Healthy as a horse: My journey into the ivermectin underworld



I was driving through Boise last winter when I heard about a new Idaho law that made the drug ivermectin a legal, over-the-counter drug.

Previously, it was prescription-only. But most doctors refused to prescribe it.

Like many people, I had taken illegal substances as a youth. Horse paste wasn’t technically illegal. But it sure felt like it was, holding it in my hand.

Soon, in Idaho, you could buy ivermectin off the shelf at Walgreens, just like you bought aspirin or dental floss.

Iver-who?

Ivermectin, in case you forgot, was thought to help cure or at least lessen the effects of COVID-19.

It was weird hearing about COVID again. It seems like nobody thinks about it anymore. We never hear about new studies or recent findings about the virus.

Have we mastered all the ins and outs of COVID? It doesn’t seem like we have. People report having “long COVID.” Is that a real thing? Nobody knows.

One thing you would think they would have figured out: Does ivermectin help against COVID?

People are still getting the virus, I assume. Do doctors ever prescribe ivermectin? And then report on the results?

If a drug is so controversial that states are writing laws about it, shouldn’t someone know if it works?

This could be a Big Pharma issue. The big drug companies don’t want people taking a cheap drug someone else invented over an expensive drug that they invented (and will make money on).

That would be the cynical view, I guess.

Meanwhile, medical people still want you to get vaccinated against COVID. Is that still the experimental vaccine from before, or do they have a new one yet that isn’t experimental?

And how is that experiment going, by the way? I guess it’s going well since you never hear about it. People don’t seem to be dying. Or even getting seriously sick. So that’s good.

Idaho fought the law (and Idaho won)

I was curious about this Idaho law, so I looked into it. I came across a funny quote from one of the state legislators. He said the biggest surprise during the writing of the ivermectin bill was that so many of the other legislators were already taking it.

He didn’t go into detail, but I assumed they were buying it in “horse paste” form. At that time, that was the only way you could get it.

I remember when I first heard about ivermectin. The rumor was that the Japanese had discovered/invented a new wonder drug. And it might cure COVID!

If you looked it up, you learned that the developers of ivermectin — one British guy and one Japanese guy — won the NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE in 2015. These two were thinking of ivermectin primarily as an anti-parasitic.

But people on the internet were claiming ivermectin could possibly do more. It might help with cancer. It could lessen arthritis. And most important: It might prevent people from getting COVID.

Many scientists had proclaimed ivermectin the most important and versatile medical discovery since penicillin. Others said: “If you’re not a horse, don’t take it.”

Hay is for horses

As the COVID pandemic dragged on, demand for ivermectin increased. People wanted to try it. They didn’t care what the establishment scientists said.

Ivermectin pills for humans did exist. But you had to order them from shady-sounding companies in third-world countries. And who knew if the pills were even real?

So people took their chances with the horse paste. And then they wrote about it online. It didn’t sound so bad. They said it tasted like apples, which is how they got the horses to swallow it.

For me, it was the possibility of the pills that made me consider taking ivermectin. I had become sick when the lockdowns first ended. I’d been in bed for a week. Judging from the unusual symptoms, I assumed it was COVID .

Even after I got better, I felt lingering effects that never quite went away.

I thought: If ivermectin really were a “wonder drug,” maybe it would help with these lingering symptoms. And maybe it would prevent other maladies in the future.

RELATED: Heroic COVID docs punished as Abbott, Texas lawmakers stay silent

Jennifer Kosig via iStock/Getty Images

Yea or neigh?

So I called a Walgreens in Boise and asked if they had ivermectin pills on the shelves yet. The person on the phone, a young man, immediately began making jokes and mocking the governor and the new ivermectin bill. He called Governor Little, “Governor Spittle.”

When I persisted, he said that they didn’t have it yet. And he didn’t know when they would. He thought it would probably be a long time. If ever.

So I went online to see if ivermectin were listed at any other Idaho pharmacy websites. It wasn’t.

Eventually, I found a package of 12 tablets on an obscure website overseas. But it was no longer available and was very expensive.

It seemed clear that it would be a very long time before the pill version was available to the public.

But by now, I’d become excited about ivermectin. I’d been watching videos about it.

