Florida is poised to become ivermectin’s new best friend.
Thanks to conspiracy theory-spouting social media influencers, the treatment for horse worms and dog mange has leapt from tinfoil-hat COVID cure to all-around cancer treatment.
In Florida, where open hostility to science has friends in high places, some portion of the state’s $60 million Florida Cancer Innovation Fund grants will be spent investigating its potential to be a cancer cure.
As a breast cancer survivor, First Lady Casey DeSantis is a sympathetic messenger. No one hearing her talk about cancer research and the need to use some of that $60 million to study ivermectin could doubt her sincerity.
Sincerity is not science, however. And people with cancer need science.
A kernel of truth
Most online whisper campaigns carry a kernel of truth. Ivermectin fits the bill.
Despite the conspiratorial contention that the federal government has quashed all investigation, ivermectin has been studied for 40 years, including as a potential cancer treatment. Most studies have been confined to lab work and mice, which suggests, but cannot confirm, how the drug will affect a person.
There is only one current human trial involving cancer listed in a federal database of studies. If the results are positive, ivermectin will have worked as part of a drug combination for one type of cancer.
That seems to justify spending state money on more studies.
But Florida General Joseph Ladapo’s alarming antipathy toward science is well-documented. So is his willingness to distort study outcomes, and ivermectin has long been on his radar.
Science, out the window
Already, his description of how to spend the $60 million sounds less like objective research and more like a crusade. “I hope that we continue to reject the normal and we pursue a path that feels righteous,” he said. “I hope it spreads like, like all those minor viruses that my critics are afraid of.”
To be clear, just two of those “minor viruses” — polio and measles — populated cemeteries with many small caskets across America before vaccine science brought them to heel.
Ivermectin treatment for another deadly virus, COVID-19, rocketed Ladapo to national prominence (and much-deserved scorn).
In a 2021 Wall Street Journal commentary, he cherry-picked data to argue that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were effective COVID medications. Multiple studies concluded they were not. Given his unwarranted boosterism for the drug then, there’s reason to be concerned that Ladapo has his mind made up about ivermectin and cancer now.
Many research fronts
Regardless, Florida doesn’t need to chase ivermectin. The $60 million in grants comes as Florida research universities are in the middle of extraordinary cancer studies.
Because Elon Musk chain-sawed his way through federal grant money, however, it’s not clear they can finish existing studies or launch new ones already approved.
University of Florida researchers face “significant disruption and uncertainty” because of a $35 million shortfall in general research, according to a memo obtained by Politico. At the University of Miami Medical School, grants paying for brain, prostate and breast cancer research are canceled, researchers tracking grants reported.
In his Wall Street Journal essay, Ladapo partly justified using ivermectin because in the middle of an unimaginable pandemic with no end in sight, overly cautious doctors wary of new treatments could kill people.
Overly cautious doctors are not killing cancer patients, however. Many understand why a patient would want to try ivermectin. But they also know the dangers: A study found that patients who relied entirely on unproven alternatives were much more likely to die than those who didn’t.
The study was led by a physician whose wife was inundated with false cure claims after her cancer diagnosis.
Just the mention of Florida’s official interest in studying ivermectin will lend it legitimacy, leading desperate people to use it long before studies confirm whether it is safe and effective.
As Casey DeSantis points out, it’s cheap and widely available. And in Florida, where the governor refused to expand Medicaid that could pay for treatment, ivermectin may be one of the few options left to a Florida cancer patient.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
