+ years out)? It seems like they figured out the 6 month (or is it 5? or 8?) window only recently. It also seems learning the vaccine is non sterilizing is new as well. I don't fault them for any of this. Science takes time and iteration. Nobody can account for unknown unknowns - the only solution is time.
      - junon 5y ago
        What is the alternative?
        rajin444 5y ago
        Based on current data? I have no idea. It's an absolute mess: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-silenced/ https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-sil... For a start, we could stop making claims that we don't know to be true. Replace "the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all get the vaccine the pandemic will be over" with "the vaccine is the best tool we have to prevent serious disease and death".
        junon 5y ago
        But people at e.g. RKI are saying the latter. It's the media that is saying otherwise.
- deleted 5y ago
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- dundarious 5y ago
  Exactly, I have no reason to doubt that the vast majority of ivermectin users are taking it as an alternative to and not in tandem with a free vaccine, and vaccine inaccessibility is way down in the list of justifications unvaccinated people give in polls.
ipnon 5y ago
The United States government already pays 2/3rds of healthcare costs.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Another fact along those lines, government spending per capita in the US is on par with European nations. We just receive vastly less services for the same and often more money.
mattigames 5y ago
Are you sure extremely poorly educated population isn't also a major factor in this matter? I bet good money that these are the very same people that believe in creationism over evolution, that bush did 9/11, on bigfoot and the illuminati, et al.
fallingknife 5y ago
I agree that our medical system is fucked, but what exactly are you referring to here? The process seems the same from when I was poor and now that I'm rich. Make appointment -> pay money -> see doctor -> get prescription -> go to pharmacy -> pay money -> get drugs. And the advice I get from doctors doesn't seem to be any better now. It's not like doctors that poor people see are intentionally giving bad medical advice.
- dboreham 5y ago
  Perhaps they don't even see a doctor, at least not in the official manner. I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper (and in some ways more convenient) than the proper medical-industrial-complex way.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    > I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper How does this work?
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  They're saying the upfront costs of healthcare put poor people off going to the doctor at all and leads to distrust of doctors as just being in it for the money. At least that's the way I read it.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  I think the point was that those who can afford it can see better doctors, particularly those who are less likely to be swayed by pharmaceutical company incentives. Case in point would be, when you were poor did you go to the same doctor in the same neighborhood now that you are rich? Kind of like those who can afford them can receive better lawyers than overworked public defenders.
  - godsfshrmn 5y ago
    As a doctor, someone tell me where I can sign up for some of these pharmaceutical incentives. I guess I am out of the loop as after a decade of practice, no one has come knocking
glogla 5y ago
We have universal national healthcare here, and people still take ivermectin because (someone on) Facebook told them to. Before that it was Hydroxychloroquine including one major newspaper running articles on how it helps with COVID (which not only it doesn't but it is illegal to run advertisements on pharmaceuticals around here). So I dunno if US medical system has much to do with it. It seems more like someone weaponized Facebook and other social media to get gullible people to commit mass murder-suicide by refusing vaccinations, masks and taking poison. Or it's an emergent phenomenon with no master behind it, who knows.
- beaner 5y ago
  Why do you mention hydroxychloroquine as if it were snake oil? At least some hospitals here administered it as part of their covid routine, ostensibly because they believed it helped according to the science.
  - glogla 5y ago
    As far as I understand, they were using it before we had the vaccine as "it might work, it might not, better than nothing". But I don't know the details. I think the practice was discontinued later? But the space it occupied in the public debate (at least around here) was the same Ivermectin does now - not "better than nothing" but "use this instead of the vaccine because evil media and pharma and gubmint is lying to you".
    - beaner 5y ago
      The other side of it is that it was unnecessarily lambasted and made to seem unscientific when it was being administered by our hospitals. People would go in Twitter and shout "people promoting HCQ are idiots!" while their grandpa was in the hospital on that very drug as administered by doctors. Neither side has been entirely rational.
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    Unfortunately, hydroxychloroquine, like Ivermectin, has become politicized. Although a Gilead shareholder with a bias towards Remdesivir, I know that the cost and infusion method (IV) makes Remdesivir much less likely to be used and contraindicated for home use. I hope this rampant politicization of drugs stops before it hits the important drug classes like ACE2 inhibitors, bronchodilators or anti-inflammatories.

kevinconroy 5y ago

It'd be a real shame if someone were to take the Pzifer COVID vaccine, slap a ivermectin label on it, and then sell it to people searching for ivermectin. Real, real shame.