So then, just for fun, I looked up the horse paste on Amazon. It was much cheaper than the pills. And on YouTube, there was a doctor who had figured out the human doses and how much to take.

I laughed at myself. WAS I ACTUALLY CONTEMPLATING ORDERING IVERMECTIN HORSE PASTE OFF AMAZON?

And then I ordered it.

Golden goo

A week later, it arrived. I opened the box, and there was the same long, plastic syringe and plunger arrangement I’d seen on YouTube.

Like many people, I had taken illegal substances as a youth. Horse paste wasn’t technically illegal. But it sure felt like it was, holding it in my hand.

I went in the bathroom and washed and dried my hands. In the bright bathroom light, I opened the top of the ivermectin tube. I then carefully, slowly pushed on the plunger end of it.

A small blob of golden goo came out of the top. I carefully scooped the “pea-sized” human dose onto my index finger. To avoid tasting it, I put my finger in the far back of my mouth and smeared it on the back of my tongue. But that was unnecessary. It didn’t taste bad. It tasted like apples.

According to the British doctor, you were supposed to take this small amount on one day, then wait a day, and then take another small amount on the third day. After one month, you do that again. And then, presumably, you keep doing that ... forever?

I did it for two months, keeping track in my day planner. Then I got busy, and I forgot about it, and a couple months later, while digging around in my bathroom pantry, I found the plastic syringe.

Should I continue with the horse paste regimen? I wondered to myself. I took a dose. But then I forgot to take the second dose two days later. And it’s continued like that. Sporadic. Whenever I remember. Which is probably fine.

Back in the saddle

Since then, I have noticed that some of my odd COVID symptoms have significantly lessened. Is it the ivermectin? I don’t know. Probably not.

My dad was a doctor. He was old-school and thought your body did most of the healing. Not the drugs. Not the doctors. So maybe that’s what happened. My body was healing itself.

Anyway, I don’t regret doing it. The whole process was kind of fun. And now, whenever I see a horse, I give him a knowing nod, as if to say, I too have enjoyed that sweet apple horse paste.

Pfizer COVID shot sales plummet after Trump administration ends universal recommendations



U.S. sales of Pfizer's Comirnaty shots have taken a nosedive since the Trump administration updated its immunization schedules last month and dropped the universal collective recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines.

The pharmaceutical company's revenues for the third quarter of 2025 are down 6% — amounting to a $1 billion drop — compared to the same stretch the previous year.

'CDC's 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks.'

Pfizer indicated in its latest earnings statement that "the operational decrease was primarily driven by a year-over-year decline in COVID-19 product revenues largely due to lower infection rates impacting Paxlovid demand as well as a narrower vaccine recommendation for COVID-19 in the U.S. that reduced the eligible population for Comirnaty."

Sales of Comirnaty were down 25% in the United States, and sales of Paxlovid, an oral antiviral medication that treats mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults, were down 52%.

When his agency dropped the universal recommendation last month for Comirnaty — a controversial vaccine used at a time of population-wide immunity to treat an endemic virus fatal in roughly 1% of confirmed cases — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Acting Director Jim O'Neill stated, "CDC's 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination for the individual patient or parent. That changes today."

RELATED: Naomi Wolf continues to expose COVID vaccine: 'A depopulating technology'

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

The CDC's decision came just months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration forced Pfizer to slap a damning warning on its Comirnaty vaccine noting the estimated unadjusted incidence of heart conditions following administration of the 2023-2024 formula of the shot, as well as the longitudinal results of a 2024 study concerning cardiac manifestations and outcomes of vaccine-associated myocarditis in American youths.

The FDA also required Pfizer to describe the new safety information in the adverse reactions section of its vaccine information insert such that it now notes that "the estimated unadjusted incidence of myocarditis and/or pericarditis during the period 1 through 7 days following administration of the 2023-2024 Formula of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was approximately 8 cases per million doses in individuals 6 months through 64 years of age and approximately 27 cases per million doses in males 12 through 24 years of age."

While the FDA has approved the drug for use in individuals who are 65 years of age and older or 5-64 years old who suffer from at least one underlying condition putting them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19, it revoked the emergency use authorization for the shot in August.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla reportedly suggested on a Tuesday call with analysts that the company is looking for opportunities outside the United States, stating that the company's catalog of vaccines constitute a "key area of focus in international markets."

