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It seemed like everyone was giving health advice at the beginning of COVID. Between homemade masks and internal applications of bleach, the advice came with varying levels of soundness. No medicine better represents the wild wild west era of COVID treatment than ivermectin. The paste to give horses diarrhea turned into a SARS-CoV-2 cure overnight, and as desperate people scrambled to the shelves of their nearest pharmacies and veterinarians, the FDA attempted a small intervention and warned people against popping ivermectin. They’ll be ending up in court over it. From ABA Journal: Ivermectin For Horse
Doctors who prescribed the human version of a drug called ivermectin to thousands of their COVID-19 patients can sue the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The doctors had alleged that the FDA’s social media posts on ivermectin interfered with their ability to exercise professional medical judgment, harmed their reputations and led to professional consequences. The suit claimed that the posts were outside the FDA’s legal authority.
Of all the people tweeting out medical advice about how the real cause of COVID was 5G wireless, God’s wrath, or a hoax created by those damned liberals, I’d have never guessed that the FDA would be the one getting sued for tweets that interfered with a doctor’s ability to exercise medical judgment.
I wonder how far cases here will go. Because let’s be honest, the content of the FDA’s tweets and Instagram posts weren’t all that bad:
A post shared by U.S. FDA (@fda)
What’s the next suit? Some doctors get pissy after the FDA shares a post about vaccine efficacy? I’m not an expert in set theory but I’ll make a prediction that the Venn diagram of the doctors who would have prescribed ivermectin for COVID and the doctors who are vaccine denialists approaches a circle. What would happen if the FDA posted a picture of Mercury and said, “No, it’s not in retrograde, you just haven’t had a flu shot in 6 years”? Is that new ground for a suit from the doctors that collect crystals and have a dream catcher somewhere in their office?
Goofiness aside — which there is a lot of — it is an interesting case that has the potential to create a bright line for what branches of government can do. Sure would be nice if this ethos migrates over to other branches of government. Yes, I’m talking about the Supreme Court which, if we’re being very honest, is doing a much bigger job of interfering with the medical judgment of doctors by overturning Roe than the FDA’s measly tweets.
FDA’s ‘Tweet-Sized Doses’ Of Ivermectin Advice Can Be Challenged In Lawsuit, 5th Circuit Says [ABA Journal]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
ATL Health, Courts, COVID-19, FDA, Fifth Circuit, Health Care / Medicine, Healthcare Docket, Ivermectin
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