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redmaverick 5y ago

Wonder how much of this is due to Joe Rogan. he apparently took a bunch of things and his covid is negative.

nkozyra 5y ago
It long predates Rogan's diagnosis. A few countries used it regularly in their treatment as far back as last year, including India. But it was more of a spaghetti as the wall thing, and it was removed from the protocol back in May. It has been the cure-they-don't-want-you-to-know-about du juor, overtaking HQC since about March

haswell 5y ago

Disclaimer: I am not implying I buy into the theories about ivermectin being an effective treatment for COVID. This feels like another situation where the attempts to quell disinformation are having the opposite of their intended effect. Depending on where these people first learned of this drug, there is some pretty confusing information floating around. When someone like Bret Weinstein points out that ivermectin is used widely and safely to treat river blindness, but most media sources are focused on “it’s a horse dewormer”, people stop listening. Censoring most information about the human use of the drug is driving conspiracy types to decreasingly reputable sources and I’d argue that this is more responsible for the overdoses than anything.

fallingknife 5y ago
It's like when the CDC first said that masks are ineffective to try to keep people from hoarding them. People are wise to the game now, and expect that the CDC is saying things to influence behavior, rather than because they are true. Nobody trusts a salesman.
- dataflow 5y ago
  > It's like when the CDC first said that masks are ineffective to try to keep people from hoarding them. The way I remember it was more like, the CDC said: - They don't know yet if surgical (and in general, non-N95) masks are effective against COVID-19 spread. They never denied this for N95. - Hospitals are running out of surgical (and N95...) masks, and given the above, people should stop hoarding them. That seemed... pretty reasonable to me? In fact here's a link [1] where Fauci literally said: > When we get in a situation when we have enough masks, there will be serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjmKc2D0Mg&t=1m4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjmKc2D0Mg&t=1m4s
  - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    We can see from this and other examples how the CDC lying to the public has backfired immensely. Not that the CDC is incentivized much to care. The bigger the crisis the bigger the funding.

gorwell 5y ago

Conflating veterinary horse paste ivermectin with the human version of ivermectin is one of the most brazen lies I've ever seen from the American media, who is actively pushing pharmaceutical industry propaganda. Just one of many examples this week: "Joe Rogan has told his Instagram followers he has been taking ivermectin, a deworming veterinary drug formulated for use in cows and horses, to help fight the coronavirus." https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033485152/joe-rogan-covid-ivermectin https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033485152/joe-rogan-covid-iv... That's framed as though he took a drug for cows and horses! He certainly did not. Meanwhile, this is the human version of ivermectin, the one Joe Rogan took: "In 2015, William Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for its discovery and applications. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines... Between 1995 and 2010 the program using donated ivermectin to prevent river blindness is estimated to have prevented seven million years of disability whilst costing US$257 million." Re-read that. It's on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It prevented seven million years of disability for less than $300M. Is that anything remotely like the way it's being portrayed by the media? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin It's a cheap, Nobel Prize winning medication that is proven safe, having been used billions of times in humans. Oh, but you can overdose on it? Just like most drugs? As for its use with regard to Covid, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't personally seek it out, but here's a meta analysis of 63 studies https://ivmmeta.com/ https://ivmmeta.com/ which would suggest it's worth looking at. If doctors are prescribing it, such as in Joe Rogan's case, I don't see why that should be a problem.

fourstar 5y ago
Of course it is. The media is the enemy and they always will be. Also see: https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overseas-guidelines.html https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overse... EDIT: LOL. Uh oh the downvote brigade has started! Keep trying to silence the truth. Also feel free to google Bilderberg group for more enlightment ;)
MattGaiser 5y ago
The one that Americans would have access to for self treating COVID would be the horse variety unless they found doctors to prescribe them some.

