RFK Jr.’s MAHA weirdos can’t quit their horse-dewormer fetish

Ready to run it back and kick it old school like it’s 2020? Let’s welcome back our old pal, ivermectin, everybody!

Yeah, if you thought we left horse paste dewormer on the ash heap of history, think again. This time, it’s not being pushed as effective against COVID, which makes sense because conservatives have largely abandoned the belief that COVID was a real threat, warping it instead into being the product of nefarious actions by China. However, it seems conservatives just cannot get enough of the notion that a horse dewormer is the secret fix to all health ills.

So this time, ivermectin is now going to … cure cancer. Here’s President Donald Trump’s pick for director of the National Cancer Institute, Anthony Letai, explaining how he decided to investigate ivermectin for cancer based on, well, vibes: “There are enough reports of it, enough interest in it, that we actually did—ivermectin, in particular—did engage in sort of a better preclinical study of its properties and its ability to kill cancer cells.”

That is quite the ringing endorsement and thoughtful and precise explanation, my guy. 

Letai cited no new evidence or research or scientific anything for this brave new world of horse paste exploration, but why would he need to? This isn’t about whether ivermectin actually works. It’s about signalling to weirdo Make America Healthy Again types that the administration is one with them. It’s about signalling to the “I do my own research” crowd that they don’t need to succumb to the tyranny of “doctors” and “scientists” and “experts.”

It’s grim to watch the head of the National Cancer Institute sound as fact-free and deluded as online conservative influencers like one Joe Grinsteiner, who The New York Times called a “gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.” How does he tout it, you ask?  

Per the Times, in a Facebook video, Grinsteiner whipped out a tube of vet-grade horse dewormer paste and ate a glob straight out the tube, after which he exclaims“Yum. Actually, that tastes like dead cancer.”

Sigh.

In deciding to dabble in dewormers, Letai is just aligning himself with the head of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, who has his job thanks to his willingness to overlook actual science in favor of conspiracy theories. Bhattacharya sees NIH as “a central driver of the MAHA agenda” and that “essentially, it’s kind of the research arm of MAHA.”

So, actual science is now in thrall to the faux-science of MAHA, which is why you are going to have to hear all about how an antiparasitic designed to deworm horses is actually a cure-all for everything, but Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know.

And if you were wondering if the other Hot Hot Hit of 2020, hydroxychloroquine, was going to make a comeback this year as well, know that the South Dakota House of Representatives was just forced to consider—and, mercifully, dispose of—a bill that would have immunized doctors for the quackery of prescribing both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Oh well, it isn’t like the administration is doing any actual cancer research these days, because that stuff is woke BS. Horse paste for everyone!