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FDA gives therapy OK to trendy toad-inspired toxin, paving the way for mass-market hallucinogenic nasal spray



At first glance, it seems insane that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted breakthrough therapy designation to a nasal spray derived from the super-powered hallucinogenic excretions of an internet-famous desert toad. The experimental compound falls among an emerging class of market-extant and incoming drugs synthesized, inspired, extracted, or otherwise manipulated out of natural hallucinogens such datura, which gave us scopolamine, or simply drugs that have previously only been associated with recreational and illegal usage.

The Colorado River toad produces for its defense a highly toxic form of DMT, dimethyltryptamine, which you may have heard of from Joe Rogan, Miley Cyrus, or, if you live in Oregon, your dentist. While the toad has ties to many a celebrity comeback and is implicated in popular culture (see “The Simpsons” episode “Missionary: Impossible”), the Bufo, as the amphibian is often called, is now apparently the inspiration for a serious advance toward Aldous Huxley’s famous vision of a society teeming with, mediated by, and dependent upon a particular mind-altering substance.

It’s just a little bit close to Huxley’s ‘Brave New World,’ where drugs are state-issued.

Huxley called his fictional drug “soma,” but Atai Life Sciences project, which is producing the toad-venom derivative, calls their contribution “mebufotenin.” Note that Atai Life Sciences valuations among speculators shot up with the announcement of the FDA designation.

In a public release from the company, Atai states that the designation “is granted to expedite development of drugs targeting serious or life-threatening conditions where preliminary clinical evidence suggests that the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement on one or more clinically significant endpoints over existing therapies.”

In the wild, the toad produces the compound 5-MeO-DMT, substantially different from the drug most associated with recreational psychedelic endeavors such as those popularized by Joe Rogan and others. Among experienced “psychonauts” (psychedelic explorers), the toad-derived variety of DMT provides a radically more intense experience even than the already supercharged but standard-issue DMT experience.

In 2019, a ketamine-based nasal spray sold by Spravato, owned by Johnson & Johnson, hit the market. It’s hard at this point to quantify, but there was an impact. It was shortly afterward that ads for the drug swamped social media. We learned that no less a winner than Elon Musk was a big proponent of the drug. (The wave of interest slowed when “Friends” television star Matthew Perry died unceremoniously in his hot tub, evidently after a ketamine overdose.)

RELATED: LA County Medical Examiner reveals drugs that caused Matthew Perry's death

Photo by Jason Krempin / Contributor via Getty Images

Is there a wink-wink nod aspect to all of this public systematizing of what were once compounds reserved for wild nights behind closed doors? Well, the nebulousness of the medical application customary to BTDs (“conditions ... suggest the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement”) is hard to miss. Harder when it seems to contribute to a recurring theme among many of these drugs which isn’t so much “license to party” as it is “license to self-isolate.” Or, as the PR campaigns will have it, “The establishment is now cool, they get it, and it’s OK to smother (anoint?) your difficulties in drug miasma. We’re all doing it.”

Scopolamine, the datura-derived compound, is unpatented and sold in low-dose patches over the counter. A higher-grade dose is offered via prescription, ostensibly for various vertigo and travel sickness-related issues. And in the case of esketamine, the justification is “treatment-resistant depression,” said to afflict 300 million people globally. Pretty nice market.

It was a well-accepted fact that for many years, the “prescription” of medical marijuana in Oregon was just a cover. In the case of medical-to-legal marijuana, Big Pharma managed to extract, patent, and control the marijuana cash cow, or least control the market on a few sub-compounds or aspects of it. It’s Big Pharma money pushing all of these drugs through; nothing gets through the corporate-government-legal machine without great globs of financial, incentivizing, and buy-off grease. Celebrities, too, have an interest and, presumably, a price for their imprimatur.

It’s just a little bit close to Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where drugs are state-issued and, curiously, often understood as a combination of hallucinogenic and anti-depression compounds.

As with any other social category or special interest group in America, psychonauts aren’t in any sense monolithic in their opinions, alliances, or wisdom. Dennis McKenna, the legit-scientist brother of late author and psychedelic exponent Terence McKenna, long ago raised objections to the intermingling of Big Pharma and the psychedelic “community,” such as the former may be. For McKenna and others, it was a self-evident fact that the bottom-line logic native to corporate operation was antithetical to the perceived sacred nature of these hallucinogenic compounds.

