Five years after the pandemic began, interest in the deworming drug is rising as right-wing influencers promote it — and spread misinformati
Richard Fausset at The New York Times, via Seattle Times (03.31.2025):
Joe Grinsteiner is a gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. In a recent Facebook video, he produced a tube of veterinary-grade ivermectin paste — the kind made for deworming horses. He gave the tube a squeeze. Then he licked a slug of the stuff, and gulped. “Yum,” Grinsteiner said in the Feb. 25 video, one of a number of ivermectin-related posts he has made that have drawn millions of views on Facebook this year. “Actually, that tastes like dead cancer.” Ivermectin, a drug proven to treat certain parasitic diseases, exploded in popularity during the pandemic amid false claims that it could treat or prevent COVID-19. Now — despite a persistent message from federal health officials that its medical benefits are limited — interest in ivermectin is rising again, particularly among American conservatives who are seeing it promoted by right-wing influencers. Grinsteiner, 54, is a President Donald Trump supporter and a country music performer who lives in rural Michigan. He has claimed in his videos that ivermectin cured his skin cancer, as well as his wife’s cervical cancer. In a video last month, he said a woman told him her nonverbal autistic child had become verbal after using ivermectin. In a recent phone interview, Grinsteiner said he takes a daily dose of ivermectin to maintain his general well-being. There is no evidence to support people taking ivermectin to treat cancer or autism. Yet Grinsteiner believes that the medical and political establishments just want to keep average people from discovering the healing powers of a relatively affordable drug. “These guys are absolutely money driven,” he said in one video. “And when I say ‘these guys,’ I’m talking about all those politicians in Washington taking money from the Big Pharma.” Indeed, ivermectin has become a sort of enduring pharmacological MAGA hat: a symbol of resistance to what some in the movement describe as an elitist and corrupt cabal of politicians, scientists and medical experts. Although many of those experts fear that misinformation about ivermectin could lead to overdoses — or prompt people to reject proven treatments for COVID or other ailments — conservative lawmakers in a number of states are promoting legislation that would allow ivermectin to be sold without a prescription, often in the name of medical freedom.
Last week, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law allowing ivermectin to be sold over the counter . Other legislation is pending in at least six other states: Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Texas. In 2022, Tennessee passed a law making it easier to get ivermectin from a pharmacist. Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has in the past embraced the idea that ivermectin can treat COVID, but whether he might seek to integrate the drug into his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda remains unclear. Kennedy did not respond to a request for an interview for this article. But in 2021, he filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration asking officials to de-authorize the COVID vaccine, arguing that ivermectin was safer. The FDA continues to emphasize that it has not authorized or approved ivermectin for treating COVID, noting on its website that “currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19 in humans.” [...] Right-wing media, however, is full of advertisements for the drug; some ads describe it as an essential component of survivalist tool kits. The website Gateway Pundit recently ran a sponsored post from an online company that offers prescription ivermectin for “stockpiling” purposes, with an illustration of a postapocalyptic street scene. Two major figures in the MAGA movement — former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI — have promoted All Family Pharmacy, an online outfit that dispenses ivermectin with “a prescription from our licensed doctors.” “No more fighting the system for the treatments you want,” Bongino said on an episode of his popular podcast, one of his last before starting at the FBI. “Stock up now before the next crisis hits.” [...] “The ivermectin story fits within a very, very long tradition in America of people latching on to nonorthodox therapies based in part on their suspicion that, for profit-maximizing reasons, drug companies and physicians are suppressing truth about them,” Grossman said. Grinsteiner said he was familiar with ivermectin because he runs a small farm and uses it on some of his livestock. Suspicious of the COVID vaccine, he decided to take ivermectin preventively during the pandemic instead. His wife did too. [...] He made his first Facebook video about his experience with ivermectin in January. “It was like, maybe a minute video, and I went to bed,” he said. “And I woke up and my phone was just melting.” Facebook briefly suspended his account, then reinstated it. The company has appended to some of his videos links to a “context” page from fact-checking group Science Feedback. The page notes that ivermectin and another anti-parasitic drug, mebendazole, have shown “promising anticancer effects in in vitro and animal studies. However, preclinical studies cannot reliably predict a drug’s effectiveness against cancer in humans, and drug candidates that show effectiveness in cells and animals often fail in clinical trials.”
Ivermectin’s rise in acceptance in right-wing and conspiracy theorist circles, as influencers such as Joe Grinsteiner, Matt Gaetz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have given praise to the drug as a quack “cure” for COVID, cancer, and other diseases, will have harmful consequences.
