7 ms·

> People are literally taking horse formulations of ivermectin People are taking the horse formulation because most pharmacists won't even fill an off-label pr

> People are literally taking horse formulations of ivermectin People are taking the horse formulation because most pharmacists won't even fill an off-label prescription for the drug, which - even if it has no effect on COVID - is safe and taken by a quarter billion people every year. Let people take it. It's not harmful. Or, make a big huge deal about people taking it and, well, then it becomes a big huge deal.

vernie 5y ago
Is that really the reason or is it that they can't get a doctor to write them an off-label prescription?
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  It's probably both, but why would a doctor risk losing their license over this? Yet another unintended consequence. Doctors are supposed to be able to write prescriptions for off-label use.
  - sgt101 5y ago
    If they have reason to believe that it's beneficial. If they don't then they are being reckless.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  A friend of mine found a doctor to prescribe it but his pharmacy won't fill it. He is so pissed. He was only planning to take small doses here or there as he's a teacher and around sick kids all the time, as if it were like Zinc to hopefully help reduce the severity of Covid-19 if he does get it, but despite going through the effort and succeeding in finding a doctor willing to prescribe it (and my friend even signed a document saying he understands it's an experimental treatment and will assume any risks), his local CVS is refusing to fill it. My opinion is if you can get a proper doctor to prescribe it (by proper doctor I mean none of this "I got a medical exemption for wearing a mask from my Chiropractor" bullshit like is going on in Florida), a pharmacy shouldn't be allowed to decide not to fill it, as if they know better than your doctor.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    The pharmacy probably doesn't want any liability so it's easier to just blanket-ban 'fad' medicine. And we make fun of the Chinese using rhino horn for erectile disfunction...
  - mint2 5y ago
    Is your friend vaccinated?
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      Yes, he's been vaccinated since April, around the same time I got it.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > pharmacy shouldn't be allowed to decide not to fill it, as if they know better than your doctor. It sounds like you have a pretty misguided idea of how pharmacies and pharmacists worked before Covid. You’re describing a situation where pharmacists act at the behest of doctors who know best, when in reality pharmacists have always had some level of independent authority over what drugs get dispensed to whom thanks to their expertise. It’s part of the pharmacists job to watch out for bad prescriptions, both in terms of abuse (e.g. opioids) improper dosages, and unintended side effects and interactions between drugs. In some states pharmacists have their own ability to prescribe medicine on their own. I’m not sure exactly how much control a pharmacist should have over whether a valid prescription is filled, but the idea that they’re only expected to blindly fulfill the order of your doctor is not correct, and never was. In fact, they probably know more about the drugs you’re prescribed than your doctor does, as that’s their entire speciality. (Especially given the long and sordid history of doctors pushing drugs on the basis of pharmaceutical sales reps, doctors often actually know very little about what they prescribe).
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >t sounds like you have a pretty misguided idea of how pharmacies and pharmacists worked before Covid. You’re describing a situation where pharmacists act at the behest of doctors who know best, when in reality pharmacists have always had some level of independent authority over what drugs get dispensed to whom thanks to their expertise. It’s part of the pharmacists job to watch out for bad prescriptions, both in terms of abuse (e.g. opioids) improper dosages, and unintended side effects and interactions between drugs. In some states pharmacists have their own ability to prescribe medicine on their own. Absolutely. I had to fire my doctor after he prescribed a sulfa drug to me, even though I'd made it clear that I have an allergy to sulfa drugs. In fact, I would never have known (well, until I became sick/dead) that the drug prescribed was a sulfa drug if the pharmacist hadn't known the drug involved and checked it against known allergies. He contacted both me and my doctor and a different drug was prescribed. In fact, it's entirely possible that I'm alive today thanks to the expertise and knowledge of the pharmacist.
sgt101 5y ago
I get where you are coming from, but I think that there is a nuance that you have missed. Like many, many drugs - and vaccines - ivemectin has some unpleasant and dangerous side effects in some people rarely. You can see these if you look the drug up :https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ivermectin-oral-tablet#side-effects https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ivermectin-oral-ta... for example. The point is that if this drug did help people make it through covid (like the vaccines do) then it would be worth the risk of these horrible things happening - if they were rare (they are). But unfortunately it looks like this is not true, so people are taking a risk of having a horrid side effect with no chance of the pill working. On the other hand if you take the pill to avoid river blindness then the risk of the side effect seems well worth taking to me. But not for covid - 0 benefit for 0.001 risk is not good trade.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  All of this is for the patient and their doctor to decide. Not the pharmacist. Not the FDA.
  - sgt101 5y ago