Old-school psychonauts, whose informal and decentralized psychedelic church ideologically opposed “the establishment,” were convinced psychedelics would usher in utopia (even though LSD was invented by Swiss pharma giant Sandoz). They considered LSD and MDMA their sacraments. Yet, for them, combining LSD with mescaline, the active compound in peyote, was sacrilege. Yesterday, the internet crossed the streams of the establishment and the renegades with unnerving effects. Tomorrow, the same is about to happen with hallucinogens. After all, as Timothy Leary famously put it, “The PC is the LSD of the ’90s.”

‘Horror story’: RFK Jr. reveals chilling organ harvesting scandal



A shocking revelation from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has exposed what he calls a “horror story” inside America’s organ donation system.

On a recent segment of Newsmax, RFK Jr. detailed a case in which a woman allegedly awoke while her organs were being harvested and did not live to tell the tale.

“It’s a horror story, and part of it is because of the capture of the agency that was regulating ORR, had a — the board that was actually regulating organ harvesting was overlapping with the contractor that was actually harvesting the organs,” he began.


“I had one instance where a family was waiting at the hospital for the body of their deceased relative. The relative was brought to one of these private organ harvesting centers, awoke while they were harvesting her organs, and then was brought back to the hospital ... where she died eventually,” he continued.

“But the family, you know, brought litigation, and that’s the only reason that we learned of this story. We’ve done a complete investigation of that company. We’ve taken the contract away from that company, and we’re reorganizing it so that we will be regulating it and running it directly at HHS and this will never happen again,” he added.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray is astonished.

“That is bizarre. And they did a thorough investigation. Turns out it’s true?” Gray says. “That’s weird.”

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‘That’s evil!’: Jillian Michaels shocks Glenn Beck with latest Big Food betrayal



For many, many years, most of us blindly trusted the pharmaceutical industry to develop drugs that were safe and effective. We didn’t question the food at the grocery store either. We just naively assumed that if it was approved for sale, it must be safe to consume.

But the ruse is up.

Now we know that Big Pharma and Big Food are in bed together – plotting how to ensure Americans stay sick and addicted.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Podcast,” Glenn interviewed fitness expert and “The Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels on the insidious ties between the “catastrophic quartet of Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance” that’s keeping us in chains.

Michaels isn’t convinced that all people who work in medicine or food are devilishly conspiring to harm Americans. The puppet masters at the top may be, but most individual workers had no intention of being pawns in a game.

“The machine has a bottom line, and the machine reports to Wall Street. And so they need profit. People are just cogs in that machine. And I don’t think these individuals are ill-intentioned, but they definitely get caught up in these industries,” she says, acknowledging that many of these individuals pursue careers in food and medicine because they want to help “save the world” and “feed the world.”

Unfortunately, what ends up happening is these well-intentioned people need to “pay [their] bills,” and the only way to do that is to “incentivize people to drink more soda and to eat more chips.”

Glenn agrees, noting that America “fed the world” because of developments in genetically modified organisms, which altered the DNA of various plants and animals so they could grow faster and be more pest resistance, drought tolerant, or nutritionally dense.

“At the beginning, it was a really good thing ... but somewhere along the line, that changed,” he says.

“I’m actually writing a book about this right now,” Michaels says, “and it looks at the ways in which our food policy, our policy around Big Ag, Pharma, Big insurance ... captured well-intentioned legislation and inverted them.”

“It is absolutely nefarious because everything that was passed with the best of intentions ended up getting in the wrong hands and subsequently manipulated to be weaponized against the American people,” she adds.

Now the food that was meant to nourish us is actually poisoning us, and the medicine that was meant to heal us is actually making us sicker.

Michaels gives the example of Howard Moskowitz, an American market researcher and psychophysicist specializing in food science, who coined the term “bliss point” in the 1970s.

The bliss point is “the perfect ratio of fat and sugar and salt” that makes our brains crave more. In other words, Moskowitz was a specialist in food addiction, which is responsible for America’s astronomical obesity rates and subsequent diseases.

