Why people eat horse dewormer | Hacker News Reader

Why people eat horse dewormer

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I’ve been following ivermectin since about June 2020. I’m still not convinced and haven’t taken it because there have no home run studies as far as I’ve been concerned, but the sheer absurd propaganda calling it horse dewormer is really suspicious as hell.

It’s one of the safest drugs known to man. Literally billions of doses have been given to humans in poor countries. If you take the animal version, of course you would get sick just like taking the animal version of antibiotics.

The key thing to remember is that ivermectin has more positive outcomes from trials (50+) than remdesivir ever did. In fact remdesivir doesn’t even appear to work, and yet remdesivir was approved after a single positive trial. And I purchased Gilead stock in 2020 because of remdesivir potential but it is clear by now it doesn’t work.

All the media bashing of ivermectin as “horse dewormer” when remdesivir has no such ire but is costing us billions is really really suspicious. It reeks of when the media was bashing the lab leak theory which was ultimately wrong.

The thread is talking literally about taking the product designed for horses because there is too much demand for the doctors who are willing to prescribe human versions.

But that isn’t the overall propaganda in the media. The media is painting it as only an animal dewormer.

Look at the discourse around Joe Rogan. One of the drugs he took was ivermectin. That’s all the media talks about and they call it horse dewormer when it was prescribed by a doctor. They don’t mention monoclonal antibodies or z-pak or drip vitamins. The propaganda is crazy.

And yes he is a fool for not getting vaccinated. But once he got covid and he was getting worse he took every single drug he could.

Then you should make that clear in your post, since this thread is very very specifically about a veterinary product for horses and it is 100% reasonable to use this title.

This thread is doing precisely the thing you are expecting of the media.

No. I don’t need to because the intent of the Twitter post is clear. To conflate human doses of ivermectin with horse doses and turn people off from ivermectin entirely.

> there is too much demand for the doctors who are willing to prescribe human versions

Isn't calling it "too much demand" kind of misleading? Isn't the problem that the powers that be are telling doctors not to prescribe the human version of ivermectin against COVID, even though usually doctors basically have carte blanche to prescribe approved drugs off-label?

In this case, the "powers that be" is the "ordinary medical approval process".

False. Remdesivir was approved to treat covid with far less positive studies than ivermectin. And subsequent trials show that it probably is worse than nothing. And yet here we are, billions of dollars later.

> If you take the animal version, of course you would get sick just like taking the animal version of antibiotics.

I don’t know anything about this, can you clarify? I was under the impression that the drug is the drug. Amoxicillin for animals is definitely the same thing as the human version. I know for a fact in one case they come from the same place, because I toured a production line.

The doses are higher and the tolerances for impurities are higher. Some drugs animals takes can definitely be the human versions but not the other way around.

My friend’s dog buys a human anti-fungal drug for his dog that costs $300/month from a pharmacy. But for example Hydroxychloroquine is a safe drug taken for malaria but you can’t take the version for aquariums!

>the doses are higher

The dose is how much you take. If the paste is 1.87% it is pretty simple to get the whatever-milligram human dose from that. Agreed on possible impurities.

>[HCQ] you can’t take the version for aquariums

That is hydrochloroquine phosphate. Not the human medication hydrochloroquine sulfate.

I don’t think it’s fair to compare those at all, very much different things. Yes, they have the same prefix, different chemical. Not the same thing in a human and none human form.

To my knowledge the only people to have taken that is a couple where the wife was at least temporarily accused of poisoning her husband.

As where Ivermectin the brand name in horse paste is the same chemical as ivermectin in human medication, right?

Do you really expect people who are dumb enough to take animal versions of medication to be able to figure out a proper dose? I certainly don’t. Even if it were safe to take the animal versions of ivermectin in the appropriate amounts by doing the proper math, you only hear about the ones who failed not the ones who successfully did it.

It's really easy to accidentally take way too much of the animal version.

