The dewormer cures everything
Why it’s not a brilliant idea to take massive doses of ivermectin on the advice of that guy on the Internet:
Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”
Hours later, Lemoi was dead.
Was it the poisonous horse paste that made him dead?
For the last decade, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promoting the use of it, including instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.
I guess Lemoi had a really bad worm infestation?
In the Telegram channel, administrators broke the news of his death to his followers. “Though it was obvious that Danny had the biggest heart, it was unbeknownst to him that his heart was quite literally overworking and overgrowing beyond its capacity, nearly doubled in size from what it should have been,” the admins wrote, adding: “We understand that this is going to raise questions for those who were following him.”
…
Lemoi began taking the version of ivermectin designed for animals on a daily basis in 2012, after he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, according to a detailed account of his medical history he gave on a podcast last November. He said then that five months after first taking the drug, he quit all other treatments and believed ivermectin had “regenerated” his heart muscle.
But the worms were still there?
[A]ccording to the Missouri Poison Center, ingesting large doses of ivermectin formulated for animals has a long list of side effects, including seizures, coma, lung issues, and heart problems. Veterinary ivermectin is not a cure or effective treatment for COVID, the FDA has repeatedly warned, and is highly concentrated because it is designed for large animals like horses and cows. “Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans,” the FDA cautions.
Horses and cattle are bigger than humans. Quite a lot bigger.
[A] review of Lemoi’s Telegram channels shows that many of his followers who are taking his dosage recommendations, or “protocols,” for veterinary ivermectin are experiencing numerous known side effects of taking the drug.
“I’m 4 months now and all hell’s breaking loose, all pain has hit my waist down with sciatic, shin splints, restless leg syndrome, tight sore calves & it feels like some pain in the bones,” a member wrote on Friday.
So maybe don’t take medication advice from Random Internet Guy.
Despite Lemoi’s death, administrators said this week the Telegram channel would live on, and the group is attracting new members who continue to take ivermectin despite suffering serious side effects.
“I am very new to this… I’ve been on Bimectin paste for 20 days,” one new member wrote on Friday morning, explaining that he too was suffering from Lyme disease. “I have severe chest pain. Costochondritis symptoms. Air hunger, internal tremors, brain fog, headaches on the back of my head, anxiety, depression, doom and gloominess.”
That shows it’s working!!!
There was an interesting deep dive on the ivermectin trials which pointed out that all the studies which showed a significant effect had something in common: they were from countries where parasitic worms are endemic. Ergo, what’s actually happening is that it’s easier to fight off Covid when you’re not full of worms, which is useful information in the Global South but less so in the USA.
Obviously I agree that people shouldn’t be self-medicating with ivermectin. And I have no issue with OB’s comments in the post. But the Vice article reminds me a little of the anti-vax folks’s eagerness to ascribe every death of a young, seemingly healthy person anywhere in the world as a “vaccine injury.”
Is it suggestive that this guy died of what may have been a heart problem? Sure. But lots of people die of heretofore undiagnosed heart conditions. And the fact that he had been taking ivermectin for about ten years with no apparent symptoms (“Lemoi had undergone testing on his heart last year, but the results had shown no cause for concern.”), weighs the other way.
No, I’m pretty sure I saw a PowerPoint slide with these symptoms that shows he’s trans.
Lemoi is a sad example of how motivated reasoning can kill you, because you never look at any evidence that you could be wrong.
Screechy M., you may be correct about the ivermectin not being a direct cause of Lemoi’s death. I do wonder if Lemoi ever went to a doctor to have his heart checked though. I’m guessing not, given his obvious disdain of conventional medical advice.
J.A., that quote in my previous comment — “Lemoi had undergone testing on his heart last year, but the results had shown no cause for concern” — is from the Vice article, quoting the admins on his site. They also cite “a family history of heart disease and chronic stress.”
The bit about testing certainly implies to me that he had sought medical advice, though I concede it’s possible that the “testing” was self-administered or done through some quack. And “[t]he admins of Lemoi’s channel did not respond to VICE News’ questions about where they got their information about his death. Lemoi’s surviving family did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment on the cause of his death,” so this may not be reliable information.
So it’s hard to say anything with any real confidence, but that’s kind of my point. I don’t care for the way VICE is speculating here.
Ya my interpolations carefully didn’t say it was the ivermectin that blew up his heart, which I perhaps should have spelled out. Vice implies but doesn’t say.
Screechy Monkey, apologies, I should have been more detailed and said that given Lemoi’s disdain of conventional medicine, I wondered if he’d gone to an actual cardiologist for a full examination of his heart issues. That the Vice reporting didn’t get into such details is yet another example of how on-line journalism, with its pressures to produce content, doesn’t do a good job of digging into such details leaving much open to speculation as you’ve mentioned.
No apologies necessary, I just wasn’t sure if you skimmed over that bit so I repeated it. I agree that it’s certainly open to interpretation.
I admit that I once self-dosed with horse deworming paste after the prescribed course of permethrin failed to take care of the scabies that I contracted while traveling. Problem 100% solved, zero regrets, would do it again. So I have a slightly different perspective on this than the average left-leaning American. Ivermectin is a vitally important human antiparasitic—mostly in the developing world, but it has applications in developed countries as well. (Alas, it’s not any sort of treatment for covid.) And yes, in principle it should only be dispensed by qualified medical practitioners, because not everyone can be trusted with self-diagnosis and dosing. And sure, the guy in the article obviously had a more than a few screws loose (though it’s not clear that his ivermectin habit caused his death). But all the widespread sneering and tittering about dumb hicks chowing down on horse deworming paste kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In the US, an uninsured person with scabies would be making a perfectly rational decision to self-treat with ivermectin, provided that he or she had done the necessary homework about frequency of dosing and understood basic fractions.
Hm. I take your point, but…you say “in principle it should only be dispensed by qualified medical practitioners” but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Not that it shouldn’t be used for anything but that it should be used for the right purposes in the right dosage and with the right precautions. The lack of universal health care is of course an obstacle but I’m not convinced off-label medicating is the solution. I’m glad it worked for you though!
As the Smoke Rises Upward:
As a scientist, I cringe whenever I hear “I did [X] and [Y] happened”. It is anecdotal, it is a sample size of one, it is not controlled, and it is the way all pseudoscience works. I am not saying your wrong, but keep in mind that personal anecdotes have literally zero scientific validity.
Every single person I know who uses homeopathic (not very many now, since I graduated from the Environmental Science department, but still too many) says the exact same thing. “I took homeopathic [read: water that once upon a time had some stuff in it] and I felt better in just a few hours”. Normal pattern? I often feel better after drinking water, perhaps because I dehydrate so badly many of my symptoms are caused by that dehydration. Placebo? Possibly. A lot of symptoms, especially pain, will respond to suggestion. Without a better history, I couldn’t say, and I suspect a lot of the reporters of this effect to be unreliable witnesses because they are bought in.
So I will always take “I did [X] and [Y] happened” as a story, not as evidence. Sorry.
From an FDA page mostly occupied with swatting ivermectin/covid nonsense:
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#10 Smoke
Even if you took the animal formulation, you were using ivermectin for a purpose well within its known efficacy – killing parasites. Very unlike using it for covid, where it is known to have no benefit.