The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Aug. 17 clarified that it had not authorized or approved the use of ivermectin in preventing or treating COVID-19.
Ivermectin is an FDA-approved antiparasitic drug that is used to treat neglected tropical diseases, including parasitic worm infections (helminthiases), onchocerciasis (or river blindness), and scabies.
The FDA stated that while it had approved ivermectin for certain uses in humans and animals, it had not issued any statement affirming the safety or effectiveness of the drug for treating COVID-19.
“We’ve seen lots of chatter about ivermectin in the last week. Some of what you’re seeing in videos and social media posts isn’t true,” the FDA stated on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Doctors in the United States, though, are able to and regularly prescribe approved drugs for purposes for which they are not approved.
“Health care professionals generally may choose to prescribe an approved human drug for an unapproved use when they judge that the unapproved use is medically appropriate for an individual patient,” the FDA said.
The FDA pointed cited the National Institutes of Health COVID-19 treatment guidelines, which recommend against using ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment due to a purported lack of evidence supporting its effectiveness. Some studies have found that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.
The agency was responding after some people, including Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.), claimed that the FDA has “quietly approved” the use of ivermectin for COVID-19.
“The doctors I’ve been dealing with and talking to for years now, they believe that probably hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives because they were denied early treatment and they were denied because the FDA sabotaged, for example, ivermectin,” Mr. Johnson told FOX News on Aug. 11.
“We are going down a very dangerous path, but it’s a path that is being laid out and planned by an elite group of people that want to take total control over our lives, and that’s what they’re doing bit by bit,” he added.
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