https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD015017.pub2/full
Is it possible this has a benefit? Sure. Has it conclusively been demonstrated yet? No. Are people ingesting a safe, reasonable amount? 
If we want to discuss whether Ivermectin works, Rickson kicked off a thread elsewhere. Otherwise, Iâd just like to discuss the notion that a judge should tell a hospital to use an unproven drug for what might well be a futile case.
Yeah. I think the issue here is that a judge is ordering a hospital to follow the treatment advice of a doctor they donât have a relationship with (doctor doesnât have admitting privileges). There are a lot of quacks out there, and i donât think other doctors should be forced to administer drugs that they arenât, themselves, comfortable administering.
Will a Catholic hospital be forced to perform abortions? Will respectable hospitals be forced to give inpatients extract of peach pit instead of traditional cancer drugs? It seems like judicial overreach to force a hospital to go outside its standard of care.
Doesnât the hospital usually continue to allow you to take prescribed medication when you are admitted? Even if the prescribing Dr doesnât have privileges at the hospital? I guess it would depend on whether the medication conflicted with the treatment. Which might be what the hospital is objecting to.
I donât think he was taking it beforehand, so this would be a new medication.
My experience is that they often switch what you are taking to something comparable in their standard formulary. My mom is on a lot of drugs, and has been admitted to a couple of different hospitals several times in the last two years. Iâm her healthcare proxy, and more on-top of her drugs than she is, so Iâve had a lot of conversations with hospital pharmacists. Sheâs actually on an unusual drug, and Iâve explained to several pharmacists what it is, what itâs for, and what a suitable replacement would be while she is hospitalized.
Her pcp has admitting privileges to one of those hospitals, and they did say that if I brought in a supply of that drug, they would administer it. That wasnât an option at the other hospital.
A friend whose wife recently died of cancer and went to different hospitals then my mom reports that he had the same experience â every time she was admitted she ended up on slightly different drugs.
This has been my experience with my wife and my father, to add anecdotes from multiple hospitals/states.
Lemme Bones that up for you:
In one of the other threads I mentioned that Invermetcin had come up during my wifeâs telehealth appointment for her breakthrough case of COVD / development of long-haul COVID syndrome.
The above comment pretty much aligns with the gist of my wifeâs doctorâs commentary: they donât exactly have a lot of tools known to help; this one might, but considering the uncertainty, theyâd want the patientâs buy-in first (and presumably theyâd prescribe differently than veterinarians would).
Edit: Iâll also note that before folks write off this doctor as a quack because she dared to mention InvermetcinâŚmy wife has other chronic, âdifficultâ health conditions. One of the reasons my wife transferred to this particular practice is that there are a couple of doctors there willing to look at treatments that might be described as âpossibly beneficial, but studies havenât shown a clear benefitâ or âbeneficial for a few individuals, but not enough to support broad useââŚbecause thatâs what my wife needs for some of these condtions.
I donât have time to dig through analogous cases, but I would suspect that what we typically see is that the patient wants X treatment and the hospital / doctor in charge says ânopeâ and thereâs a fight over it, but in those instances the doctor in question is admitted and so itâs really a patient vs. doctor thing and the hospital is standing behind the doctor. I donât know how often we get a non-admitted doctor trying to dictate treatment and the patient sues the hospital for not listening.
In those cases, I would expect the patient to seek transfer to another facility willing to work with the non-admitted doctor, assuming the patientâs condition permitted transfer.
Iâm unfortunately familiar with a couple of cases where transfer was sought because of somewhat analogous quality-of-care concerns.
I wonder if âthe court made us do thisâ would be an effective defense in any malpractice/liability suit arising from issues caused by the treatment in question.
I canât imagine how that is not a valid defense. They clearly tried to not administer the drug. It would be chilling if that wasnât the case.
I didnât get the sense that this was the case here. When I first saw this story, it seemed more patient vs doctor/hospital on wanting to try treating with ivermectin. I thought the non-admitted doctor was a âsecond opinionâ who was willing to prescribe it.
Either way, it kind of seems like this is a âhail Maryâ attempt to do something where the hospital/ICU doc is sticking to the âfirst, do no harmâ part of the Hippocratic oath & not wanting to be the one to do a thing that would push the patient over the edge, while doing nothing is likely to be equally fatal.
Reminds me of when a family member was dying in the hospital years ago. The ICU doc was trying to get/keep them stable & convince a specialist to do a certain (invasive) test. The specialist refused because the test might kill them, to which the ICU doc loudly replied, âTheyâre dying anyway if we donât figure out whatâs going on!â
Agree with your earlier post that this thread should focus on the interesting aspect of this case with the judge overruling the hospital & forcing it to work with a non-admitted doc of the patientâs choosing.
I agree that itâd be a valid defense. Iâm more concerned about whether it would be an effective defense. In some courts/with some juries, there can be quite a difference between the two.
Thatâs what jury instruction is for.
Actually itâs hard to imagine it even getting past a grand jury.
I wasnât aware that grand juries were involved in civil suits.
(My concern isnât with the miniscule threat of a criminal case. Iâm concerned about the claim against the hospitalâs professional liability coverage.)
I was wondering if anyone experienced in med mal would want to comment on this (maybe you have worked in med mal, Kevin? I donât remember)
I havenât directly worked with either med mal or hospital professional liability, but exposure to HPL does factor into some of the work Iâm doing now.
So Iâm not familiar with the ins-and-outs of the liability issues here; Iâm just aware of the general high-level trends and other ugliness of that kind of exposure, as well as the vagaries/craziness of US civil courts in generalâŚwhich is why I made that comment.
Fair enough. Iâve never been a juror on a civil trial, but I believe the judge can still instruct the jurors on what the hospital can and cannot be found liable for.
While I donât have direct experience with med mal or hospital professional liability, I do have direct experience with several other forms of professional liability. (Law enforcement liability, for example.)
That direct experience, augmented by some exposure to civil justice systems outside the US, has fueled my cynicism when it comes to civil courts and juries.
I agree that itâs possible that a judge would instruct the jury in a manner favorable for the hospital (although if that were to happen, itâs more likely that the case would be settled before trial, I think, or this particular question would have been quashed if there were other matters to be litigated). However in some courts, the judges seem rather biased towards the injuried parties / biased against the parties with deep pockets.