Conservative Justices Deal Blow to Ivermectin in Court Battle

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in a 6-1 decision that hospitals cannot be forced to issue Ivermectin to patients.

This decision made by a majority conservative court spawned from a lawsuit filed by Allen Gahl, on behalf of his uncle, John Zingsheim, against Aurora Health Care in October 2021. It claimed that Zingsheim, who was put on a ventilator at the time due to COVID-19-related complications, was not provided Ivermectin by hospital staff after being requested.

Zingsheim later cleared COVID and was released. This recent decision upholds an appeals court ruling from 2022 that healthcare providers are under no duty to administer treatments desired by patients, and courts have no authority to compel treatments.

"Gahl's counsel referenced various cases across the nation in which courts had ordered health care providers to administer Ivermectin," liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said in the court's opinion. "Some of these decisions were provided as exhibits. The court questioned whether these decisions were factually on point."

"The circuit court considered the relevant facts and applied the correct legal standard to reach a reasonable decision in light of the life-or-death circumstances presented," conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, no relation to Ann Walsh Bradley, wrote in her dissent.

Jennifer Bard, a law and medicine professor at the University of Cincinnati, told Newsweek via email that forcing doctors to administer care "would be dangerous to the public."

She said that because Ivermectin is approved by the FDA for some uses, any patient who can get a prescription and is able to take it is free to do so. However, a patient can't make a doctor or hospital give it to them against the doctor's or hospital's medical judgment.

"Many states have already passed laws making it easier for patients to get Ivermectin by protecting doctors who prescribe it from being punished by the state medical court," Bard said. "But so far, no state has identified a patient's right to force a doctor or hospital to administer a specific treatment.

"I think this was the right decision because it is consistent with a legal structure that protects patients by holding doctors responsible for providing a nationally recognized standard of care."

Ivermectin has been referred to as a deworming drug, said by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be "approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea."

The FDA has also strongly discouraged its use among humans with COVID, saying large doses could be dangerous.

Gahl obtained a prescription for ivermectin from an uncredentialed, retired doctor who had never met Zingsheim or his medical team at Aurora Health, according to court documents, and that was when the hospital refused to administer it.

Subsequent court documents reportedly contained no statements of support by medical professionals in Gahl's behalf, according to the Associated Press—which noted that dozens of similar legal battles are occurring nationwide based on the same medical argument.

Substandard care should not be legally enforced

Nicolas Terry, a law professor and executive director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at Indiana University, told Newsweek via email that the constitution indeed allows for a refusal to accept treatment—such as in death or dying cases—but no positive rights.

He added that multiple aforementioned lawsuits have also failed in court:

• One in Pennsylvania accepted arguments including judges not practicing from the bench.
• Another in Delaware found that compelling hospitals to treat a patient outside the standard of care would cause harm to providers.
• Courts in Michigan and Texas ruled that hospitals must exercise reasonable professional standards of care.
• In Illinois, it was decided that the FDA has not approved ivermectin for humans, so it would be an off-label use.

The essential argument is that "courts should not be allowed to compel providers to administer care that is medically substandard," as Aurora officials said in a January statement.

"Whether providers who choose to use an off-label drug is a more nuanced issue, although with the evidence base against this and other off-label treatments for COVID-19, I would expect most courts to rule against providers who use them in, say, medical malpractice cases," Terry said.

Attorney Andrew Lieb questioned how this particular case reached the state's Supreme Court in the first place due to the FDA never granting it for humans' specific use.

"Hopefully, this will be the start of bringing us back to a time when we trusted expertise rather than creating the false equivalency that online research somehow should be given equal weight to years of learned study and peer-reviewed research," Lieb told Newsweek via email.

Newsweek reached out via email to Aurora Health Care for comment.