dboreham 5y ago

Note for readers like me inside the liberal media bubble: the Ivermectin craze isn't 100% nonsense where hillbillies take their horse medicine. As the article notes, it's been seriously studied in various countries and so far afaik hasn't been proved to not be effective.

cultofmetatron 5y ago
thats a really weird way of saying "hasn't proven to be effective"
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Also hasn’t been proven to be not effective. Half empty or half full?
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    > hasn’t been proven to be not effective. yes but thats grammatically obtuse so as to avoid conveying clear information. its very easy for someone reading that to come away with the wrong info due to the redundant negation.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
cbg0 5y ago
> it's been seriously studied in various countries and so far afaik hasn't been proved to not be effective. It also hasn't been proven to be effective. Edit: to further show why this is a ridiculous approach towards using something that is unproven to treat a disease: cat urine has also not been proven to not be an effective Covid treatment.
- haswell 5y ago
  I'm on board with the argument that it hasn't yet been proven to be effective, and should be judged as such. The argument about cat urine no longer seems in good faith, though. There are multiple studies evaluating ivermectin as a COVID treatment, but there are no such studies about cat urine. I understand what you're trying to say; however, there's at least enough interest in ivermectin to warrant real trials. I'm not optimistic that it'll be some miracle cure, but let's not pretend it's cat urine.

gherkinnn 5y ago

How is this even a thing? Why does this have to be pointed out? I've been convinced that the world is beyond parody for years now. And yet it keeps on giving.

antattack 5y ago

I think it's possible that ivermectin could have positive effect (less hospitalizations) on people with parasites who contracted Covid-19. After-all a lot of people die not from Covid-19 but from complications from it. I think the main issue with it's use is, similar to antibiotic resistance, (note that it's not antibiotic or antiviral) overuse will lessen it's effectiveness when needed the most.

seattle_spring 5y ago
Do you have any evidence that doctors are withholding access to anti-parasitic medication for patients who test positive for parasitic infections?
- lostapathy 5y ago
  Parent's claim doesn't really require that. I believe they are just theorizing that some people carry unknown parasitic infections and taking anti-parasitics clears that which happens to put them in a batter place to clear covid as well.
- deleted 5y ago
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sto_hristo 5y ago
And i think Chtulu is possible. Haven't seen it, can't prove it, but it has go to be true, just because i think it.
- choward 5y ago
  They said that it's possible and not that is has to be true. A big part of science is ruling things out. Ivermectin hasn't been ruled out yet.
  - sto_hristo 5y ago
    Neither has been cyanide. And since i've always wanted to be a cult leader, I say that it's possible that cyanide cures wuhan virus disease if you ingest minute quantities of it. Don't forget to smash that like button, hit subscribe, and click on the bell icon.

nikanj 5y ago

I love how they forgot about hydroxychloroquine. Wasn’t that one supposed to be the silver bullet that big pharma was hiding?

AndrewBissell 5y ago
Fun fact, the clinical trials for hydroxychloroquine were basically shanked by data which made it appear dangerous that turned out to be completely fabricated. https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scandal-what-went-wrong--67955/amp https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scand... As a standalone medication or one administered late in the disease hydroxychloroquine has not shown any real promise. When paired with TMPRSS2 inhibitors it may have some promise: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009212 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
HideousKojima 5y ago
Well there was that study published in the Lancet dunking on HCQ using manufactured data that even made it past peer review. This despite the data failing the most basic of smell tests: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

epx 5y ago

Let's suppose ivermectin has a weak positive effect. I am fine with the possibility. My doctor believed in that, he prescribed it, me and my family took it (my kid would take it anyway for other reasons). The big problem (in Brazil at least) is, the bozo president and his entourage elected this medicine as a silver bullet, saying that we didn't need vaccines, didn't need any social isolation (let alone lockdowns), etc. These bozos created a false dichotomy: one thing is to take a chance and swallow some medicine as last-ditch attempt when you have no other known option. They use this reasoning to say nothing else was needed.

