Drug Dilemma

By
Appears in the November 2021 issue.

Even as highly effective and fully approved vaccines are available to prevent COVID-19, the latest treatment for the virus making the social media rounds is ivermectin. The off-label use of the drug—approved for treating parasitic worms in horses and livestock—has resulted in empty shelves at feed stores and spawned several local lawsuits. The FDA issued this alert: “There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s OK to take large doses of ivermectin. It is not OK.”

Photo by Houston Cofield/The New York Times