“That is probably the least nefarious thing that has happened,” Michaels says.

Moskowitz’s research has since developed into a “multidisciplinary team of scientists and behavioralists and marketing experts that work around the clock trying to figure out how to make you not eat just one.”

“That’s not a slogan — you can’t eat just one. That’s a business model. Period,” Michaels says.

This creates a prime opportunity for the pharmaceutical companies to create expensive weight loss drugs, like Ozempic, which boost the body’s GLP-1 hormones that tell it to stop eating.

However, because these weight loss medicines are helping people break food additions, now “the food companies are trying to find a way to make these ultra-processed foods now bypass your GLP-1 hormone pathways,” Michaels says.

“That’s evil!” Glenn reacts.

“That is the kind of stuff that is happening and has been happening for decades,” Michaels says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the full interview above.

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Texas sues Tylenol makers over alleged links to autism



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first highlighted the new revelation based on studies that there are potential links to autism when pregnant women take Tylenol.

Now the state of Texas is suing the makers of Tylenol, claiming that they hid these links to autism and that it was deceptively marketed to women.

“These are kids that are permanently altered,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“This is the type of thing, whether it’s transitioning kids or going after the vaccine, that harms people, that these companies know about, and they don’t tell us. They make hundreds of millions, billions of dollars off these products, and they don’t disclose they’re harmful,” Paxton explains.


“So that’s part of my job, is to protect consumers from companies that are doing bad things and that’s what we’re doing here,” he adds.

Gonzales points out that it was “interesting watching the backlash.”

“It was very alarming for me to see after RFK Jr. announced this, you had these TikTok videos of these pregnant women who just to spite RFK were like, ‘I’m going to take a bunch of Tylenol on video and, you know, knock it back with some water. Haha, screw you.’ And I’m like, what are we doing? How have we been reduced to this?” she says.

“It seems like anytime you give them a scientific study and say, ‘Hey, this company was fraudulently misrepresenting a COVID vaccine, Tylenol,’ whatever it is, they can’t handle it. Like, it doesn’t compute for them,” she adds.

“Well, and the fact that you’d be willing to ignore the science and maybe take the risk that, ‘Oh, I hope it’s not right, and I might damage my kid permanently,’” Paxton chimes in.

“I mean, why would you do that?” he asks.

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Headaches continue for Tylenol brand as Texas AG files lawsuit over alleged autism link



A little more than a month after President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced an official statement suggesting a link between Tylenol and autism, drug manufacturers are facing some heat.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue for allegedly concealing the link between prenatal use of acetaminophen and autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol.

'By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again.'

Dated October 27, the lawsuit lodges two main complaints against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries Kenvue Inc. and Kenvue Brands LLC.

First, the lawsuit alleges that "defendants have paid no heed to the scientific facts" by downplaying or concealing the known link between acetaminophen and ADS and ADHD. If the defendants had been more forthcoming on their labels, pregnant mothers may have chosen to avoid the drug, the lawsuit posits.

RELATED: Trump administration claims link between autism and Tylenol, greenlights remedy

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

It cites 26 epidemiological studies that showed "positive associations" between prenatal use of acetaminophen and ASD and ADHD. Other studies showed a dose-response relationship, according to the lawsuit.

The second part of the lawsuit alleges that Johnson & Johnson, aware of the legal risk of its product, attempted to "shed its liability" by transferring its liabilities associated with Tylenol to Kenvue without transferring the necessary assets to the subsidiary company.

Asked about the lawsuit, a Johnson & Johnson spokesperson told Blaze News, “Johnson & Johnson divested its consumer health business years ago, and all rights and liabilities associated with the sale of its over-the-counter products, including Tylenol (acetaminophen), are owned by Kenvue.”

“Big Pharma betrayed America by profiting off of pain and pushing pills regardless of the risks. These corporations lied for decades, knowingly endangering millions to line their pockets,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a news release. “Additionally, seeing that the day of reckoning was coming, Johnson & Johnson attempted to escape responsibility by illegally offloading their liability onto a different company. By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again.”

On its website, Kenvue issued the following statement regarding the supposed link between acetaminophen and autism: "Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of the people who use our products. We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with allegations that it does and are deeply concerned about the health risks and confusion this poses for expecting mothers and parents."

