Congressman Shuts Down Republican’s COVID Disinformation
Arizona’s Gosar still trying to push dewormer Ivermectin as treatment
A prominent Democratic congressman had to swoop in Thursday to debunk his MAGA Republican colleague who wanted to insist an animal deworming treatment is effective to treat COVID-19 in human patients.
During questioning of the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Rep Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) continued to raise the potential of Ivermectin to treat COVID — years after use of the veterinary dewormer has been debunked for use against the disease.
Gosar bizarrely tried to assert that the FDA had endorsed the use of Ivermectin for COVID only to retract its authorization later.
“Well, we didn’t retract everything we had to say about Ivermectin,” said Commissioner Robert Califf, adding, “If you look at the randomized trials of Ivermectin — and there are many of them now — there is no benefit of Ivermectin in the treatment of COVID. That’s a statement — just a fact.”
Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md), who often has been a real-time fact-checker of Republicans, jumped into the fray.
“I’m going to follow up on this because this exchange to me was extremely illuminating. Because what we have here is the commissioner is the head of the Food and Drug administration and then we get a drive-by spray of propaganda, disinformation and ideological attacks,” he said, referring to Gosar’s Ivermectin comments. “So let me try to sort some of this out and maybe it will help to illuminate why we have a Food and Drug Administration, rather than leaving it to politicians in state legislatures, or in Congress to make decisions based on ideological whim.
“But let’s start with Ivermectin, which I believe is an animal de-worming agent that some people were advocating for use to treat COVID-19. Has this been approved as a form of treatment or a cure for COVID-19?” Raskin asked.
“No, it has not,” Califf said. “If I may, I should also point out it also has benefit for humans with worms, which is a huge problem in Asia. So it actually won a Nobel Prize, because it’s an amazing drug, both for animals and humans who have worms. And there was a good reason to think it may work in the case of COVID.
“And that’s why thankfully, the community including the [National Institutes of Health] did a number of randomized clinical trials. There’s just no benefit,” Califf added. “And you know, that’s true of most things that we try. There’s nothing wrong with thinking it might work, it just didn’t.”
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