azalemeth 5y ago

If, like European me, you're wondering how in the nine hells of Baator the US ended up in a situation whereby what a doctor prescribes has somehow become political, I found this primer (on Twitter) by the US Journalist Ben Collins to be highly informative: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1431040456364810242.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1431040456364810242.html If, on the other hand, you live in the US and just want some comedic relief from an excellent medical professional comedian, try this: https://twitter.com/DGlaucomflecken/status/1432776080104951810?s=20 https://twitter.com/DGlaucomflecken/status/14327760801049518...

mach1ne 5y ago
Read the whole thing and it wasn't very informative.

willcipriano 5y ago

A interesting observation I had recently was that some people who tend to have views around recreational drugs that can be described "live and let live" are up in arms about ivermectin. I know a guy who uses horse tranquilizers recreationally who posts on Facebook everyday about the "morons who are taking horse medicine". Personally I don't care if you use either, it isn't my body. We are in a age where you no longer must be remotely logically consistent in your arguments and it's fascinating to watch.

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h2odragon 5y ago
"My body my choice" but we have to have vaccine mandates. Are we at war with East Asia today?
Bertio 5y ago
People are frustrated with the resistance to vaccines from people willing to take a lot less sound medicine and like it or not, vaccines are a social issue. It's actually very logical.
littonlamb 5y ago
On the one hand: Some people abusing drugs: - to successfully get high - more or less safely at home On the other: Some people abusing a drug - that doesn't have the effect they're using it for - when there's a better alternative - which is freely available - AND the knock-on effects are harming other people - ODs using up hospital capacity - continued spread of coronavirus I don't see much comparison, nor any contradiction in being okay with the former and not okay with the latter.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  To my read, the arguments you are making are not different from the ones made about marijuana legalization, and medical marijuana. > that doesn't have the effect they're using it for Similarly, the FDA claims that marijuana has no legitimate medical use. > when there's a better alternative Many people consider alcohol or tobacco to be alternatives to marijuana. Further, all of the conditions treated by marijuana have alternatives for treatment of some kind. > which is freely available Alcohol and tobacco are freely available. All of the alternatives to marijuana are available via a prescription. > AND the knock-on effects are harming other people Watch Reefer Madness. Take a look around the moral panic where marijuana has been legalized in regards to driving. "Since we can't tell accurately how high someone is, they could get stoned and be a risk to everyone on the highway!". Or what about "You are funding terrorism/organized crime!". I can't also neglect to mention the "think of the children" card that is often played, "If the drug was more available, children might get their hands on it!". If I had chosen a less benign drug at the start of this, I could talk about people overdosing, or the harms of addiction, or people accidently killing themselves while having drug induced hallucinations, and so on and so on.

pseudo0 5y ago

This is a bizarre stat: > By mid-August U.S. pharmacies were filling 88,000 weekly prescriptions for the medication, a 24-fold increase from pre-COVID levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, U.S. poison control centers have seen a five-fold increase in emergency calls related to the drug, with some incidents requiring hospitalization. So despite prescriptions going up x24, and some unknown number of people taking veterinary versions of the drug, emergency calls have only gone up x5? Wouldn't we expect it to be around x24 or greater? Also, the lack of stats on hospitalization is interesting, in that there aren't any. From another article on the same subject, Mississippi at least has apparently had zero (https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf). This whole thing just seems like a manufactured story that gets clicks because it plays into prejudices about rural Americans.

redisman 5y ago
I mean it is FDA approved for humans for various ailments so it’s not that surprising that everyone isn’t dying from taking it
meheleventyone 5y ago
> So despite prescriptions going up x24, and some unknown number of people taking veterinary versions of the drug, emergency calls have only gone up x5? Wouldn't we expect it to be around x24 or greater? Presumably most of the hospitalizations are from the non-prescription use and less people are likely to take medicine "off-book" and some of those are at least clever enough to work out a safe dosage.
TOMDM 5y ago
> So despite prescriptions going up x24, and some unknown number of people taking veterinary versions of the drug, emergency calls have only gone up x5? Wouldn't we expect it to be around x24 or greater? Why would we expect excess emergency calls due to doctor prescribed levels of ivermectin? Ivermectin is used to treat humans for other things, and unless it's a particularly dangerous treatment I doubt we'd see many hospitalisations due to it. There's little evidence it helps treat COVID, but I doubt doctors are prescribing dangerous levels of ivermectin like those found in animal treatments. 5x emergency calls for people taking animal treatments sounds reasonable.

