Doctors who touted ivermectin as covid fix now pushing it for flu, RSV This group of doctors championed ivermectin as a covid "miracle" drug without scientific evidence. Now they're pushing the anti-parasitic for flu and RSV. Lauren Weber Washington Post

First, the group of doctors championed ivermectin as a covid panacea. It failed to live up to the hype. Now, they’re promoting the anti-parasitic to prevent and treat the flu and RSV.

The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, formed in 2020 to “prevent and treat covid,” is touting ivermectin for common respiratory infections amid a dramatic drop in prescriptions for the drug as clinical trials undermined claims of its efficacy against covid.

There is no clinical data in humans to support using ivermectin for flu or RSV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical experts.

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And yet, the alliance publishes “treatment protocols” promoting the use of ivermectin for flu, RSV and covid that it says have been downloaded more than a million times. It also recommends a network of hundreds of medical providers and pharmacies that can provide prescriptions for ivermectin, often through virtual visits that can run hundreds of dollars.

“Profiting from bunk and nonsense has no place in ethical medicine,” said Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine who called the alliance’s promotion of ivermectin for covid, flu and RSV “fraud during a pandemic on a significant scale.”

The alliance’s co-founders Pierre Kory, a Wisconsin critical care doctor, and Paul Marik, whose medical license expired in 2022 according to Virginia licensing records, declined through the alliance’s spokesman to be interviewed. Marik said through the spokesman that he chose not to renew his license.

Kory responded over email, through the spokesman, to questions about the group recommending ivermectin for flu and RSV despite the lack of scientific evidence and accusations of profiteering from medical misinformation.

“Ivermectin has been found to have strong antiviral properties and is effective as part of a protocol that includes other medications and supplements,” Kory said in a written statement.

He said doctors and medical scientists associated with the alliance began exploring how “covid-like” respiratory infections “might respond to novel treatments” and developed the protocol for RSV and flu “using medical and scientific research (including over 80 references to peer reviewed studies) as well as clinical data from doctors currently treating patients.”

But the CDC and other medical experts strongly advise against such protocols.

“Ivermectin is not recommended by CDC for prevention or treatment of influenza, and there are no data from clinical trials of ivermectin for prevention or treatment of influenza in people,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said. “It’s important to note that currently, ivermectin has not been proven as a way to prevent or treat RSV.”

DC has warned that ivermectin, commonly taken as a pill, can interact with medications such as blood thinners and that overdosing on ivermectin can result in gastrointestinal symptoms and neurological effects.

Nordlund also noted that the alliance itself points out on its website that there is “no (published) clinical data on the use of ivermectin in the treatment of influenza.”

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