    I agree about the pharmacist - but the drug regulator really does have to have a role. There is a serious information imbalance between patients and doctors and both big pharma and lunatic talkshow host millionaries. Regulation is important to help prevent junk getting pushed into kids arms to make bastards money. It's not perfect and they get a lot wrong, but without it you and I are at the mercy of some very mercy short people.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    They're [often] using the horse formulation because their doctor said no.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      This is such a hypothetical. How many people got ivermectin against their doctor prescription, and how many got adverse effects from that? 1 in 100M?
cma 5y ago
> is safe and taken by a quarter billion people every year. Usually yearly or bi-yearly. Not bi-weekly. There is much less safety data on doses that frequent.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  > There is much less safety data on doses that frequent. You can say the same thing about COVID boosters.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    And yet there is a wealth of data on both the safety and the efficacy of covid vaccines, and there is also a wealth of data on the effects of getting covid. So why are people going for something without any data?
    - brandonmenc 5y ago
      I specifically said boosters. However, there is no data on the long-term effects of the COVID vaccines, mRNA or otherwise. That's an indisputable scientific fact. They just haven't existed long enough for that data to be available. Hopefully a decade from now we'll discover that they were safe. We do have data on the long-term effects of Ivermectin. Someone who is not concerned about COVID will take neither a vaccine nor Ivermectin. Someone who is concerned about COVID but who is also concerned about the long-term effects of the vaccine may opt to take Ivermectin. It's their choice. It could also end up being the wrong choice.
      - manwe150 5y ago
        The long term effect of ivermectin seems to be long-COVID (according to the article), which is rare, but just as bad as being unvaccinated, if not worse.
      - snovv_crash 5y ago
        Can you show any other vaccine which has long term, but not short term negative side effects, which this concern might be based on? Because this seems like whataboutism, and of course it's impossible to prove a negative, and people are dying while waiting. > We do have data on the long-term effects of Ivermectin At bi-annual dosage rates, yes. Not daily or even weekly.
swader999 5y ago
Ivermectin from horse paste cleared up all of my long covid symptoms except for lung inflammation which prednisone fixed after the ivm. Pretty incredible. Felt better after a few hours and after each subsequent daily dose of five total. A lot of the studies don't seem to be using enough doses or they use too low of a dose. I was at .06g/kg body weight per dose. Also you need to take it with zinq!
- dhimes 5y ago
  Did you self-medicate, or were you under the direction of a medical doctor?
  - swader999 5y ago
    My doctor told me to wait it out, anywhere up to twelve more months. Yes, I self medicated. Suicide would have been my other choice had I not had Ivermectin - felt like I was slowly dying to begin with. It was very debilitating and impossible to work.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  You should take at lest 1g/kg daily for a month to clear up the lung inflamation.
- threeseed 5y ago
  HN should delete this post and probably your account. You are actively encouraging people to get on a path that ends up in overdose and death.
  - swader999 5y ago
    It has a safer profile than Tylenol, Advil and Asprin.
  - symlinkk 5y ago
    “Apple is evil for adding CSAM checks, imagine if a totalitarian government used that to silence people” “You should be permanently silenced for suggesting a medical drug” Are you feeling any cognitive dissonance?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
threeseed 5y ago
> is safe and taken by a quarter billion people every year When taken in dosages that have been determined based on extensive studies and research. This doesn't apply to COVID so it is completely responsible for them not to supply it.
heavyset_go 5y ago
It's not a placebo pill, it's an active medication that has effects on the body and undergoes metabolism. Ivermectin inhibits cytochrome P450, which the majority of prescription and OTC drugs are metabolized by. Administration of a P450 inhibitor will cause the levels of other medications in a person's blood to rise, and will cause some prodrugs to be ineffective due to reduced metabolism. I can't even walk into a doctors' office and get prescribed Singulair, an allergy medication, without giving them a reason to believe that I need it. And if I was a doctor, I'd err on the side of caution, as well, when it comes to prescribing things I don't think my hypothetical patients need. Not only is it a question of ethics, it's also a question of legal liability and keeping a license to practice.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  I agree that a doctor should not prescribe a drug that is going to interact dangerously with a patient's other medication. I also agree that a pharmacist should not fill a prescription if they know it will interact dangerously with the patient's other medication. But I also don't know the dosage schedule doctors who are prescribing Ivermectin are using. They're probably using one from a research paper that they believe justifies its use to treat or prevent COVID. Those dosage schedules are afaict similar to how it's used to treat on-label conditions - take one dose every three months, or whatever. It's pure speculation that doctors are out there writing prescriptions for dangerous dosages of Ivermectin. However one thing for sure is that in lieu of a prescription, people are more likely to self-medicate with a dangerous formulation and dosage, ex: horse paste.

