The Arkansas Medical Board is investigating after a doctor said he prescribed an anti-parasitic drug [Ivermectin] “thousands” of times for treatment of Covid-19, including to inmates in an Arkansas jail.
Justice of the Peace Eva Madison raised the issue during a county budget hearing in Fayetteville saying a county employee had told her the jail’s medical provider was prescribing ivermectin to treat Covid.
The county employee — who doesn’t work for the sheriff’s department — was directed to the jail to receive a Covid-19 test, Madison told CNN. During the visit he was prescribed ivermectin, which the Arkansas Department of Health also advises not to use to treat or prevent Covid-19.
Dr. Robert Karas provides medical services to the Washington County jail. He has been the contracted provider since 2015, according to Madison.
Madison said Karas defended his use of the drug during a phone conservation and again in a subsequent television interview after the practice came to light. Karas told television station KFSM that he began last October with prescribing the drug and has subsequently given it to family members and “thousands” of others.
“Do you want us to try and fight like we’re at the beaches of Normandy? Or do you want me to tell what a lot of people do and say — oh, go home and ride it out and go to the ER when your lips turn blue,” Karas said.
Karas said that he started to use ivermectin in the jail population starting in November on “high-risk patients over 40.” The doctor defended his practice, saying no deaths have been reported due to Covid out of the 531 cases in the jail.
The Arkansas Medical Board has opened an investigation into the matter, Meg Mirivel, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Health, told CNN. Due to the ongoing investigation the department was not able to comment further.
“No one — including incarcerated individuals — should be subject to medical experimentation,” Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said in a statement, adding that the sheriff “has a responsibility to provide food, shelter and safe, appropriate care to incarcerated people.”
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“I hope Holly is talking about the EUA (emergency use authorization) vaccines as medical experimentation, and not Ivermectin, which has been safely administered for decades,” wrote one commenter about Holly Dickson’s statements concerning ivermectin being “medical experimentation.”