Prison populations are hotbeds of COVID-19 infections, and they’re full of surplus people society doesn’t really need, and gosh, a lot of them are black, even, so you know what we should do? An experiment!
An Arkansas doctor under investigation for prescribing an anti-parasite drug called ivermectin to jail detainees with COVID-19, even though federal health officials specifically warn against it, has said that those patients took the drug willingly. But several inmates at the Washington County jail say that is not the case — that they were given the pills with no indication of what they really were.
CBS News spoke with 29-year-old Edrick Floreal-Wooten over a video call from the jail on Friday. After testing positive for COVID-19 in August, he said he and other inmates went to “pill call” and were given several pills with the explanation that it would help them “get better.” He said he and others asked repeatedly what the pills were.
“They said they were vitamins, steroids and antibiotics,” Floreal-Wooten told CBS News. “We were running fevers, throwing up, diarrhea … and so we figured that they were here to help us. … We never knew that they were running experiments on us, giving us ivermectin. We never knew that.”
Except it wasn’t even an experiment. The doctor, Rob Karas, took it upon himself to dose the patients, despite the fact that every credible medical organization says it is dangerous and not recommended.
Karas, who has treated people at the jail for six years, confirmed prescribing the drug to CBS News on Friday, saying that vaccines are a “tremendous asset in the fight against COVID,” but that their availability “does not change the day-to-day reality of caring for sick patients.”
Karas said in an email he obtained ivermectin from a licensed pharmacist “in dosages and compounds formulated for humans” to give to COVID patients.
“I do not have the luxury of conducting my own clinical trial or study and am not attempting to do so. I am on the front line of trying to prevent death and serious illness,” he told CBS News. “I am proud of our track record in both of my clinics and at the jail in particular.”
Karas is now under investigation by the Arkansas State Medical Board. That’s weak sauce — he’s been poisoning his patients, and needs a rather more severe and immediate punishment.
But what the hey, they’re just prison inmates, they probably deserve some mild poisoning.
Actually, they’re not prison inmates. They’re in a county jail, which generally means one of three things:
1. They are convicted felons either waiting to be transported to an actual prison (or they’re felons who were sentenced to county jail as part of a felony conviction) (I do not know Arkansas law, but such a sentence is possible in many states), or;
2. They are in jail, not prison, doing a sentence for a misdemeanor conviction, or;
3. They are in jail awaiting trial on either a felony or misdemeanor charge, and have not been convicted yet of anything.
So people who have not even been found guilty of a crime could be receiving this dangerous drug.
This is outrageous.
The only good thing is, when used as indicated, for its indicated usage as an antiparasitic, it does have a good safety profile.
The bad thing is, if we can’t trust that physician to apply best treatment and prevention practices, how can we trust that he simply misused a valid human prescription drug for an inappropriate condition and didn’t use the less expensive veterinary drug for livestock instead? What other inappropriate non-treatments has he used on unwilling “study participants”?
I think that his state medical board should examine his “treatment” records quite closely.
Hope he meets the same fate as Christopher Duntsch.
At the very least he is utterly incompetent, and that should disqualify him from continuing in medical practice. Where did he get the idea that this antiparasitic drug, used to kill off multicellular organisms, would have any effect at all on a virus? There is no evidence of it being effective, no understood mechanism by which it might possibly be, no credible supporting literature to even suggest it’s worth a try.
So what was his thinking? He heard it from right-wing radio nutcases? He read about it on a facebook conspiracy page? He’s got shares in a company that makes the stuff? Why should anyone trust the medical opinion of someone who gets his pharmacological regimens from such sources?
@2
I’d add dosage concerns. Livestock ivermectin isn’t set out for a dose for human adults; you have to calculate a dosage from the animal weight and maybe species (I’m not a vet or otherwise treated anything for parasites). Not to mention that a lot of the people dosing for COVID apparently think they need a stronger and/or more frequent dose than would be appropriate for clearing up parasites… which is where something that has a reasonable side effect profile (when used for its actual approved purpose) can escalate to ‘this will mess you up’.
Hopefully, the fact it came in pills means it is the human version, at appropriate dosages. Like… the situation is still all kinds of a nightmare, but appropriate dosages of human pharmaceuticals might mean no one gets liver failure from this.
