Some COVID-19 Patients Want Ivermectin So Badly They’re Taking Hospitals To Court
SEP. 27, 2021, AT 6:00 AM
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/some-cov...-to-court/
When the suburban Chicago hospital where her mother was being treated for COVID-19 refused to give her ivermectin, Tiffany Wilson had her moved to another hospital. The antiparasitic drug achieved a cult following as a treatment for COVID-19, despite no current evidence it is effective.
But that didn’t deter Wilson from suing when the next hospital also refused to give her mother, 68-year-old Leslie Pai, ivermectin. And she won. This week, after the hospital obliged a judge’s injunction ordering it to give Pai ivermectin, Pai’s heart rate plummeted, hospital doctors said in court documents. The hospital pushed back in court, and Wilson dropped the case, with her lawyers asking the court to lift the injunction while continuing to argue that the ivermectin was, in fact, helping.
The fixation on ivermectin is largely driven by online misinformation and a misrepresentation of what we know about the drug.
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic that has been around for decades and is very effective at treating certain parasitic infections, like river blindness. Its effectiveness on viral infections, particularly COVID-19, is still being investigated.
Unfortunately, there’s not yet good evidence showing it’s effective in this case, and one of the biggest papers suggesting it could be effective was withdrawn due to ethical conflicts.
That said, it’s not as if ivermectin has been written off; clinical trials to test ivermectin’s effectiveness against COVID-19 are ongoing, and their results will be carefully monitored by federal agencies and professional groups that help create guidelines for treatment.
That same process has led to other existing drugs, like the antiviral remdesivir, getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration for treating COVID-19. But neither the FDA nor the World Health Organization nor the National Institutes of Health currently approve of ivermectin for treating COVID-19.
But misinformation has convinced many people that they know more about how to treat COVID-19 than the medical establishment and experts. The thing is, they don’t. “The number of studies and the quality of them and the different research methodologies in any field of medicine is always pretty overwhelming. That’s why we have professional societies and regulatory bodies who take all of that evidence into consideration,” said Carolyn Bramante, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and the principal investigator on an ongoing randomized clinical trial of ivermectin and other potential COVID-19 treatments.
It can, of course, be a good thing for patients to advocate for their own care. The difference in ivermectin cases is that their advocacy is based on rumors and lies, not on scientific evidence.
Though ivermectin has been around for decades, it’s still a drug and it can have side effects and potentially negative impacts, Bramante said. Not only is there not yet evidence that it works, we also don’t know if it could be harmful. That can also cause complications for a hospital system already stretched thin by the pandemic it’s trying to treat.
“You don’t get treated based upon what you feel or think,” Hood said. “There are certain approved treatment regimens for certain diseases. If [what a patient is demanding] doesn’t fit within that regimen, then you cannot treat them.”
Online, however, proponents of ivermectin tout it as both a prophylaxis and a cure for COVID-19, cherry-picking data from preprint studies and sharing anecdotes of miraculous recoveries. It’s an infectious narrative that leads many people to believe the drug ought to be used widely — and to wonder if the fact that it isn’t is evidence of a conspiracy. Amid the desperate haze of the pandemic, this type of thinking is leading people to extreme actions.
All this while another preventive medical intervention, one that has been shown to be highly effective and safe — the vaccine — is shunned by many of the same people. These lawsuits may represent a precedent of conspiracy-theory-influenced patients using the courts as a cudgel to force medical professionals to practice against their own expertise. Right now, it’s ivermectin, but what’s stopping patients from demanding to be treated with colloidal silver or bleach?
Kaleigh Rogers is FiveThirtyEight’s technology and politics reporter.
Andy Freeland
Brett Bellmore Yeah, who needs them fancified "doctors" to write "prescriptions"? Let these folks prescribe themselves any ol' loony treatment for themselves and their children - antifreeze, rattlesnake bites, bats' gizzards, eye of newt - since they really know more'n them educated elite! It's the Brave New tRu*mpy World!
