The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling that “sovereign immunity” protects the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from any wrongdoing or harm in telling the public to stop taking ivermectin, a safe, well-studied, and proven drug for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.
In their opinion, Judges Clement, Elrod, and Willett state, “FDA argues that the Twitter posts are ‘informational statements’ that cannot qualify as rules because they ‘do not ‘direct’ consumers, or anyone else, to do or refrain from doing anything.’ We are not convinced.”
“We are very pleased with this development and extremely proud of our colleagues for taking a stand against a government health agency that is clearly overstepping its authority,” said Pierre Kory, M.D., M.P.A., president and chief medical officer of the FLCCC. “The FDA’s campaign against ivermectin continues to be used as an excuse by hospitals to deny access to a lifesaving treatment and weaponized by medical boards to threaten the licenses of doctors who stray from the mainstream to prescribe a drug that has been proven in controlled trials to safely treat hundreds of thousands of patients around the world.”
The Court’s reversal was issued Sept. 3 with the ruling, which said “FDA is not a physician. It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise—but not to endorse, denounce, or advise. The Doctors have plausibly alleged that FDA’s Posts fell on the wrong side of the line between telling about and telling to.”
The ruling goes on to say the “FDA can inform, but it has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine.” And finally, “Even tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond FDA’s statutory authority.”
“The work of the legal team at Boyden Gray has been nothing short of superb,” Kory added. “We are very fortunate to have them on the side of our doctors in this case.”