Doctors and pharmacists ramp up calls for Americans to stop using ivermectin

This feels like another situation where the attempts to quell disinformation are having the opposite of their intended effect.

Depending on where these people first learned of this drug, there is some pretty confusing information floating around. When someone like Bret Weinstein points out that ivermectin is used widely and safely to treat river blindness, but most media sources are focused on “it’s a horse dewormer”, people stop listening.

Censoring most information about the human use of the drug is driving conspiracy types to decreasingly reputable sources and I’d argue that this is more responsible for the overdoses than anything.

Just one of many examples this week:

"Joe Rogan has told his Instagram followers he has been taking ivermectin, a deworming veterinary drug formulated for use in cows and horses, to help fight the coronavirus."

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033485152/joe-rogan-covid-iv...

That's framed as though he took a drug for cows and horses! He certainly did not.

Meanwhile, this is the human version of ivermectin, the one Joe Rogan took:

"In 2015, William Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for its discovery and applications. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines... Between 1995 and 2010 the program using donated ivermectin to prevent river blindness is estimated to have prevented seven million years of disability whilst costing US$257 million."

Re-read that. It's on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It prevented seven million years of disability for less than $300M. Is that anything remotely like the way it's being portrayed by the media?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin

It's a cheap, Nobel Prize winning medication that is proven safe, having been used billions of times in humans.

Oh, but you can overdose on it? Just like most drugs?

As for its use with regard to Covid, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't personally seek it out, but here's a meta analysis of 63 studies https://ivmmeta.com/ which would suggest it's worth looking at. If doctors are prescribing it, such as in Joe Rogan's case, I don't see why that should be a problem.

I am so tired of seeing Tuskegee trotted out as an argument by anti vaxxers.

The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans and was an overtly racist program. COVID vaccines on the other hand are not targeting a specific sample group, they are being given to virtually everyone. There's no sample group. The two are not remotely comparable.