vernie 5y ago

Is that really the reason or is it that they can't get a doctor to write them an off-label prescription?

brandonmenc 5y ago
It's probably both, but why would a doctor risk losing their license over this? Yet another unintended consequence. Doctors are supposed to be able to write prescriptions for off-label use.
- sgt101 5y ago
  If they have reason to believe that it's beneficial. If they don't then they are being reckless.
cableshaft 5y ago
A friend of mine found a doctor to prescribe it but his pharmacy won't fill it. He is so pissed. He was only planning to take small doses here or there as he's a teacher and around sick kids all the time, as if it were like Zinc to hopefully help reduce the severity of Covid-19 if he does get it, but despite going through the effort and succeeding in finding a doctor willing to prescribe it (and my friend even signed a document saying he understands it's an experimental treatment and will assume any risks), his local CVS is refusing to fill it. My opinion is if you can get a proper doctor to prescribe it (by proper doctor I mean none of this "I got a medical exemption for wearing a mask from my Chiropractor" bullshit like is going on in Florida), a pharmacy shouldn't be allowed to decide not to fill it, as if they know better than your doctor.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  The pharmacy probably doesn't want any liability so it's easier to just blanket-ban 'fad' medicine. And we make fun of the Chinese using rhino horn for erectile disfunction...
- mint2 5y ago
  Is your friend vaccinated?
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    Yes, he's been vaccinated since April, around the same time I got it.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > pharmacy shouldn't be allowed to decide not to fill it, as if they know better than your doctor. It sounds like you have a pretty misguided idea of how pharmacies and pharmacists worked before Covid. You’re describing a situation where pharmacists act at the behest of doctors who know best, when in reality pharmacists have always had some level of independent authority over what drugs get dispensed to whom thanks to their expertise. It’s part of the pharmacists job to watch out for bad prescriptions, both in terms of abuse (e.g. opioids) improper dosages, and unintended side effects and interactions between drugs. In some states pharmacists have their own ability to prescribe medicine on their own. I’m not sure exactly how much control a pharmacist should have over whether a valid prescription is filled, but the idea that they’re only expected to blindly fulfill the order of your doctor is not correct, and never was. In fact, they probably know more about the drugs you’re prescribed than your doctor does, as that’s their entire speciality. (Especially given the long and sordid history of doctors pushing drugs on the basis of pharmaceutical sales reps, doctors often actually know very little about what they prescribe).
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >t sounds like you have a pretty misguided idea of how pharmacies and pharmacists worked before Covid. You’re describing a situation where pharmacists act at the behest of doctors who know best, when in reality pharmacists have always had some level of independent authority over what drugs get dispensed to whom thanks to their expertise. It’s part of the pharmacists job to watch out for bad prescriptions, both in terms of abuse (e.g. opioids) improper dosages, and unintended side effects and interactions between drugs. In some states pharmacists have their own ability to prescribe medicine on their own. Absolutely. I had to fire my doctor after he prescribed a sulfa drug to me, even though I'd made it clear that I have an allergy to sulfa drugs. In fact, I would never have known (well, until I became sick/dead) that the drug prescribed was a sulfa drug if the pharmacist hadn't known the drug involved and checked it against known allergies. He contacted both me and my doctor and a different drug was prescribed. In fact, it's entirely possible that I'm alive today thanks to the expertise and knowledge of the pharmacist.

sgt101 5y ago

I get where you are coming from, but I think that there is a nuance that you have missed. Like many, many drugs - and vaccines - ivemectin has some unpleasant and dangerous side effects in some people rarely. You can see these if you look the drug up :https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ivermectin-oral-tablet#side-effects https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ivermectin-oral-ta... for example. The point is that if this drug did help people make it through covid (like the vaccines do) then it would be worth the risk of these horrible things happening - if they were rare (they are). But unfortunately it looks like this is not true, so people are taking a risk of having a horrid side effect with no chance of the pill working. On the other hand if you take the pill to avoid river blindness then the risk of the side effect seems well worth taking to me. But not for covid - 0 benefit for 0.001 risk is not good trade.

brandonmenc 5y ago
All of this is for the patient and their doctor to decide. Not the pharmacist. Not the FDA.
- sgt101 5y ago
  I agree about the pharmacist - but the drug regulator really does have to have a role. There is a serious information imbalance between patients and doctors and both big pharma and lunatic talkshow host millionaries. Regulation is important to help prevent junk getting pushed into kids arms to make bastards money. It's not perfect and they get a lot wrong, but without it you and I are at the mercy of some very mercy short people.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  They're [often] using the horse formulation because their doctor said no.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    This is such a hypothetical. How many people got ivermectin against their doctor prescription, and how many got adverse effects from that? 1 in 100M?