Blaze News contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton's office and Kenvue for comment but did not receive a response.

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Tylenol fights autism claims, slams proposed FDA warning label as 'unsupported' by science



The maker of Tylenol is fighting back against proposed changes to its label.

Kenvue, the American company behind Tylenol, says changes proposed by a recent petition would be "improper."

'Fight like hell not to take it.'

After the Trump administration linked the use of Tylenol during pregnancy to autism, the Informed Consent Action Network urged the FDA to "change the labels" for Tylenol and provide "crucial warnings for pregnant women and their care providers."

No evidence for risk?

Kenvue responded directly to the petition in its own document and said that changing the labeling to its over-the-counter acetaminophen products in such a manner would be "unsupported by the scientific evidence and legally and procedurally improper."

Requesting that the consumer-facing warning addresses a risk between "acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders" would allegedly go against the "overwhelming weight of the evidence contradicts the existence of any such risk," Kenvue claimed.

The manufacturer called acetaminophen one of the "most studied medicines in history," with evidence regarding its use during pregnancy being "continuously evaluated by the FDA for more than a decade."

It further claimed that available evidence does not support "a causal association between acetaminophen use in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders, including ASD and ADHD."

RELATED: Tylenol's concerns about possible autism risk date back more than a decade, documents reportedly show

Billion-dollar brand

CNN reported that Tylenol generates about $1 billion annually for Kenvue and is considered to be its top-selling brand.

If the FDA agrees with ICAN's demand, Tylenol labels would need to be updated from its current instructions that say, "If pregnant or breast-feeding, ask a health professional before use."

President Trump had previously said during a press conference in September that if used during pregnancy, Tylenol was linked to a "very increased risk of autism."

"Fight like hell not to take it," Trump added.

RELATED: 'TrumpRx' website to offer discounted drugs as part of landmark Big Pharma deal

Photo by Jordan Bank/NWSL via Getty Images

New autism drug

At the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had begun its process to approve a treatment for autism-related symptoms.

The FDA announced in late September that it had approved leucovorin calcium tablets for patients with "cerebral folate deficiency."

The neurological condition affects folate transfer into the brain, the FDA said, adding that "individuals with cerebral folate deficiency have been observed to have developmental delays with autistic features."

"We have witnessed a tragic four-fold increase in autism over two decades," said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. "Children are suffering and deserve access to potential treatments that have shown promise. We are using gold standard science and common sense to deliver for the American people."

According to the Mayo Clinic, leucovorin has a few side effects, all of which are listed as rare. These include skin rash, hives or itching, and wheezing. "Convulsions (seizures)" are also listed.

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SSRIs and mass shootings: A link we can't afford to dismiss



There’s no link between antidepressant use and mass shootings, at least not according to a new study published in the journal Psychiatry Research.

Certainly good news for the pharmaceutical industry — but does one study really mean case closed?

The FDA’s own adverse event reporting system shows a consistent link between SSRIs and violence among adults.

It’s a controversial topic that has only become more so in recent years, especially now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the secretary of health and human services under President Trump.

Deplorable questions?

Kennedy has long maintained that antidepressants are causing mass shootings. In an interview with Elon Musk in 2023, for example, Kennedy said, “Prior to the introduction of Prozac [a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor], we had none of these events [mass shootings].”

In his confirmation hearings in February, he told the Senate that the link “should be studied, along with other possible culprits.”

He was asked to clarify his views about antidepressants and mass shootings by his Democrat interrogators, because they were intended to be discrediting just by being uttered aloud — just like his views on water fluoridation, vaccination, and the origins of COVID-19. A whole basket of deplorable ideas.

In short, we’re talking about yet another partisan political issue, even though, surely, we can all agree that mass shootings are terrible and we need to do everything we can to stop them.

Guns, not drugs?

And that includes, obviously, understanding what motivates the shooters.

The new study looked at over 800 mass-shooting incidents that took place between 1990 and 2023. The researchers used publicly available data — news reports, court records, and police statements — to see whether the perpetrators had any history of antidepressant or psychotropic drug use and whether there was a link between suicidality and mass shootings. Previous research had suggested there was such a link.