Wayne Insko
Been following a Facebook posting all weekend on mRNA vaccines from University Hospital's. The dis/misinformation, right-wing propaganda and lack of even high school level understanding or misrepresentation of even basic vaccination science has been staggering. The consistency of the frightwing position in re whether Ivermictin should be accepted treatment falls totally in line with this article
SEP. 27, 2021, AT 6:00 AM
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/some-cov...-to-court/
When the suburban Chicago hospital where her mother was being treated for COVID-19 refused to give her ivermectin, Tiffany Wilson had her moved to another hospital. The antiparasitic drug achieved a cult following as a treatment for COVID-19, despite no current evidence it is effective.
But that didn’t deter Wilson from suing when the next hospital also refused to give her mother, 68-year-old Leslie Pai, ivermectin. And she won. This week, after the hospital obliged a judge’s injunction ordering it to give Pai ivermectin, Pai’s heart rate plummeted, hospital doctors said in court documents. The hospital pushed back in court, and Wilson dropped the case, with her lawyers asking the court to lift the injunction while continuing to argue that the ivermectin was, in fact, helping.
The fixation on ivermectin is largely driven by online misinformation and a misrepresentation of what we know about the drug.
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic that has been around for decades and is very effective at treating certain parasitic infections, like river blindness. Its effectiveness on viral infections, particularly COVID-19, is still being investigated.
Unfortunately, there’s not yet good evidence showing it’s effective in this case, and one of the biggest papers suggesting it could be effective was withdrawn due to ethical conflicts.
That said, it’s not as if ivermectin has been written off; clinical trials to test ivermectin’s effectiveness against COVID-19 are ongoing, and their results will be carefully monitored by federal agencies and professional groups that help create guidelines for treatment.
That same process has led to other existing drugs, like the antiviral remdesivir, getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration for treating COVID-19. But neither the FDA nor the World Health Organization nor the National Institutes of Health currently approve of ivermectin for treating COVID-19.
But misinformation has convinced many people that they know more about how to treat COVID-19 than the medical establishment and experts. The thing is, they don’t. “The number of studies and the quality of them and the different research methodologies in any field of medicine is always pretty overwhelming. That’s why we have professional societies and regulatory bodies who take all of that evidence into consideration,” said Carolyn Bramante, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and the principal investigator on an ongoing randomized clinical trial of ivermectin and other potential COVID-19 treatments.
It can, of course, be a good thing for patients to advocate for their own care. The difference in ivermectin cases is that their advocacy is based on rumors and lies, not on scientific evidence.
Though ivermectin has been around for decades, it’s still a drug and it can have side effects and potentially negative impacts, Bramante said. Not only is there not yet evidence that it works, we also don’t know if it could be harmful. That can also cause complications for a hospital system already stretched thin by the pandemic it’s trying to treat.
“You don’t get treated based upon what you feel or think,” Hood said. “There are certain approved treatment regimens for certain diseases. If [what a patient is demanding] doesn’t fit within that regimen, then you cannot treat them.”
Online, however, proponents of ivermectin tout it as both a prophylaxis and a cure for COVID-19, cherry-picking data from preprint studies and sharing anecdotes of miraculous recoveries. It’s an infectious narrative that leads many people to believe the drug ought to be used widely — and to wonder if the fact that it isn’t is evidence of a conspiracy. Amid the desperate haze of the pandemic, this type of thinking is leading people to extreme actions.
All this while another preventive medical intervention, one that has been shown to be highly effective and safe — the vaccine — is shunned by many of the same people. These lawsuits may represent a precedent of conspiracy-theory-influenced patients using the courts as a cudgel to force medical professionals to practice against their own expertise. Right now, it’s ivermectin, but what’s stopping patients from demanding to be treated with colloidal silver or bleach?
Kaleigh Rogers is FiveThirtyEight’s technology and politics reporter.
Andy Freeland
Brett Bellmore Yeah, who needs them fancified "doctors" to write "prescriptions"? Let these folks prescribe themselves any ol' loony treatment for themselves and their children - antifreeze, rattlesnake bites, bats' gizzards, eye of newt - since they really know more'n them educated elite! It's the Brave New tRu*mpy World!
Wayne Insko
Been following a Facebook posting all weekend on mRNA vaccines from University Hospital's. The dis/misinformation, right-wing propaganda and lack of even high school level understanding or misrepresentation of even basic vaccination science has been staggering. The consistency of the frightwing position in re whether Ivermictin should be accepted treatment falls totally in line with this article
