Patients Can’t Force Hospitals to Administer Ivermectin for COVID, Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in a 6-1 decision that a hospital cannot be compelled by the courts to administer ivermectin to patients to treat COVID-19.

The decision upheld a 2022 appeals court decision against Allen Gahl, who sued Aurora Health Care in October 2021, when doctors refused to use ivermectin to treat his uncle, John Zingsheim, for COVID-19.

The appeals court ruled there was no legal basis by which a patient could compel a healthcare provider to administer a particular treatment or to credential an outside provider to do so.

Kim Mack Rosenberg, acting chief counsel for Children’s Health Defense told The Defender the narrow ruling has no bearing on the broader issues around ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision is concerning but ultimately should be treated as the narrow ruling it is,” she said, adding:

“While replete with criticisms of ivermectin, the Supreme Court’s opinion did not ultimately rule on the efficacy or appropriateness of administering ivermectin to this patient.”

Ivermectin is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is typically used to treat parasitic diseases. It is “extremely safe for use in humans,” and has general antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties.

Ivermectin has for decades been administered to hundreds of millions of people across the world, with very few side effects.

During the pandemic, doctors working on the front lines and 93 controlled trials — 73 of them peer-reviewed and 43 of them randomized controlled trials — showed the safe and effective use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19, according to internist and critical care physician Dr. Pierre Kory.

But the press, public health officials and regulatory agencies consistently denigrated the low-cost, generic ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” — even in reports about this ruling, stoking fear around its use. They also prevented people from accessing the drug.

Kory told The Defender he thought the details of this particular case are not the major issue in the Gahl v. Aurora ruling. Instead, he pointed to the broader problem of “the underlying systemic corruption around repurposed drugs” like ivermectin.

He said:

“I see it in a much broader picture, which is that ivermectin was attacked by a global disinformation campaign executed by the pharmaceutical industry.

“They’ve been doing this for years to other drugs, and this drug threatened a worldwide market for vaccines and other antivirals in a market that’s worth over $100 billion.

“So it [ivermectin] was a grave threat and they pulled out every disinformation tactic possible.”…