The researchers found evidence of lifetime antidepressant use in just 34 out of 852 cases and evidence of psychotropic drug use more broadly in 56 cases — just 6.6%. There was no unusual association between suicidality and mass shootings either. Suicide attempts were slightly more common among those with a history of medication use, but the difference was not statistically meaningful.

Population-level data also indicated that antidepressant use among mass shooters was lower than among the general public. If antidepressants were causing mass shootings, we’d expect levels of antidepressant use to be higher, not lower.

QED — or so the researchers believe.

“The vast majority of mass shootings have nothing to do with mental illness,” Ragy R. Girgis, one of the study authors, told medical news website PsyPost.

“The primary modifiable population-level risk factor for mass shootings is firearm availability.”

Prevent people from getting their hands on guns, prevent mass shootings. It’s that simple.

Or is it?

RELATED: Groomed for violence? The dark world of furries and transgenderism in America's classrooms

Blaze Media illustration

Premature conclusions

There’s a glaring problem: The data simply isn't good enough to allow any kind of firm conclusion to be reached. The writers at "PsyPost" do at least acknowledge there’s a serious problem, although it doesn’t stop them from trumpeting “new study finds no evidence” in their headline.

Here’s what "PsyPost" says about the reliability of the evidence on offer.

Data were collected from publicly available sources, such as news articles and online records. This approach may miss cases where medication use was not reported or was kept confidential. The study also could not determine whether medications were being taken as prescribed during the attack or whether the person had recently stopped taking them.

Data is often kept confidential, even in the most high-profile cases. Take the Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. At the time of the massacre, which claimed the lives of 14 people and left another 20 wounded, it was widely reported that Harris had been on the powerful new SSRI Luvox, generic name fluvoxamine. The New York Times claimed Harris had been rejected by Marine recruiters just five days before the attack for taking the drug.

There were suggestions that he had tried to go cold turkey as a result and that this might have affected his actions on that dreadful, bloody day. The Times noted that “patients taking Luvox are warned that if combined with other drugs, including alcohol, the drug can cause extreme agitation progressing to delirium, coma and death. The package also carries a warning about suicide.”

While officials said neither shooter had drugs or alcohol in his system at time of death, the coroner refused to say whether they had been tested for antidepressants, including Luvox.

And so we still don’t know, 26 years later, whether antidepressants played a role in the Columbine killings.

Mandatory screenings

Thankfully, there are now some attempts to provide answers. Unsurprisingly, they’re coming from Republican politicians and red states.

Tennessee has become the first state in the U.S. to introduce mandatory screening for psychotropic drugs in mass killings, defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed. In every mass killing that takes place in Tennessee, a detailed toxicology report will be produced and made available to the public. Investigators will study drug interactions in the killer’s body — because drugs have different effects when used in combination, a fact that is poorly understood — and they’ll also consult with providers of mental health services if the killer was receiving treatment.

Here’s something we do know for sure. A clear, well-established link exists between SSRIs and all forms of violent behavior. A huge Swedish study from 2020 that looked at 250,000 people revealed a significant association between SSRI use and violent crime, especially among 15- to 24-year-olds and 25- to 35-year-olds. The study also showed that risk of violence remained elevated up to 12 weeks after discontinuation of the drugs. The FDA’s own adverse event reporting system shows a consistent link between SSRIs and violence among adults.

A tall order

Instead of dismissing the possibility of a link between antidepressant use and mass shootings, we actually need to do some proper research. Gather data and interpret it objectively — meaning dispassionately, without imposing an ideological agenda that fixes the conclusions in advance.

I know that’s a tall order, given how emotional a subject mass murder is — especially mass murder of children — and how unwilling we all are to talk across the growing political divide, but that’s the scientific ideal, and that’s the only way we’re ever going to get to the truth.

As every first-year history undergraduate knows — and I was one, once upon a time — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Let’s not get twisted. Lives are at stake.

Time for RFK Jr. to expose the dark truth about the pill



No drug is as sacrosanct in today’s sexually “liberated” culture as oral contraceptives. But the proliferation of the birth control pill since the 1960s has fostered a number of grave consequences for our society: hook-up culture, delayed marriage, and the destruction of the nuclear family.

None of this would surprise Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. In the early 20th century, she promoted contraception as the mechanism for female emancipation. “Birth control is the first important step a woman must take toward the goal of her freedom,” she wrote. “It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.”

