Today, let's talk about ivermectin.
The generic medicine, most commonly used as a dewormer for farm animals and household pets, has been taken up as a cause by a right-wing claque of anti-government and anti-vaccine activists.
Their claim is that ivermectin is some sort of miracle drug that can save the lives of COVID-19 patients even if they're at death's door.
Its leading promoters include conspiracy theorists and physicians whose water-carrying for earlier anti-COVID nostrums such as the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine marked them as sources of dangerous misinformation.
As with those treatments, there is no scientifically valid evidence that ivermectin works on COVID-19 or the coronavirus that causes the disease. The evidence indicates, as a large recently published study of COVID treatments found, that in those cases it has "no effect whatsoever."
Yet the ivermectin craze has only intensified, alarming medical authorities.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an emergency warning. Calls to poison control centers reporting adverse effects from ivermectin increased fivefold in July over a year earlier, the CDC said.
That was consonant with a 24-fold increase in prescriptions at retail pharmacies, to 88,000 in the week ended Aug. 13 from an average of 3,600 per week in the pre-pandemic period through February 2020.
The only possible explanation for the surge in prescriptions is the drug's misuse as a COVID treatment or preventive, as its promoters claim.
The Food and Drug Administration approves the drug for treatment of two conditions caused by parasitic worms and occurring chiefly in tropical habitats - intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis - as well as head lice and skin conditions such as rosacea, for which topical applications are approved. The drug is most commonly used at veterinary strength to control parasitic worms in livestock.
The CDC's figures don't include veterinary prescriptions, but the agency said those were a particular problem. "Veterinary formulations intended for use in large animals such as horses, sheep, and cattle ... can be highly concentrated and result in overdoses when used by humans," the CDC warned.
These warnings overlook what may be the most dangerous side effect of the popular fascination with ivermectin: stupidity. The conspiracy mongering about the drug has become increasingly febrile. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., this week blamed "hatred for Trump" for what he asserted was an unwillingness among scientists to study ivermectin, as well as other purported anti-COVID nostrums.
In an Aug. 23 tweet, another ivermectin promoter, Los Angeles child psychiatrist Mark McDonald, attacked as "ignoramuses" those who questioned ivermectin as a COVID treatment because of its applications for livestock.
The promotion of ivermectin has even prompted judges to demand that doctors give patients the drug. An Ohio state judge last week ordered a Cincinnati hospital to treat a patient with severe disease with ivermectin for three weeks. Since the hospital's staff physicians refused to comply, the hospital had to find an outside doctor to perform the treatment.
The judge was acting on a lawsuit brought by the patient's wife, who cited claims by Fred Wagshul - an Ohio doctor who co-founded an ivermectin promotion group and told the Ohio Capital Journal that the evidence favoring ivermectin in COVID cases was "irrefutable" - that the CDC and FDA were engaged in a "conspiracy" against ivermectin and that national and social media were guilty of "censorship" of positive information about the drug.
Nor was the Ohio judge the first: Judges in New York and Chicago have issued similar orders. This may be the longest-lasting consequence of the promotion of scientific misinformation in the pandemic. Scientific authority has become conditional, and more ignorance, illness and death may be the inevitable result.
The Los Angeles Times