Invermectin is a drug used to treat heart worm in small animals. It is also used clinically to treat a variety of worm (e.g. River blindness) and arthropod (e.g. head lice) infections. All the targets of this drug, are consequently a million miles away from viruses. In spite of this, some right wingers (they were also keen on the anti malarial hydroxychloroquine), have advocated invermectin as a treatment for Covid19 (
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-supporting-ivermectin-as-covid-treatment-withdrawn-over-ethical-concerns). A pre-print of a large 'study' using ivermectin, by Dr Ahmad Elgazzar of Benha University, Egypt has caused controversy. The pre-print has now been withdrawn 'on ethical grounds'. The body of the paper appeared to be largely plagiarised. Its associated data was also very suspect, having numerous errors. Some of the data appeared to be 'cloned' to boost the numbers. Sadly, as the paper was so apparently large, it has skewed 2 meta analyses on the same topic. Oxford University will independently run a trial of ivermectin as a potential treatment for covid19. This is intended to try to help settle whether ivermectin has any benefits in this disease. Scientists have to spend time eliminating as well as validating treatments. It seems very odd that certain groups, who totally oppose the use of vaccines (designed to treat Sars-CoV-2), strongly support other improbable treatments. The substances seem to be advocated, even when the studies on them are extremely dodgy. Anything but a vaccine?
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