Republican Rep. Andy Harris said he is facing a complaint against his medical license because he prescribed ivermectin as a treatment against COVID-19.
“An action is currently being attempted against my medical license for prescribing ivermectin, which I find fascinating, because as an anesthesiologist, I know I use a lot of drugs off-label that are much more dangerous,” Harris said.
The lone Republican congressman from Maryland made the comment during a House Freedom Caucus unofficial “hearing” on President Joe Biden’s employer vaccine mandate, held off campus at the headquarters of conservative advocacy organization FreedomWorks.
“It’s in the investigation stage with the board of medical examiners,” Harris told the Washington Examiner after the panel discussion. “There was a complaint based on the Washington Post article.”
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The apparent article recounted Harris revealing in a September radio interview that he prescribed ivermectin as a treatment for an early COVID-19 case and that he had trouble finding a pharmacy to fill the prescription due to backlash against using the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
Harris said he does not know who made the complaint and is trying to figure out if its only basis is the news report. “I assume that the board of physicians does not use the media as a complainant,” he said.
Ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, became part of angry COVID-19 debates earlier this year. Advocates, some of whom were skeptical of taking emergency authorized COVID-19 vaccines, said early studies showed promise for the drug being used to treat the virus. Many physicians began to prescribe it, and people began to seek out the drug — in some cases buying versions intended for animals.
Though ivermectin is commonly used on humans, opponents dragged the drug as a “horse dewormer,” and the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against taking the drug to treat or prevent COVID-19.
Harris called the complaint a “distraction.”
“I’ve been licensed for 41 years, and I’m an associate professor at Johns Hopkins. Why would you bring this complaint other than purely political reasons?” Harris said. “There are physicians all around the country who are prescribing ivermectin. They prescribe it way more times than I have prescribed it.”
Molly Rutherford, a family physician and addiction specialist in Kentucky who was a panelist for the Freedom Caucus event, said that she has heard of “many” doctors who have felt pressured to stay away from certain medications for COVID-19 or ran into trouble with pharmacists asked to fill prescriptions for controversial treatments.
“They do not want to fill the prescriptions. There have been threats to turn physicians into the medical boards if we prescribe these medicines,” Rutherford said. “I’ve prescribed medicines off-label for many, many years, and so many of them are much more harmful than anything we give for COVID.”
Harris expressed frustration with the FDA for not providing approval for potentially helpful already-existing drugs to treat COVID-19, specifically mentioning fluvoxamine, a drug used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression.
“A 10-day course of that can greatly increase someone’s chances of not going to a hospital or surviving the disease,” Harris told the Washington Examiner. “Why isn’t the FDA rushing this through? Well, it’s actually a generic drug. It’s not a brand-name drug. And one has to question why a series of generic drugs are actually not being approved or indicated for COVID by the FDA.”
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A recent trial among 1,500 patients in Brazil found that those taking fluvoxamine were less likely to suffer a severe COVID-19 case.
The Maryland Board of Physicians did not immediately return a request for comment. Harris’s online profile with the board says that there have been no known disciplinary actions reported against him.