Though the perceived benefits of birth control pills are loudly and publicly celebrated, their costs need to be fully exposed.

Feminist author Betty Friedan agreed, asserting that the pill gave women “the legal and constitutional right to decide whether or not or when to bear children” and established the basis for true equality with men.

Because oral contraception has been touted as a cornerstone of women’s equality and freedom, its health repercussions are rarely called into question. Even Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who regularly wades into controversy by calling for investigations into seed oils and food dyes, remains relatively silent on oral contraceptives.

This is to the detriment of women across the country. As Dr. Sarah Hill demonstrates in “This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: How the Pill Changes Everything,” birth control has had numerous repercussions on women, relationships, and society. She shows that women at the peak of their cycle feel sexier, more outgoing, and more confident with the natural increase in estrogen. And men find them more attractive at that time, too.

More than mere ‘birth control’

As Hill points out, birth control pills do more than just prevent pregnancy: They affect a woman’s hormones more generally — hormones that affect everything from her brain to her fingertips and her overall emotional, mental, and physical health. Many of the women Hill interviewed described feeling emotionally blunted, or as if they were moving through life in a fog, while on the pill.

A woman’s menstrual cycle is often known as the fifth vital sign, and a disruption signals a concern to be addressed, not to be masked.

Birth control is, in fact, “medicated menopause.” While it can be a difficult reality for many to face, studies show that women who no longer menstruate are not as attractive to men, which is why trying to find a mate in the latter years of life can be challenging. The drive to partner up and reproduce is diminished, making marriage less of a necessity and mere companionship more of the goal.

Studies comparing women who use contraception with those who do not reveal that the pill lowers libido, can lead to mood swings or depression, disrupts natural cycles, can cause infertility after discontinuation, interferes with the endocrine system, and can lead to bloating and a gain of nearly five pounds on average. Other studies have found that estrogen-containing pills raise the risk of venous thromboembolism and, to a smaller extent, strokes and heart attacks.

America lags behind

European countries have conducted many tests that demonstrate such effects. A nationwide Danish cohort study of over one million women found higher rates of first antidepressant use and first depression diagnosis among users of contraceptives than nonusers. Another large Danish study found that women who were currently or recently on hormonal contraception were more likely to attempt suicide or die by suicide than women who had never used it.

A Finnish study and a Swedish one produced similar results. A British database shows that the first couple of years of being on the pill brought an increased risk of depression and that women who began using the pill in their teens sometimes had a lasting higher risk.

Few, if any, comprehensive American studies have been conducted, even though about 15% of American women between 15 and 49 use oral contraceptives.

Environmental havoc

Potential problems are not limited to those who ingest the hormones. Synthetic estrogen, an endocrine-disrupting compound used in oral contraceptives, makes its way from America’s toilets to the water supply. Wastewater treatments can reduce, but never fully remove, such psychoactive drugs from drinking water.

U.S. regulators and scientists treat these as “contaminants of emerging concern.” The Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Geological Survey publish methods for measuring the prevalence of such hormones in wastewater and waters used for our drinking supply.

RELATED: Women’s infertility is Big Pharma’s cash cow

simarik via iStock/Getty Images

Male fish begin growing female genitals, and fish populations collapse in water containing the synthetic estrogen from birth control, according to some studies. As RFK Jr. has mentioned, boys are “swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today, and many of those are endocrine disruptors.”

Though some studies show that typical concentrations of synthetic estrogen in drinking water pose negligible risks to women, perhaps the cumulative exposure to endocrine disruptors affects the sexual development of young males.

Long overdue accountability

RFK Jr. promised to “follow the law regarding access to birth control” during his confirmation process. That could include commissioning the National Institutes of Health to conduct “gold standard science” on oral contraception, as he has sworn to do for other food additives and pharmaceuticals, studies that many European countries have already done.

While calling for restrictions on birth control pills would likely cause a frenzy among many, informed consent is a paramount health priority. Though the perceived benefits of birth control pills are loudly and publicly celebrated (women, you too can have sex like a man!), their costs need to be fully exposed if we are going to restore human health and flourishing among both sexes.

Editor’s note: This article was published originally at the American Mind.