An Ohio judge ordered a hospital to stop treating a COVID-19 patient with horse deworming drug ivermectin, reversing a colleague's earlier decision to allow the treatment, because 'judges are not nurses or doctors'.
Jeffrey Smith, 51, has been in the West Chester Hospital's intensive care unit since mid-July battling COVID-19 and has been on a ventilator for more than 30 days.
After he was placed on a ventilator, his wife, Julie Smith, reached out to Dr. Fred Wagshul - who is listed as a founding physician of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and who promotes the horse deworming drug as treatment for the virus - for a prescription, according to The Washington Post.
When the doctors refused, Julie Smith took the hospital to court, and after a months-long battle a different Ohio judge ordered that he be administered the treatment. That order lasted 21 days.
On Monday, Butler County Judge Michael A. Oster Jr. reversed the order and told the hospital to cease administering the unproven treatment.
He ruled that Julie and Wagshul - who is not affiliated with the hospital - did not provide 'convincing evidence' that the drug would help Jeffery, and said in his ruling that 'judges are not doctors or nurses.'
Father of three, Jeffrey Smith, 51, has been in the West Chester Hospital's intensive care unit since mid-July battling COVID. He has been on a ventilator for over 30 days and was put under a medically induced coma on August 20
His wife, Julie, obtained a prescription for Jeffery to be treated with Ivermectin by an outside doctor but the medical staff at the hospital refused to administer the unproven treatment claiming it could interfere with his current treatment
Julie filed a lawsuit against the hospital which she initially which ordered the hospital to administer the unproven treatment to her husband for 21 days
Jeffery, a father of three, tested positive for COVID on July 9 and admitted to the ICU less than a week later as his condition quickly deteriorated, according to the lawsuit.
It's not clear whether he had been vaccinated against COVID-19.
The hospital staff treated Jeffery with Remdesivir, plasma and steroids, which brought him to a 'period of relative stability,' court records state. But on August 20, Jeffery was put under a medically induced coma when his condition began to worsen again.
That was when Julie reached out to Dr. Wagshul who prescribed the unproven treatment to Jeffery without seeing him, court records state.
Julie then requested that her sick husband be given ivermectin but his doctors refused, insisting that the medication could negatively interfere with the medications he was already being given, the lawsuit claims.
There was nothing left to be done, the doctors allegedly said.
Julie claims that she offered to sign a release relieving the hospital and its doctors of any liability associated with the requested treatment, which the hospital contradicts in its response to the court.
The determined wife took the issue to court and won on August 23 when Butler County Judge J. Gregory Howard ordered the hospital to treat Jeffery with 30 milligrams of Ivermectin daily for 21 days.
But on Monday after 14 days of treatment, Julie, Dr.