cma 5y ago

> is safe and taken by a quarter billion people every year. Usually yearly or bi-yearly. Not bi-weekly. There is much less safety data on doses that frequent.

brandonmenc 5y ago
> There is much less safety data on doses that frequent. You can say the same thing about COVID boosters.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  And yet there is a wealth of data on both the safety and the efficacy of covid vaccines, and there is also a wealth of data on the effects of getting covid. So why are people going for something without any data?
  - brandonmenc 5y ago
    I specifically said boosters. However, there is no data on the long-term effects of the COVID vaccines, mRNA or otherwise. That's an indisputable scientific fact. They just haven't existed long enough for that data to be available. Hopefully a decade from now we'll discover that they were safe. We do have data on the long-term effects of Ivermectin. Someone who is not concerned about COVID will take neither a vaccine nor Ivermectin. Someone who is concerned about COVID but who is also concerned about the long-term effects of the vaccine may opt to take Ivermectin. It's their choice. It could also end up being the wrong choice.
    - manwe150 5y ago
      The long term effect of ivermectin seems to be long-COVID (according to the article), which is rare, but just as bad as being unvaccinated, if not worse.
    - snovv_crash 5y ago
      Can you show any other vaccine which has long term, but not short term negative side effects, which this concern might be based on? Because this seems like whataboutism, and of course it's impossible to prove a negative, and people are dying while waiting. > We do have data on the long-term effects of Ivermectin At bi-annual dosage rates, yes. Not daily or even weekly.

swader999 5y ago

Ivermectin from horse paste cleared up all of my long covid symptoms except for lung inflammation which prednisone fixed after the ivm. Pretty incredible. Felt better after a few hours and after each subsequent daily dose of five total. A lot of the studies don't seem to be using enough doses or they use too low of a dose. I was at .06g/kg body weight per dose. Also you need to take it with zinq!

dhimes 5y ago
Did you self-medicate, or were you under the direction of a medical doctor?
- swader999 5y ago
  My doctor told me to wait it out, anywhere up to twelve more months. Yes, I self medicated. Suicide would have been my other choice had I not had Ivermectin - felt like I was slowly dying to begin with. It was very debilitating and impossible to work.
shapefrog 5y ago
You should take at lest 1g/kg daily for a month to clear up the lung inflamation.
threeseed 5y ago
HN should delete this post and probably your account. You are actively encouraging people to get on a path that ends up in overdose and death.
- swader999 5y ago
  It has a safer profile than Tylenol, Advil and Asprin.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  “Apple is evil for adding CSAM checks, imagine if a totalitarian government used that to silence people” “You should be permanently silenced for suggesting a medical drug” Are you feeling any cognitive dissonance?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

threeseed 5y ago

> is safe and taken by a quarter billion people every year When taken in dosages that have been determined based on extensive studies and research. This doesn't apply to COVID so it is completely responsible for them not to supply it.

heavyset_go 5y ago

It's not a placebo pill, it's an active medication that has effects on the body and undergoes metabolism. Ivermectin inhibits cytochrome P450, which the majority of prescription and OTC drugs are metabolized by. Administration of a P450 inhibitor will cause the levels of other medications in a person's blood to rise, and will cause some prodrugs to be ineffective due to reduced metabolism. I can't even walk into a doctors' office and get prescribed Singulair, an allergy medication, without giving them a reason to believe that I need it. And if I was a doctor, I'd err on the side of caution, as well, when it comes to prescribing things I don't think my hypothetical patients need. Not only is it a question of ethics, it's also a question of legal liability and keeping a license to practice.

brandonmenc 5y ago
I agree that a doctor should not prescribe a drug that is going to interact dangerously with a patient's other medication. I also agree that a pharmacist should not fill a prescription if they know it will interact dangerously with the patient's other medication. But I also don't know the dosage schedule doctors who are prescribing Ivermectin are using. They're probably using one from a research paper that they believe justifies its use to treat or prevent COVID. Those dosage schedules are afaict similar to how it's used to treat on-label conditions - take one dose every three months, or whatever. It's pure speculation that doctors are out there writing prescriptions for dangerous dosages of Ivermectin. However one thing for sure is that in lieu of a prescription, people are more likely to self-medicate with a dangerous formulation and dosage, ex: horse paste.