Agreed! It’s in a terrible vial and loose syringe from what I saw in pics. Completely inappropriate for people. But if you were to measure it out on a sub-gram scale, I’m not sure I see the problem -assuming- there are nothing else bad like bacteria or harmful chemicals.

Sigh, I grew up in a farming family. I didn't live on the farm, I only spent summers there before it was sold off. However, the issue with ivermectin is not new because there has been a history, predating the covid pandemic, of rural Americans self prescribing drugs from the local feed shop. Sometime they get sick from it and sometimes they don't, but even so it seems a decent risk because the drugs are cheaper than getting it from the pharmacy. Here is an article circa 2017:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bradesposito/fish-antib...

The problem isn't ivermectin consumption per se, its more of the fact that ivermectin has not shown substantial therapeutic value in covid cases, and therefore doctors don't generally prescribe it for that use. To get around that folks are getting the kind made for livestock to consume. That is what is dangerous.

There’s a kind of parallel history of why people ended up taking ivermectin, which was The Dark Horse podcast with Brett Weinstein. On the show they talked extensively about their theory that ivermectin was an effective prophylactic against Covid-19, but because the drug was out of patent, pharmaceutical companies had not interest in slowing down the vaccines. (Their words, not mine.)

IIRC some countries actually rolled out ivermectin at scale, but AFAIK, the studies have all been disappointing in terms of its effectiveness.

One problem with everyone calling it horse dewormer and calling people stupid, is there seems to be a lot of people out there who consider themselves independent thinkers, have read a lot about the history of ivermectin, and see this kind of poking-fun as dishonest (and I would think probably hardening their views that there’s a manufacturing of consent happening.)

I’m vaccinated — I just like to listen to lots of podcasts, read different people’s takes. FWIW, it doesn’t seem like ivermectin does what Weinstein suggested — and he made some very bold claims. I also don’t think the shorthand of “horse dewormers” is helping reach anyone who’s uneasy about the vaccines. But, that’s just my lay-person opinion.

What I wonder is how absurd does this stuff have to get before we can no longer maintain the posture of political correctness with a straight face?

> IIRC some countries actually rolled out ivermectin at scale, but AFAIK, the studies have all been disappointing in terms of its effectiveness.

Oh it's even worse than that. Argentinian study concluded that those who received ivermectin over placebo ended up on a respirator sooner[0]:

> The mean time from study enrollment to invasive mechanical ventilatory support (MVS) was 5.25 days (SD ± 1.71) in ivermectin group and 10 days (SD ± 2) in placebo group, (p = 0.019).

[0] https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...

> but because the drug was out of patent, pharmaceutical companies had not interest in slowing down the vaccines.

This is a thing that often gets claimed, but there's a special three-year "New Clinical Investigation Exclusivity" that's available. (https://www.fda.gov/media/135234/download p15)

I agree that people seem to be too focused on the Horse part given that it is approved for and used by humans. Same thing with Ketamine though and it is still mostly referred to as a Horse tranquillizer. I think at it's core though I think the derogatory nature is similar to making fun of the drunk asshole who ate dog food at a party. It's not deemed fit for human consumption, and sure the manufacturer isn't intentionally trying to poison your dog with bad food, but it still wouldn't have the same level of quality control.

> There’s a kind of parallel history of why people ended up taking ivermectin, which was The Dark Horse podcast with Brett Weinstein.

Worth mentioning: those guys on that podcast were very positive to the vaccine, they only said that it was a shame that health authorities wouldn't use both.

I tried pointing it out to the friend of me who sent it.

It didn't work. He is still against Covid-19 vaccines.

(I'm not taking a position right here and now, except that I find it weird that my anti-covid-vaccination friend can listen to only half of what is said in that podcast)

I also agree that calling it “horse dewormer” is a pretty lazy attempt to denigrate people and doesn’t really do much to reach out in a mature or effective way. Regardless of its effectiveness for COVID, ivermectin has been a safe, commonly prescribed anti parasite drug for humans since the early 1970’s. It was also championed early on as a possible prophylactic and treatment option by reputable doctors, most notably Dr. Paul Marik of EVMS who has treated thousands of COVID patients. If you googled “EVMS COVID protocol” as late as May of this year you were treated to a long form PDF about inpatient and outpatient care authored by Marik claiming that there was significant benefit to using ivermectin to treat COVID. I tried to find the document to link here and I noticed that the old one referencing ivermectin has been conspicuously removed sometime in the last few months.

