The physician at the Washington County Jail in Arkansas is currently under investigation by the state medical board after he prescribed anti-parasite drug, ivermectin to jail detainees without their knowledge and despite warnings from the FDA.
The inmates told CBS News that they were given the drug after testing positive for COVID-19. They were told that the pills were vitamins, steroids and antibiotics which was suppose to make them “feel better.”
The inmates were not aware that they were taking ivermectin until five days after receiving the drug when news broke that Dr. Rob Karas, the jail’s physician, was prescribing the drug to detainees. It was from that point jail nurses started asking the inmates whether they consented to take the pills.
Karas and the county sheriff said the inmates took the drugs willingly, a claim that the detainees have disputed, CBS reported.
“We were running fevers, throwing up, diarrhea … and so we figured that they were here to help us. … We never knew that they were running experiments on us, giving us ivermectin. We never knew that,” Edrick Floreal-Wooten, an inmate at the jail said.
“It was not consensual. They used us as an experiment, like we’re livestock. Just because we wear stripes and we make a few mistakes in life, doesn’t make us less of a human. We got families, we got loved ones out there that love us,” Floreal-Wooten added.
“They were pretty much testing us in here is all they were doing, seeing if it would work,” William Evans an inmate who was given ivermectin for two weeks after testing positive for COVID told the Associated Press.
Ivermectin is a drug commonly used to deworm livestock, though it has been authorized by the FDA to treat parasitic worm infections in humans like intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis.
“The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in people or animals. Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for these indications. There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. It is not okay,” the FDA said in a statement.
Floreal-Wooten told CBS that he has had diarrhea and upper abdominal pain since he was given ivermectin. However, he said he would wait until he is released in 42 days to seek medical attention since he no longer trust the medical staff at the jail.
“I’m scared,” he said. “If you were so willing to put something in my pills and give me a pill without my acknowledgement, you could do the same thing and be deceptive and put it in my juice, my food. … I can’t trust any of the medical staff. I can’t trust any of the guards.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas demanded that the jail stop prescribing the drug to detainees.
“No one — including incarcerated individuals — should be subject to medical experimentation,” ACLU of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson said in a statement. “The detention center’s failure to use safe and appropriate treatments for COVID-19 … illustrates the larger systemic problem of mistreatment of detainees and over incarceration in Arkansas that has persisted — even in the midst of a pandemic.”
