Ivermectin Preprint, Poison Control Calls
Most of the calls to poison control in one state seem to point back to a bad preprint
Last month, I covered the slipshod withdrawal of a preprint on Research Square involving the idea that ivermectin could be used to treat Covid-19. The preprint was rank with plagiarism, and the premise itself was faulty, yet it took 8 months and a whistleblower to finally get the preprint’s fourth version withdrawn. Versions 1-3 remain available on both Research Square and Europe PMC.
Yesterday, the Mississippi Department of Health confirmed that at least 70% of the recent calls to poison control centers in the state have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin. People have been buying it at their local feed stores and taking it to prevent or treat Covid-19 infections.
Where might someone have gotten the idea of ingesting ivermectin to treat Covid-19? Could it have been from a preprint entitled, “Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic”??
Remember, three versions of this withdrawn preprint remain available in full-text via Research Square and Europe PMC.
The notion of ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment has been amplified by right-wing media, with Fox News at the center. Such sources are mainly to blame. But without a science-like report available to reference and kick it all off, they’d have nothing to base their harmful lies on.
It’s a reminder of how careful we need to be with biomedical information. Yet, we’ve only become less discerning and more porous and careless. So here we are.
I have even more questions than I had just a few weeks ago . . .