So it seems like the lesson here is that once bad information gets out it’s really hard to change it. It’s not like this trend started by Dr. Oz or unqualified Youtubers or as some uncoordinated misinformation campaign. Actual qualified doctors that we should be listening to were claiming for a long time that it could help people. And now that we know that’s not the case it’s really hard to take that back.

We don't know that that's not the case. There have been many studies so far, some of which showed significant positive results and others which showed no benefit. The science remains unclear. That's why the NIH has prioritized ivermectin for a large scale clinical trial.

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initi...

A recent Israeli study showed effectiveness. Of course that was ivermectin made for humans and administered by a doctor.

https://m.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-scientist-says-co...

A recent small Lebanese clinical trial also showed effectiveness. Naturally the doctors administered the human formulation, not veterinary.

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/6/989

I think India pushed it pretty hard. And Japan is now, so that will be interesting to see.

Is the Ivermectin in the horse product different from the human version?

Or does the FDA just have higher standards for animal v human products and no one knows if the line making the horse product is clean and free of things like benzene (industrial solvent, liquid cancer, that sometimes makes it into products, sunscreen most recently)?

The molecule is the same in all formulations. The FDA also has high standards for veterinary products. Most likely idiots are just taking way too much. With medicine some people have the idea that if a little bit is good then more must be better. (I am not recommending that anyone take medication for unapproved purposes.)

Makes sense. That syringe on the horse paste is insane anyone would trust that. But if you were to measure a sub-gram amount on a good scale, that seems a lot safer than taking almost any recreational drug besides pot.

Should qualify that with effectiveness in reducing the length of active covid disease and amount of viral shedding rather than as a preventative. Looks like a promising study though if it passes muster, can be replicated and like you say isn’t horse dewormer!

Strangely the research in question "Ivermectin vs. Placebo for the Treatment of Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19" by the supposed researcher Eli Schwartz is shown as expecting results in September 2020 (i.e. a year ago), but no results have been posted.

I think it's possible, just barely possible, that when the results of a supposed random drug trial are available exclusively on YouTube, and are suspiciously absent from medical journals and government databases, you should treat the alleged "outcome" with extreme skepticism.

This one?

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.31.21258081v...

Not peer reviewed, and the comments seem to point out a lot of poor methodology.

Naturally also followed by a lot of “why would anyone in academia ever lie about results”.

The NCT they claim in the abstract contains no results whatsoever.

An important note is that no study has shown it to be more effective than getting the vaccine, so it’s unfortunate people are putting all their fate into something less scrutinized and less effective.

In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNgzxQmM3AU Dr. Daniel Griffin talks about the data not being in yet either way. But the studies are underway.

Calling it a horse dewomer is mostly political babble.

I've asked a physician about it and the answer as to why they were being taken was mostly because there was some faint evidence that it works and the likelihood of side effects weren't that high compared to covid.

To make it abundantly clear, I took the vaccine and I think you should too, but calling it horse dewomer is pure politics

I get what you’re saying, but…

You are right; calling Ivermectin a horse dewormer is MOSTLY polarization. It’s approved for humans. There are also a ton of off label uses for OTCs and that has always been OK and not ridiculed. We’ve moved on to polarizing everything so why not, “the other side” is always full of idiots, right?

Side note: anyone that does recreational drugs has about no room to talk on this topic.

In this case, he alternates between generally talking about the drug, and talking about the actual horse paste product. Which seems to be the exact same drug, but with some paste and not FDA approved. I wouldn’t, but the horse paste is probably safe if you use a scale to measure the sub-gram amount needed for a human, but who knows!? There could be benzene and garbage in there and no one would know, it’s not intended for humans.