To say he is ‘poisoning’ patients, seems like a bit of exaggeration – at least based on the linked story. He is using an FDA approved drug for an off-label use. Apparently many doctors around the country are doing the same thing. If any of them are prescribing or providing their patients with drug formulated for animals, then I will agree that they are poisoning patients. More likely they aren’t doing them any good, but not doing them any harm either.
chris61, he is indeed potentially doing harm, because he is exposing the recipients to needless side-effects.
cf. https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-1122/ivermectin-oral/details
chris61 @6: A physician using an off label drug should have some basis for believing it will be effective and be able to demonstrate that they have a reasonable belief that it may be effective. Not having that makes it malpractice at the least. In the absence of any evidence that the drug could be helpful, the prescription is basically exposing the patient to risk with no benefit. And I think you would agree that the informed consent was grossly inadequate.
Agree with dianne@#8. If a consenting adult agrees to take part in a trial with a drug that is not approved for that situation, OK, fine. That does not appear to be the case here. People who are in prison are still, you know, people. it’s not OK to just give them drugs just to see what happens.
Isn’t that something that actual Nazis did? Christ of the Andes.
kestrel@9: Yes, people in jail or prison are considered a vulnerable population on whom experimentation is greatly restricted (not altogether forbidden, but additional safeguards must be put in place.) However, if I understand correctly, the claim was that this wasn’t experimentation but off label use. That has fewer restrictions, but still requires at minimum some evidence that the proposed treatment will work. And consent of the patient. Informed consent of the patient. “Here, this will make you feel better” is not adequate consent, even if the patient is perfectly willing to take the drug, which the people affected here were not.
Also yes, this is something the Nazis did. Sadly, it is not something that ONLY the Nazis did. There are all too many examples in the US, Canada, and elsewhere. It’s supposed to be something that we don’t do anymore EVER. As in, this is a “never again” thing in medical research. You do not ever, for any reason, no matter how benevolent your intent, experiment on people without their consent. You don’t ever, for any reason refuse to tell your patient what drug they’re being given. Ever. That should be an immediate and automatic withdrawal of the perpetrator’s medical license.
Sorry, ranting and multi-posting, but this is exactly the sort of thing that leads people to distrust doctors and I can’t blame them for that under the circumstances.
Yeah, and I remember not so long ago when you bravely came out swinging against gain of function research, as well as the series of lies officials have told about it, which is wildly irresponsible and totally disregards the consent of the billions of people who could be adversely affected…. And you did this, because it was just the right thing to say and an important message that needed to be heard, despite your partisan leanings and your biases in favor of scientists and their work.
Or was that somebody else?
It must have been somebody else. My mistake.
Ivermectin has been treated like any other drug or vaccine.
We did a properly designed and run clinical trial in the USA.
The results were:
Scientists have done a well designed clinical trial. Ivermectin doesn’t work for Covid-19 virus.
That the Data Safety Monitoring Board stopped the trial means they didn’t see any indications that the drug had any affect on Covid-19 virus patients.
cr @13, seemingly, you consider experimentation in vitro is exactly the same as in vivo on human subjects. Me, I see the differences.
Funny, the long-sentence-fetishist from the other day who was cheering on the country’s obsession with sending people to prison, I think it was WAKitty, hasn’t shown up in the comments here to tell us how this is all actually okay.
John Morales, #15:
I don’t know what makes it seem that way to you.
I don’t think the dangers are equivalent. Indeed, I think GOF is much worse in that respect, not better. And I think the setting in which the experimentation occurs is not the sort of information you need in order to evaluate that. But you seemingly don’t believe you’re raising a spurious objection, so maybe you can explain to me why that’s supposed to matter.
I do think the lack of consent is basically the same issue, except that the one is on a vastly larger scale than the other.
Morally and politically, both are extremely problematic, however different in detail they may otherwise be. I have no clue why I should care more about those differences than I should about that. But if I’m just missing something that seems relevant or important, please go ahead and explain it.
cr, heh.
In a nutshell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_God_(ethics)
For fuck’s sake, religion has nothing to do with it, John. I’ll stop wasting my time, unless you decide it’s worth yours to express something that at least looks like it could be a complete thought.
cr, you imagined that, because I used that idiom, I was referring to religion?
