An upstate New York hospital was so dead set against administering Ivermectin that they ended up with a dead patient.
Rochester Regional Health refused to administer the drug to 75-year old Jeremy L. Carter, a patient sickened by Covid-19, even after a court ordered them to. Carter was a Vietnam-era Navy veteran who later retired from Eastman-Kodak after 31 years employment.
Carter was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit September 20 where he was placed on a ventilator, according to Rochester’s NBC TV affiliate WHEC.
“Less than a week later, he was admitted to Rochester General Hospital where doctors started COVID-19 treatment which included Remdesivir and Dexamethasone,” WHEC-TV reported, adding “treatments did not work and his health continued to deteriorate.”
Carter’s daughter, Jill Alvarado, began research on alternative treatments. She found the drug Ivermectin, which is typically used to treat certain infections caused by parasitic worms, head lice, and skin conditions.
Alvarado got her father’s primary care provider to write him a prescription for ivermectin but the hospital refused to administer ivermectin to Carter even after family said they would sign a liability waiver. The family then took the hospital to court. A Monroe County judge ordered the hospital Friday to administer the experimental treatment to the dying patient.
Rochester Regional Health did not give Carter the drug. Instead, they filed an appeal Saturday. A hearing was scheduled for Monday morning but Carter died Sunday.
“Every case I have is a person in a hospital dying… what is the harm if a hospital is done with its protocol?” asked Ralph Lorigo, the attorney who has brought dozens of lawsuits against health systems across the country.
Carter’s suit is the third Lorigo has filed against Rochester Regional Health to get them to administer Ivermectin.
“Each of those times we were successful and those people went home,” Lorigo told the TV reporter. “In this situation we sued, we got a court order and the hospital refused to administer the Ivermectin.”
Ivermectin has not been approved for treatment of Covid-19 by the Food and Drug Administration. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an emergency alert about the antiviral August 13 after noting a large increase in prescriptions for the drug, which won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine.
A recent study examining pharmacy dispensing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic showed an increase from an average of 3,600 ivermectin prescriptions per week before the pandemic (March 16, 2019–March 13, 2020). “Outpatient ivermectin dispensing has again begun to rapidly increase, reaching more than 88,000 prescriptions in the week ending August 13, 2021,” noted the CDC.
Bill Maher recently bemoaned the furor over the drug, saying the pandemic has exposed how people politicize medication such as the drug denied the dying Rochester man. “I mean, Ivermectin. It’s a drug. It’s not a politician,” Maher said. “It should not have any reputation, except, ‘Does it work or not?'”
An in vitro study of Ivermectin found the FDA-approved drug “inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2.” Critics note that in vitro means it was studied in test tubes, which is not the same as in vivo (in people). But, studies like that may explain a surprising number of medical professionals who consider ivermectin a Covid-19 slayer. High profile promoters of ivermectin include the physician advisor to Florida’s Governor DeSantis.
Forbes magazine chimed in as opposing the drug’s use as a Covid-19 treatment, saying “The pandemic has been replete with politicized discussions of non-pharmaceutical interventions, treatments, vaccines, and even the virus itself. None of this has served public health well. Too many people have fallen under the spell of unproven “cures” while foregoing clinically confirmed instruments, such as vaccines.”
Carter’s family and attorney pointed out that he had been vaccinated.
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