I think it’s all a bit ridiculous. And while people will hate what you said, it has a grain of truth in most cases when mocking people who are interested in Ivermectin, just to mock and belittle them.

People are literally purchasing it at a feed and supply store with a picture of a horse on it and a label that indicates that it is meant for horse use. Regardless of the active ingredient, that is unusual behavior and rightly garnered attention.

Exactly. That's why whenever ivermectin shows up in the news, it's because someone has taken so much of it that it made them ill. A 900 pound animal dose for a 150 pound human is quite a tall order.

It's not because of ivermectin, it's because people are eating a paste that is literally used to deworm horses. It's no babble, it's the product description.

https://www.horsehealthproducts.com/all-products/horse-healt...

"Provides effective treatment and control of the following parasites in horses: large and small strongyles, pinworms, ascarids, hairworms, large-mouth stomach worms, bots, lungworms, intestinal threadworms and summer sores caused by Habronema and Draschia spp. cutaneous third-stage larvae. Removes worms and bots with a single dose"

I find the more interesting question here to be why is a legitimate medical drug that has been given to humans for legitimate uses only labeled as a horse dewormer?

For what it’s worth, I don’t know if ivermectin is effective against covid, but testing out a cheap drug that some doctors make arguments for seems like a smart risk-management decision.

I mean the FDA explains exactly why on their website[0]. Livestock are much bigger than humans meaning the medication has a much higher dosage and even if the active ingredient is the same the delivery mechanism doesn't have to be, which is why we have so many morons ending up in hospital.

The real tragedy in all of this is that these idiots are killing innocent people by overwhelming hospital resources.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...

The FDA would be making a very reasonable point about Ivermectin if they weren't the barrier in place preventing people from acquiring the version of the product meant for humans in the first place. They can't just block people from acquiring normal human doses and then smugly decry people trying to acquire it through other means.

There should be much stronger "Right To Try" provisions in medicine to allow people the right to try drugs to cure them of disease and for society to gain information on its effectiveness. My Body, My Choice.

This is a simple risk-management decision. Ivermectin is cheap and safe in human sized doses.

If Ivermectin doesn't work: that would suck, but we'd at least eliminate one potential cure and can try other things.

If Ivermectin does work: great, that means this thing would be over.

What the hell do we have to lose other billions in Big Pharma profits?

> The real tragedy in all of this is that these idiots are killing innocent people by overwhelming hospital resources.

Which is it this week: are hospitals bursting at the seams with Covid patients or Ivermectin overdoses? I can't remember anymore, not that I see any flooded hospitals anyway.

> My Body, My Choice.

COVID has shown us that this adage is patently false.

If not me, then who owns my body? The state? Pfizer? You?

Because it's the face of vaccine denialism.

It’s a parasite medication for humans too. The reason it’s said that people take horse dewormer is because people literally take things labeled horse dewormer. The reason of course being that it’s easy to get and doctors won’t prescribe it so you get it over the counter. At the pet store…

Large peer reviewed studies or meta analysis doesn’t show a strong effect. Some small positive effect might be there - but it’s definitely tiny compared to vaccines.

Self administering a drug is rarely a good idea. But it’s perhaps understandable. However, skipping the vaccine and taking ivermectin instead is probably what’s being questioned (and rightly so).

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Vaccines have completed eliminated smallpox and rinderpest, (which infects cattle) and we as close as can be to eradicating polio (500 cases a year).

Additionally vaccines have pretty much wiped out diphtheria, bacterial influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, and tetanus.

So, no there is absolutely no rational reason to not take any of the double-blind tested vaccines.

At this point it is just a cult.

Any cult big enough is a religion, right?

The other way around.

Aren't the vaccines against those other diseases effective enough that once you get vaccinated, you don't need to worry about catching the disease anymore, and don't have to do things like wear masks too afterwards?

How many of those specific vaccines were leaky or had statistically significant escape metrics?

Why do people eat horse dewormer? Mostly because people are desperate to do anything that doesn’t involve taking an actual vaccine.

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