From my link: “When the term is used, it can be used to refer to people who try to exercise great authority and power. It is usually pejorative and suggests arrogance, misappropriation of power, or tampering with matters in which humans should not meddle.”
Nah. You have form.
I do wonder if the sheriff is close friends with the doctor. The current sheriff, Tim Helder, has been sheriff for a while (since 2005). Washington county, Arkansas, is a pretty good size county with about 240,000 residents (mostly white with a sizable Hispanic minority, 15.5%). Republican but with one blue enclave in Fayetteville.
It seems unclear whether they weighed the patients; Ivermectin doses are calculated per kilogram of the patient. It certainly seems they were giving multiple doses (for worms it is one pill not to be repeated for at least 3 months, main use for humans seems to be against river blindness).
The inmates apparently were told they were being given “vitamins”, Inmates Weren’t Told They Were Given An Anti-Parasite Drug Instead Of COVID-19 Meds:
Apparently then the quack “prescribed” off-label ivermectin not only without informed consent, but outright deception.
Oh, it’s obvious.
<sarcasm> This doctor (and the Sheriff) thinks all residents of the county are sheep. We are, after all, talking about a region and general county demographic in which “different folk” are “encouraged” to conform to a certain narrow preconception of both what and who is Right and Good. With, of course, a few highly active border collies running around keeping the herd in order. Whatever the person(s) directing the border collies think is correct at any one moment is correct — and mandatory — for not just the herd as a whole, but for each individual member of the herd without any variation at all. And since ivermectin use is well-established for parasitic infections (like r. maddowius) in o. aries, it’s obviously appropriate to treat all other sheep for all other disorders.
We won’t talk about what happens to the herd a little bit later
after its members have been fattened up. Or what happens at and after shearing during life, either. That’s only for Management’s consideration, not for individual sheep to bother their wee little heads with. </sarcasm>@14 raven @8 dianne
According to clinicaltrials.gov there are currently six trials taking place in the USA and about two dozen more around the world studying the efficacy of ivermectin. So I don’t think one can say with any confidence yet that it either does or does not work.
The issue of informed consent is another matter. Doctor was definitely wrong on that front.
@#24 chris61
You can say with confidence that no trials yet reported^ have shown any noticable effect on metrics relevant to the patient like not getting COVID-19 or only getting mild COVID-19 or not needing intubation or not dying. There have been enough trials for there to be meta-analyses of them, and the best they can say is ” none of these trials show any effect, maybe do some more trials?”. Furthermore although there was apparently an in vitro effect on SARS-CoV-2 it was at concentrations impossible to attain in human blood. So yes we can say with reasonable confidence that it doesn’t work.
^ the only exception to this was a paper shown to be fraudulent and withrawn
For example, the Cohrane review (July 2021), Ivermectin for preventing and treating COVID-19: “We found no evidence to support the use of ivermectin for treating or preventing COVID-19 infection, but the evidence base is limited.”
chris61 @24: If you can find a study that has been completed and is positive, that’s potentially grounds for off-label prescribing. Studies being underway is evidence that you shouldn’t be prescribing it out of the context of a clinical trial: if there are studies ongoing then the question of whether something works is not settled. Off-label prescribing outside of a clinical trial can only be justified if evidence of efficacy and safety can be presented. It has not been for ivermectin in COVID.
Merck doesn’t think ivermectin works. When the manufacturer doesn’t think it works, it’s time to give it up. Merck didn’t get to be a multi-billion dollar drug company by interpreting data pessimistically.
@dainne 27
Which is pretty much what I said. in my #24.
LOL Vicar can’t even get my name right, let alone my position! GTFO, you lying hack!
On topic, now. Because you got me thinking about it.
Prisoners should be allowed to participate in medical trials — like, if a prisoner has a rare condition, and meets the requirements to participate in a trial run of a new medication for it, they should be allowed to do the thing for science.
But never, ever forced.
Ivermectin causes male sterility.
The antivaxxers always claim without proof because it is wrong, that the vaccines cause sterility.
Strangely enough, their fantasy drug of choice actually does cause male sterility.
“According to their study, 85 percent of men who take Ivermectin become sterilized.”
@32 raven
Nope. I was going to write my own reply but Snopes (quoted below) has already covered this one.
Presumably if you’re going to trust UFDA on vaccine safety, you’ll trust them on this one too.