They used good ol’ horse sense.
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Oh cool. So now you can demand doctors treat you or your family member with a drug they believe doesn’t work and could cause further harm, and if they refuse, you can get a judge to compel them to do so. Sounds reasonable.
Who stands to gain the most by promoting the use of ivermectin? The drug’s manufacturer (Merck) stands to gain the most (i.e. financial). Even Merck has put out an official statement that it does not support the use of ivermectin to treat covid. If the manufacturer and physicians say no, that should be the final decision. Can the judge be held liable for practicing medicine without a license? What if something goes wrong? Doctors can be sued for malpractice, can the judge be sued now as well? Merck Statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic - Merck.com
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Zero-covid was impossible (and therefore anti-science?).
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Honestly? In the situation this guy is in (was in?), if reported correctly, I don’t blame the wife, judge, or anyone else grasping at straws. Use Ivermectin. What’s the worst it can do? Kill him? Sounds like he’s in danger of dying anyway.
I feel anyone with terminal illnesses that haven’t responded to anything “tried and true” ought to be able to choose to use experimental meds. I see that as totally different than rejecting tried in true in favor of snake oil or anything experimental.
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I have a problem with judges compelling doctors to do things which go against their medical judgment and public health advice. The woman is free to fire her doctor and find another who has privileges at that hospital who is willing to do her bidding.
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If I read it correctly, the judge told the hospital to allow a doctor’s prescribed treatment. We can (and probably do) disagree with the doctor who wrote the prescription, but the judge isn’t practicing medicine and writing prescriptions himself (or telling a doctor to do so). He’s just allowing the wife to have a Hail Mary pass for her husband.
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It’s worked for over a year.
The way I read this article, the prescribing doctor does not have privileges at this hospital. Just having a medical license does not mean you get to direct care at any old hospital you desire, particularly for a patient whom you haven’t seen/examined/treated.
This is completely outside the realm of standards of practice and could open up a whole dangerous can of worms. There are so many ways in which this precedent could harm patients.
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I agree, but in this case it’s difficult to move the patient and they didn’t know ahead of time they wanted to go this route. This isn’t a case of “anyone can do it for any reason.” It also sounds from the article that other judges have decided the same way in other cases.
When life isn’t happening as it usually does, sometimes one needs to make exceptions. If the patient were able to go elsewhere, then there’d be no lawsuit.
If they can’t get even one doctor at this hospital to agree to give this treatment, that should have been very telling for this judge.
There are very good reasons doctors must have privileges at hospitals in order to treat patients, and there are also very good reasons why ethical doctors do not prescribe medicine for patients they have never seen. And like it or not, this ruling does open the door to massive abuse.
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So you think it’s better to let someone die because they can’t change locations and are out of approved treatments and I (and the judge) think a Hail Mary isn’t going to hurt anything.
I don’t think it’s going to set any sort of bad precedent. If it sets one that allows other terminally ill people (cancer or whatever) to also do a Hail Mary when they can’t physically go somewhere else, I’m ok with that and don’t consider it bad at all.
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Sorry. Just cannot agree with you. It DOES set a precedent of coercing doctors into giving treatments that go against medical judgment and standard of care.
I don’t want to hijack this thread any further, so I’m just going to bow out of this particular subject.
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Here’s something I don’t understand: wouldn’t this patient legally need to be under Fred Wagshul’s care in order for him to actionably prescribe any medication to be administered? Wagshul has hospital privileges elsewhere and if he wants to be this patient’s doctor then the patient should be transferred to his care at a hospital where he has privileges. Let the liability rest on him there, and not at West Chester where no doctor is willing to pursue ivermectin.
Can it be assumed this patient has a g-tube? Otherwise administering oral ivermectin is pretty difficult (since the patient is in a medically induced coma). There isn’t a parenteral ivermectin approved for humans that I’m aware of (veterinary product yes, not human).
If he can be safely transferred elsewhere, I’d be in agreement with you. I’ve no idea in his condition if he can be or can’t and was assuming he couldn’t.
The Ivermectin part I have no idea about. I’ve only used it on our horses…
Please don’t take this argumentatively, I respect all your posts. Just giving you my reason for not treating with ivermectin. And, unlike some doctors in another post, I strongly believe every life, young or old, should be valued and fought for. But physicians have to practice evidence-based medicine. To not do so could be harmful. I totally understand wanting to throw everything but the kitchen sink at something for my loved one. But if the data says it doesn’t work and that it could actually do more harm than good, you have to trust the data.
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We can disagree on the Hail Mary attempts (after everything else has been tried and failed) and still be friends, plus respect each other. 
Since Ivermectin is currently in trials, it’s one step above trying “Snake Oil.” The fact that it hasn’t shown good evidence to work as of yet makes it a Hail Mary. With this guy’s life (assuming the article is as written with him being on death’s door) there’s no harm in trying it. Heck, if it doesn’t work, there’s more data against using it for the future. If it somehow did, the researchers could try to decipher if it made a difference or not with another data point - even if not a controlled one.
There’s no way in the world I’d start with Ivermectin.
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There are many forms of travel that can spread covid outside of air travel. As has been stated above, much of Pennsylvania’s early spread was near interstates. Imagine how many people drive on our interstates every day. Many of these people are driving from one region of the US to another. This is in addition to the bus and train travel that was pointed out earlier. The virus doesn’t care how it gets from one place to another.
The US is also not an island. In addition to persons arriving daily by air there are also many coming in via truck, bus, automobile or even walking across the border. Many of these travellers are coming from all over the world in many areas where they aren’t nearly as highly vaccinated. We’re certainly not requiring vaccinations for those entering that way.
Like stated above, we will continue to see covid coming in from outside this country until we completely shut down international entry and that’s just not going to happen. We’re going to see state to state spread unless we completely lock down interstate travel, which we’re also not going to do. No region of this country can completely isolate. As well as Hawaii tried it didn’t even work on a remote island with vaccination and quarantine requirements for travellers.
The virus is going to continue to circulate until we as a world reach herd immunity and at this point I don’t actually see that happening. The virus is here to stay. In the end we’re probably all going to be exposed and even the vaccinated can have bad effects and spread the virus to others. Thankfully the vaccine does reduce those risks.
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I have been reading and hearing about MANY breakthrough infections, but our TV stations keep reporting that almost everyone in the hospital is unvaccinated. Read the article below today. One third of the hospitalized in my state are vaccinated. I do not consider that a small amount, and I don’t think they’re doing anyone any favors by making it seem, through their reporting, that being vaccinated = no risk. I think everyone should be wearing masks, at least indoors/with those outside your family, until we have a better sense of what’s going on, especially the older, more at-risk folks.
At Yale New Haven Health 27 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were fully vaccinated. At Hartford Healthcare, that number is 30 percent. In the state as a whole, 65 percent of the entire population is vaccinated.
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Regarding TavernGirls post, here is the latest from CDC:
Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization drops, CDC says
The COVID-19 vaccines’ ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly, particularly for those 75 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday during an advisory panel.
The CDC has previously estimated that 97% of people in the hospital being treated for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, but that data was collected before the spread of delta, a hyper-transmissible variant that many doctors have warned appears to be making people sicker.
The latest CDC analysis estimates that the ability of the COVID vaccines to keep a person out of the hospital is now between 75% to 95%.
For people older than 75 in particular, vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization experienced the steepest decline, from more than 90% to 80% between June and July.
Health experts are also concerned that a person’s immunity could be waning over time, particularly among older people whose bodies are less likely than younger people to develop a strong immune response to the vaccines.
However, the vaccine still remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, according to the briefing.