Ivermectin: ‘Bogus’ or ‘Miracle Drug?’
ANDREW HILL KNOWS FIRSTHAND WHAT IT’S like to bring a breakthrough drug to fruition. The pharmacology researcher at the University of Liverpool in the U.K. helped develop antiviral medications for HIV. “You think about helping to save millions of lives,” he says. “It was a wonderful feeling.”
Last year Hill was also excited about ivermectin, a 40-year-old generic drug shown in early laboratory experiments to inhibit reproduction of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Since ivermectin was already being produced in industrial quantities as a treatment for parasites in people and animals, it could potentially provide a lifeline to thousands of COVID patients struggling for breath in emergency rooms around the world—but only if it proved effective in the clinic, not just in a petri dish.
Some of the early, promising studies were found to be flawed; one clinical trial was halted when the drug showed no benefit. Hill reported that the drug didn’t seem to be living up to its early promise.
The reluctance of Hill and other scientists, doctors and regulators to endorse ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment has since inflamed the political right in the U.S. Conservative pundits have called it a “miracle drug,” and some prominent Republican members of Congress fume that medical experts are in cahoots
