Silence can harm.
As COVID-19 continues to inflict suffering, harm and death upon humanity, the Georgia Composite Medical Board is silent on the use of the drug ivermectin as a treatment for those infected with the virus.
While other states and respected medical and scientific communities have spoken out about the problems and risks of using the anti-parasite drug on humans suffering from COVID-19, the Georgia medical board has remained mum.
What are these risks?
For starters, ivermectin has not been shown with any degree of scientific rigor to be effective against the coronavirus.
Ivermectin comes in two forms.
One version, approved by the FDA for treatment of parasitic disease in people, comes in tablets. The other form, which is like a paste, is used for deworming animals like cows and horses. It is not only in a different form, but also is more highly concentrated because of the size of the animals.
Certainly, no one should self-administer the veterinary form. And Georgia’s medical board could advise just that.
But prescribing even the tablets for people with COVID is also contrary to scientific advice, too.
Ivermectin’s manufacturer put out this information in February, stating that there is:
“No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies; no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease; and a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”
Yet, Georgia’s medical board has no official stance on the medication.
Why?
Silence seems an inappropriate, even potentially harmful stance for an organization which posts on its website that “The mission of the Georgia Composite Medical Board is to protect the health of Georgians…” The board’s chair goes on to say that mission includes, “providing up-to-date information regarding the practice of medicine for both consumers and healthcare professionals.”
What is not posted on the board’s website, according to a query of its search engine Monday is a single mention of the word “ivermectin.”
Yet, other entities are forcefully pointing out the potential risks of ivermectin’s use in the COVID fight.
The American Medical Association, the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists had this to say about ivermectin and COVID-19 this month:
“We are alarmed by reports that outpatient prescribing for and dispensing of ivermectin have increased 24-fold since before the pandemic and increased exponentially over the past few months. As such, we are calling for an immediate end to the prescribing, dispensing, and use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial.
“In addition, we are urging physicians, pharmacists, and other prescribers — trusted health care professionals in their communities — to warn patients against the use of ivermectin outside of FDA-approved indications and guidance … .”
Other states’ medical bodies haven’t remained mute, either.
The Medical Commission in Washington State has warned that it may take action against doctors prescribing ivermectin. In Arkansas, the medical board is investigating a doctor who said he has prescribed the drug “thousands” of times, including to inmates in a jail.
These warnings and strong stances around ivermectin use should carry weight with all – and set an example Georgia should emulate.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last Friday that, “As demand for the drug skyrocketed in August, a handful of Georgia physicians have been writing prescriptions for those who request it – or even offering it for patients to try, as they scramble for ways to treat COVID-19.”
Thanks to the respected medical authorities that’ve had the courage to speak out, it can be heard above all the harmful noise that such use of the drug is against the advice of groups in the best position to know the risks – or potential benefits.
Yet, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Friday, “pandemic and vaccine skeptics” and an “outcast” group of doctors have trumpeted ivermectin’s use against COVID.
This has caused demand for the drug to skyrocket above pre-pandemic levels.
As is to be expected for a drug that legitimate scientific authorities urge not be used as a COVID treatment, the surge in usage has triggered a spike in calls to poisoning centers by people who’ve overdosed on ivermectin or consumed the veterinary form of the medication.
The CDC has reported hospitalizations in some cases. And poison control centers cited a small number of calls reporting “death and major effect.”
Medical and science entities do acknowledge the use of ivermectin as part of clinical trials to study its efficacy against COVID-19. And such studies are underway.
But research thus far has been shown to be unreliable. Many studies lacked rigorous safeguards, and one rare major study showing significant benefits was recently pulled down because of concerns about the data.
In the face of all the confusion, misstatements and even falsehoods dangerously floating around now about COVID-19, it is critical that Georgians be able to rely on their medical and scientific leaders for accurate information about available treatments. This is, after all, a virus that has claimed the lives of more than 20,500 Georgians.
A present-day version of the Hippocratic Oath reads: “I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.”
Georgia’s medical board should be a key source of this kind of trustworthy information.
No public good can be expected to come from its silence in this regard.
And the risk of harm is real.
The Editorial Board.
A Troubled Medical Board
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has closely covered the state medical licensing board for years, finding that too often its lax oversight of dangerous physicians and its penchant for secrecy have left the public at risk.
In March, a report by the consumer organization Public Citizen found that Georgia ranks near the bottom of states nationally for imposing serious disciplinary actions on its licensed physicians, leaving patients vulnerable to incompetent, impaired or abusive doctors. That report reinforced findings of a blistering state audit in 2020 that found less than 2% of cases opened against physicians in the previous fiscal year resulted in any public disciplinary actions.
Investigations by the AJC in 2016, 2017 and 2018 revealed that the board rarely imposed serious consequences against doctors found to have provided substandard care, sexually abused patients or improperly prescribed opioids or other addictive medications. And the board has resisted pressure to improve key patient protections.
The board also has thwarted legislators’ moves to improve transparency.
Back in 2001, the Georgia Patient Right to Know Act required the board to create and maintain a profile on each licensed physician, with such information as a doctor’s education, experience, disciplinary actions, malpractice judgment and felony convictions. But the medical board doesn’t try to verify information physicians provide, relying instead on an honor system. The result, the AJC found, has been incomplete or even false information on some physicians.
And years after Georgia lawmakers amended that Right to Know Act to require physicians to disclose whether they have malpractice insurance, the information is still missing from the physician profiles. A notice on the board’s website says that it has been collecting the information since 2012, but it has not completed development of a new physician profile to include it.
Whether the board lacks the will or the resources, it has not carried out its prime mission, protecting patients.