mrfusion 5y ago

Methinks the lady doth protest too much (regarding the media reaction to this)

almost_usual 5y ago

Triage children before anyone at hospitals and health service centers. Any adult should treat themselves with their best decision making. If that results in their death so be it. Time to stop babysitting adults.

whiddershins 5y ago

What I don’t understand about ivermectin is… is the horse paste version different from the human version in any meaningful way other than concentration?

toxik 5y ago
Yes, in the purity. It’s okay to give slightly contaminated medication to horses, not to humans. The human Ivermectin is purer.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I agree, just a doubt: Do the very expensive race horses take the human version or the veterinarian version?

armagon 5y ago

This is so interesting to me. Perhaps what is most interesting is that people seem to have an opinion already and are not willing to change that opinion, and worse that the opinions seem to coincide with political leanings (at least in Canada and the US -- no idea about the rest of the world.) The anti-ivermectin side seems to say: we have vaccines. We don't know if this is good enough until large-scale randomize controlled trials are done -- so don't go trying it. There aren't any peer-reviewed, published studies that show it has a positive effect, and, two high profile studies were pulled because they were done poorly. The pro-ivermectin side says: the drug is cheap -- which means we can easily ramp up production and get it to everyone who needs it, and also means there's no one standing to make a profit to pay for large-scale randomized controlled trials. There are many studies showing a positive effect, some peer reviewed, and others "languishing on pre-print servers are no journals will print them." If you meta-analyze the studies, ignoring the ones that have been retracted, the results are clearly positive. It is so frustrating. https://c19ivermectin.com https://c19ivermectin.com says that are 113 studies of using 73 peer reviewed studies, and they all tend to show good results. That sounds convincing to me, but not anti-ivermectin people. Someone told me he read some of the studies and they were garbage. I really should try reading some of them, but it isn't my field, and even if I can understand what they did, I can't gauge the quality. It seems to come down to "which experts do you trust?" ---- Last night, I was skimming through a book my wife got out of the library on diets called "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II. I flipped at random to a chapter called "Science: The Dark Side", and will share a few excerpts here. "Scams, tricks ... are as old as history itself... Very few experiences are as personal and powerful as those of people who have lost their health prematurely. Understandably, they are willing to believe and try just about anything that might help. They are a highly vulnerable group of consumers. "In the mid-1970s, along came a prime example of a health scam, at least according to the medical establishments. It concerned an alternative cancer treatment called Laetrile. [A woman who was sick was told by all her friends about this treatment, which was not available in the states.] 'There are at least a dozen people in this area who were told they were going to be dead from cancel who used Laetrile and are now out playing tennis.' [The lady went to Mexico for the treatment -- they treated 20 000 Americans each year -- and it didn't work.] "[One of the authors joined a committee on health and nutrition.] [I]n the spring of 1980, I had discovered that, of the eighteen members on that committee, I was the only individual who did not have ties to the commercial world of food and drug companies and their coalitions. "The committee was a stacked deck; its members were entrenched in the status quo" "[In their second meeting, everyone was passed a copy of an intended press release, which] listed examples of the kind of nutrition frauds that our committee intended to expose. "As I scanned the list of so-called frauds, I was stunned to see the 1977 McGovern dietary goals on the list. [A senator McGovern had convened experts on health and nutrition and they recommended decreased consumption of fatty animal foods and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables because of their effect on heart disease.] [Because of his dissent, they didn't release this message at this time, but he could tell 'he was the chicken who had wandered into the foxes den']. [The author talks about good science that was smeared by this group] "The majority of scientists are honourable, intelligent and dedicated to the search for the common good rather than personal gain. However, there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder. They may not be many in number, but their influence can be vast. They can corrupt the good name of institutions of which they are a part and, most importantly, they can create vast confusion among the public, which often can not tell who is who. You might turn on the TV one day to see an expert praising McDonald's hamburgers, and then read a magazine the same day that you should eat less high-fat red meat to protect yourself against cancer. Who is to be believed? "Institutions are also part of the dark side of science. Committees like the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the American Council on Science and Health generate lopsided panels and committees and institutions that are far more interested in promoting their point of view than debating scientific research with an open mind. If a Public Nutrition Information Committee report say that low-fat diets are fraudulent scams, and a National Academy of Sciences report says the opposite, which one is right?" ----- Anyways, to sum up, it is not clear to me who is who in this fight. I can see a case that the people promoting ivermectin are fraudsters or doing bad science, and our medical organizations are trying to save us, but it is also not hard to see that the people writing the papers showing ivermectin is effective are trying hard to save us, and the medical organizations don't like it as it disagrees with their predisposed view of the world. Who is to be believed, indeed?

