A group of doctors is suing the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services for their various attempts at preventing ivermectin from being prescribed to treat Covid-19. Plaintiffs Robert L. Apter, Mary Talley Bowden, and Paul E. Marik argued the FDA tried to prohibit them from prescribing the drug, even though they have successfully used it in treating patients with the coronavirus.
“The FDA generally cannot ban particular uses of human drugs once they are otherwise approved and admitted to the market, even if such use differs from the labeling — commonly referred to as ‘off-label’ use,” the lawsuit argues. “The FDA also cannot advise whether a patient should take an approved drug for a particular purpose.”
But the FDA overstepped its authority by “directing the public, including health professionals and patients, not to use ivermectin to treat COVID-19, even though the drug remains fully approved for human use,” the lawsuit continues. The aim of the suit is to set aside “any FDA actions that direct or opine on whether ivermectin is an appropriate treatment for COVID-19, declare such actions unlawful, and issue permanent injunctive relief enjoining the FDA from further engaging in such actions.”
The plaintiffs originally filed their lawsuit in June 2022 — after the FDA and corporate media spun up the narrative that ivermectin is used as a cattle dewormer and that anyone who prescribed or took the drug as a Covid treatment was an anti-science rube — but a U.S. district court denied their claim. In February 2023, the doctors appealed their case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Multiple groups have filed amicus briefs in support of the suit, including America’s Frontline Doctors and the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).
“This was a coordinated campaign amongst the agencies to limit the use of ivermectin,” Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the FLCCC, told The Federalist. “Multiple actions taken by the CDC and FDA, as well as the media over a two-week period were triggered by the release of data showing that there were 90,000 prescriptions being filled for ivermectin by the middle of August.”
Kory described the collusion among the FDA, CDC, and corporate media as a massive disinformation campaign.
“For two weeks, all you heard was ‘horse dewormer,’” Kory said. “And the effects were massive. Hospitals started removing it from their formularies, pharmacists stopped filling. Doctors became scared to prescribe because they didn’t want to go against the agencies and take the risks on their licenses.”
Even celebrities who took ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, such as podcast host Joe Rogan and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, were victims of a public smear campaign and derided for taking “horse dewormer,” despite both figures recovering quickly from their illness. As Kory explained, however, the massive propaganda campaign wasn’t really about ivermectin at all, but rather the use of repurposed or “off-label” drugs.
“Repurposed drugs are the Achilles heel of the entire business model of the pharmaceutical industry,” Kory said. “And when you see our health agencies literally working in the service of the pharmaceutical industry by destroying the credibility of repurposed drugs, it’s terrifying. They’re not working according to the interests of patients or physicians but the pharmaceutical companies.”
By prohibiting the use of “off-label” drugs to treat Covid, public health officials and federal bureaucrats put the interests of Big Pharma over patients. As such, physicians were scared to prescribe off-label drugs, a common practice within the medical community, for fear of losing their licenses. How many needless Covid deaths or severe infections might have been prevented if not for this false public intimidation campaign?
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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