What do they call the medical student who graduates last in his class?
Doctor
I know you know this, but someone’s going to nitpick it: No lives were saved from covid by ivermectin. It remains a very effective treatment against parasitic diseases (which are very rare among humans in the First World), and has saved many lives in that context.
He could mean the organized campaign to shut down all of the real studies of ivermectin, by the folks dishonestly peddling the stuff.
Studies showing the effectiveness of ivermectin for covid are hard to find, because they don’t exist. Studies showing the lack of effectiveness are hard to find, because some people are working hard to make them hard to find.
Yes of course.
I would have made myself clear except I was irritated by the facts of peddling something for COVID and not prescribing vaccination.
Many serious reactions and some deaths have been reported in people taking ivermectin for Covid. The presence of any significant side effects associated with an ineffective drug is unacceptable.
There have also been cases where reliance on ivermectin to treat Covid has led to more serious disease, hospitalization and death which could have been avoided with timely, proper care.
It’s common for promoters of ivermectin and other faux remedies to resent pushback against their false claims and cry censorship, while enjoying large audiences on social media, Substacks, and through books and conferences, as well as what mainstream media they can sucker into publicizing their beliefs.
At this point, it’s hard to be unaware of conclusive evidence that ivermectin is not useful in treating or preventing illness from Covid-19. Those who continue to bang the drum for ivermectin are either outliers like Pierre vaccine-shedding-through-sex-will-make-you-sick Kory, or nitwits who think that touting a Big Pharma drug is a way to get back at Big Pharma.
Physicians who violate the standard of care by prescribing ivermectin for Covid should expect medical board sanctions.
I’ve found both, without much trouble. There were several early studies that showed a small benefit from ivermectin. A meta-study found that all of them had been done in places where parasites are common, and that no studies done in places where parasites are uncommon found any benefit. A natural conclusion is that if you are also fighting parasites when you are infected with covid, ivermectin is likely to help. Even if just the parasites wouldn’t have killed you on their own.
There are also tons of large, well-done studies that find no benefit to ivermectin. There was enough interest in it early in the pandemic that s number of studies were started. The most interesting of those, imho, is
To be clear, this is still a preprint. But it’s interesting both because it found powerful evidence that long covid is a real problem, and also, that metformin appears to have a protective effect against developing long covid. This study also included ivermectin, and found it had no impact on outcomes.
Yup. @Kedikat 's claim of censorship is factually false. At least around the efficacy of ivermectin.
But the quarantine zone rules don’t allow the spread of misinformation around covid. And as “ivermectin helps when you have covid” has been conclusively debunked, I’m going state as a QZ mod that I’m censoring further discussion of the factual question "does ivermectin help beyond its value if you also have parasites? " as off-topic for this thread. Please continue the discussion with the understanding that this doctor was prescribing a placebo.
Except he wasn’t actually prescribing a placebo. Ivermectin does have real and sometimes serious side effects.
There are lots of things that have been used as placebos that are harmful. But perhaps there are competing definitions of placebo.
More details will likely come out. The particular Doctor patient interactions are important. The issue of off label use of various medications can be entwined in this. Specifics of actual or possible levels of harm to patient and patient contacts could be delved into.
Of course it may just be resolved without much investigation into any aspects, if the Doctor just takes the hit without challenge.
Did you actually read the article? The investigation and hearing phase is done, with a finding by the College of Physicians and Surgeons that the doctor had engaged in unprofessional conduct.
The discipline board cited the policy of the College which they found the doctor had breached:
“It is unethical to engage in or to aid and abet in treatment which has no acceptable scientific basis, may be dangerous, may deceive the patient by giving false hope, or which may cause the patient to delay in seeking conventional care until his or her condition becomes irreversible,” the policy states.
In other words, the College rejected your argument about “what’s the harm?” Giving a patient false hope is unprofessional conduct.
Where’d you get your microbiology degree?
I think the main difference here isn’t a doctor prescribing something off-label that it works for- like back in the day, when they’d prescribe minoxidil off-label for baldness treatment (it was originally developed as a blood pressure drug), or doctors prescribing the various GLP-1 inhibitors off-label for weight loss before they were approved for that use.
In those cases, the drug in question actually works for the off-label usage, but it’s just not labeled for that.
This is a doctor prescribing something that’s been proven NOT to be effective, and something that has had a whole lot of political nonsense surrounding it. In effect, this doctor is putting their political beliefs ahead of good doctoring. It’s only one step, maybe, from a chiropractor purporting to treat an actual disease with chiropractic adjustment.
So you are going to withhold judgement until…what? The information gathered matches what you want to hear?
From the article:
The college’s decision on Kabongo said one or more of the prescriptions he gave out weren’t medically necessary, he failed to recommend other evidence-informed treatment options, and he didn’t properly document the prescriptions in medical records.
So he seems to have misled his patients. This isn’t, “doc, i really want to try ivermectin, yeah, i hear what you’re saying about paxlovid, but i didn’t trust it”. It’s much worse than that.
Did your dog get Covid? If not, there’s proof Ivermectin works, right?
Funny, man🤭
I’m disgusted he only got a month “vacation.” The quack should lose his liscense.