tlogan 5y ago

Really crazy times: - doctors say: take a vaccine but people say “I don’t trust big pharma” - random guy say take ivermectin and people say “great I trust pharma”. Merck is marking tons of money now. So this is all about packaging of the message. I think the only way to convince people to take vaccine is that Binden (and democrats) starts telling people not to take one… This is just beyond stupid and this is all result of our nanny state. Im 100% for Florida approach: let’s god sort them out.

haswell 5y ago
To be fair, ivermectin is an old drug with a well established safety record ... when using proper human dosing. The COVID vaccines are only just getting their first full approvals. If someone is evaluating the drugs purely on their long term track record of safety, ivermectin wins by a long shot. But none of that really matters, because the problem is about efficacy. It might be "safer" to take ivermectin in a vacuum than one of the vaccines, but that doesn't matter if ivermectin doesn't protect you and you die of COVID anyway.
- tlogan 5y ago
  > To be fair, ivermectin is an old drug with a well > established safety record But then why these crazy doctors are saying not to take it? Conspiracy? I guess we not should trust these "doctors"...
  - haswell 5y ago
    For the same reason a doctor would say you shouldn’t take penicillin to treat COVID. People are conflating safety with efficacy.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

That's odd. A quick look at sci-hub shows a bunch of ivermectin papers that don't look half bad. I figure that if a physician wants to go off-label on a prescription they should go ahead. Plenty of warnings of course. Buying it at the feed store along with fish antibiotics is sketchy, but remember that it's your body after all. People forget that. God knows how many people are harmed by Tylenol overdoses.

karaterobot 5y ago
The issue is that there aren't any studies showing that safe doses are effective for treating this disease in humans. The studies on monkey cell cultures are what they are, but nobody seems to be noticing that the dose you'd have to use to get those effects in living humans is unsafe. As a rule, medicine should be more likely to treat the illness than to kill you. If my doctor prescribed Ivermectin, I guess I'd take it, but if my doctor prescribed it at this point, they should get their license revoked.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  >The issue is that there aren't any studies showing that safe doses are effective for treating this disease in humans. Actually I'm seeing a few, but they suffer from the typical lack of statistical rigor that I've come to expect in medical studies and fall into the 'further studies are needed' bin. As a side note, I'm always blown away by the poor quality of many medical papers. Publish or perish? Dunno.

AHappyCamper 5y ago

This article is ridiculous. It's claiming that Ivermectin is unsafe because people are taking the horse-intended version... . Really, they're screaming "We're losing money! We wanted to get paid for you taking the unproven vaccine instead of a safe drug that's been around for decades!" The wording in this article is highly dubious "The drug can cause... even death." Oh please! Then how come doctors are prescribing it???? Individual doctors, who have been to medical school, who understand pharmacy and anatomy, are prescribing this drug, and Pfizer is FURIOUS. Pfizer and Faucci likely paid for this article to be written, because one shred of critical thinking "debunks" this fraudulent article.

gHosts 5y ago

Back in the precovid 3rd world I met people who took very dubious / polluted / rotten stuff as a "purge". a. The placebo effect is real. A bout of induced vomiting and diarrhea makes whatever you are left with feel less worse than that... b. They couldn't afford 1st world doctors and medicine anyway. c. They were desperate. d. Scoundrels preyed on their desperation.