In an outcome ignored by most of the mainstream media, Biden administration drug regulators agreed last week to take down snarky posts that ridiculed doctors and their patients who treated COVID-19 with Ivermectin.
According to Newsweek, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conceded to “delete and never republish” multiple social-media posts that claimed Ivermectin was only for animals and not people.
Newsweek was one of the few legacy media outlets to cover the latest development in the legal brawl over the Nobel Prize-winning medication, which is critical because it could reshape and curtail the FDA’s influence in promoting medical treatments.
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The FDA’s pledge, made on Thursday, settled a lawsuit first brought in June 2022.
Three Texas doctors – Mary Talley Bowden, Paul Marik and Robert Apter – asserted that the FDA had interfered with their ability to practice medicine by claiming the drug was ineffective.
As the Tampa Free Press has reported, liberals and the left-wing medical establishment, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, widely trashed Ivermectin as a potential treatment for the virus during the pandemic.
Chief among them was President Joe Biden’s FDA.
The FDA posts at issue in the lawsuit were made in 2021. They included messages the FDA posted on then-Twitter (now X), Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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The agency’s campaign promoted Ivermectin’s use to deworm horses and cattle, while ignoring its Nobel-winning work in human to treat intestinal conditions, head lice, and skin problems.
One FDA post read, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
The agency later added, “Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.”
Newsweek noted that a third post stated, “You are not a horse. Stop it with the #ivermectin. It’s not authorized for treating #COVID.”
The FDA also flatly said “no” under a Q&A webpage about the drug’s use for COVID.
But then stories emerged that people took Ivermectin to treat COVID and recovered or were no worse off.
Both podcaster Joe Rogan and then-Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers admitted they took Ivermectin to fight off the effects of the virus.
In a widely viewed interview Rogan, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, admitted to Rogan that his own network “shouldn’t have said that” when some of its anchors ridiculed Rogan for treating COVID with a “horse dewormer.”
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Newsweek reported that a federal judge initially dismissed the Texas doctors’ case on the grounds the FDA had “sovereign immunity.”
Yet the conservative U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that, declaring that the “FDA is not a physician.”
The appellate court also noted in its ruling, “Even tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond the FDA’s statutory authority.”
In response, the FDA told Newsweek, “The agency has chosen to resolve this lawsuit rather than continuing to litigate over statements that are between two and nearly four years old.”
The FDA also added that it “has not admitted any violation of law or any wrongdoing, disagrees with the plaintiff’s allegation that the agency exceeded its authority in issuing the statements challenged in the lawsuit, and stands by its authority to communicate with the public regarding the products it regulates.”
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Dr. Bowden, however, noted the significance of the FDA’s defeat on X.
“FDA loses its war on ivermectin and agrees to remove all social media posts and consumer directives regarding ivermectin and COVID, including its most popular tweet in FDA history,” she posted on Thursday.
“This landmark case sets an important precedent in limiting FDA overreach into the doctor-patient relationship.”
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