Shock Ruling on Ivermectin: Texas Appeals Court Says Hospital Has Final Say on Refusing Drug to Dying Sheriff Deputy (Part 4)
Shock Ruling on Ivermectin: Texas Appeals Court Says Hospital Has Final Say on Refusing Drug to Dying Sheriff Deputy (Part 4)
Jones Family Doctor, Mary Talley Bowden, responds that 'Ivermectin is safer than Tylenol'
EXCLUSIVE SERIES: This is part four in an exclusive 10-part series on a dying Texas Sheriff Deputy suing for the right to try Ivermectin for COVID.
To catch up, read part 3 here: Hospital Calls Police to Stop Texas Sheriff Deputy Getting Ivermectin: 'The Medicine Will Kill Him’ (Part 3)
Hospital doctors won a big legal battle to stop a dying COVID patient from trying Ivermectin. A Texas appeals court ruled Thursday that it could not intervene in the medical decisions of health care providers. The lawyer for the Jones family, which lost in the case, said the opinion is “shocking.”
Sheriff Deputy Jason Jones is dying of COVID at Texas Health Huguley Hospital, and his wife Erin wanted a private doctor to administer Ivermectin. Now she wants her husband released from this hospital.
“I am hoping he can get the trach put in soon so I can get him out of there. Just worried with the chest tubes,” Erin told me after the court ruling. “I still have my faith. It will make Jason's testimony that much stronger.”
To get caught up on this case, read my story today on GoFundMe removing the fundraiser for the Jones Family. Also read how the hospital called the police to stop Dr. Mary Talley Bowden from administering Ivermectin.
I spoke to Dr. Bowden after the ruling and she said it was disturbing, but she was not defeated.
“We are not giving up and are working to get Mr. Jones transferred to a hospital that cares more about human life and patient autonomy than politics and control,” said Dr. Bowden. She added that, “Ivermectin is safer than Tylenol.”
(Scroll down to read the court pleading for Dr. Bowden to administer the Ivermectin.)
Beth Parlato, the lawyer for the Jones family who wrote the appeal, was “shocked” by the court’s ruling.
“This is a horrendous opinion,” Parlato said. “It’s a badly written decision. They basically concluded that nothing in the law allows us to overrule the hospitals treatment decisions.”
Parlato is preparing to appeal the case to the Texas Supreme Court, but that will take longer than Jason can live like this.
The Appeals Court
Chief Justice Bonnie Sudderth signed the opinion for the Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth to reverse and vacate the trial court’s temporary injunction order. The lower court had ruled that Dr. Bowden would be given temporary privileges at Texas Huguley in order to administer her prescription to Jones, who is on a ventilator in the ICU.
APPEALS COURT RULING
Justice Sudderth wrote this:
the law does not allow this court, the trial court, or any other court to substitute our nonmedical judgment for the professional medical judgment of health care providers—whether we agree with their decisions, have serious doubts about them, or disagree with them entirely.
Under the facts of this case, the trial court had no legal authority to intervene in Huguley’s legal exercise of its discretion to grant, deny, or limit Dr. Bowden’s ICU credentials.
As another court has observed, the fact of the matter is that we can give the Joneses our sympathies and prayers, but not an injunction, because the law simply does not permit us to do so.
HOSPITAL OPPOSITION TO IVERMECTIN
Texas Huguley Hospital argued in the case that its doctor would not give Ivermectin to Jones for several reasons. This is from the hospital’s appeals plea:
Dr. Jason Seiden, Mr. Jones’s treating physician, board certified in pulmonary medical, critical care medicine, and hospice and palliative care medicine, Assistant Chief of Staff and Medical Director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Huguley Hospital, testified about Mr. Jones’s treatment and the COVID protocols at the hospital.
Ivermectin is not part of Huguley Hospital’s COVID protocol.
Dr. Seiden testified that there is not a single authoritative body that recommends Ivermectin at any stage in the treatment of COVID-19.
Ivermectin is not approved or recommended by any governing agency for the treatment of COVID-19.
FAMILY WANTS TO TRY IVERMECTIN
The Jones family’s plea to the appeals court addresses these issues:
Dr. Seiden admitted that Ivermectin has been an FDA approved drug for 35 years, that is well-tolerated, and that has very few side effects that are not serious (with the exception of arrhythmias which can occur in a small percentage of people).
He admitted that Remdesivir has side effects, has been the subject of only one small study, and the most commonly reported adverse effect of it is renal, or kidney failure. He was unfamiliar with the number of adverse effects from Remdesivir (7,690) and had never looked into the number of deaths (560) from it.
He was not aware there have been no deaths reported from Ivermectin, including in the last two years when it has been used worldwide for COVID.
Dr. Seiden admitted that the NIH upgraded their position on Ivermectin from being against its use to being neutral with regard to its use.
Dr. Seiden admitted that in the NIH list of drugs described as “Characteristics of Antiviral Agents That Are Approved or Under Evaluation For Treatment of COVID” the first is Remdesivir and the second one is Ivermectin.
Dr. Seiden said that the dosage for Ivermectin recommended on the NIH website based on a patient’s weight was the same as that prescribed in this case by Dr. Bowden.
He admitted that off-label use of drugs is not prohibited and using Ivermectin for COVID would be considered an off-label use.
Dr. Seiden was aware that it is the policy of the CDC to recommend Ivermectin to each refugee entering this country without a physical exam being required, a point the trial court asked about and reiterated in so doing.
Dr. Bowden prescribed Ivermectin for Deputy Jones after consultation with his surrogate decision maker, his wife, Appellee in this case.
Dr. Bowden has had extensive experience treating COVID patients during the ongoing Pandemic: she has tested over 80,000 people, never shut her doors to patients, has conducted “deep research” into treatments, including reading all of the studies on Ivermectin, determined it was safe.
She has treated over 2,000 COVID patients so far, prescribed Ivermectin “[m]any times” and has “documented zero deaths and zero reports of side effects” from it.
She stated that “absolutely” it was her “medical opinion that Ivermectin is a safe drug to administer to Jason Jones in this situation,” that she “[a]bsolutely” has the medical opinion that Ivermectin “will, in fact, help Jason Jones given his situation,” and that she would give this to her own children were they in the same situation.
Dr. Bowden is the mother of four school-age boys.
Deputy Jones tried to get a prescription for Ivermectin before he was hospitalized. He clearly would try again if he was not in a medically-induced coma.
His wife Erin is desperate to save his life. She’s facing raising six children on her own and losing the sole provider and her great love husband. The hospital is being cruel to not let her at least try everything she can, no matter how small a chance.
This ruling is dangerous for all Americans who need the courts to fight back when doctors and hospitals take away our right to make our own health care decisions. The case must be appealed to affirm the role of the judicial branch in medicine.
But, for now, Texas Health Huguley, needs to drop the fight and let Erin move Jason to a place where she can try her last hope of treatment with Ivermectin.
Thank you to my paid subscribers for funding my work and allowing me to tell the Jones’s story here first and push the big media outlets to cover topics they normally refuse.
Update 11-22 Good news! Erin just texted me this: "Jason is getting his tracheotomy and peg tube for feeding right now."
Her plan is to get him out of Texas Health Huguley Hospital.
She texted me:
“Hopefully I can move him to a long term care facility. They take people with trachs...and then they can help wean him off the vent.”
Update Friday night:
Erin at the ICU asks for prayers “specifically for his lungs, heart to stay in normal rhythm, brain function, kidneys, and liver. And for the new doctor who has done more in 1 week than the last 5 weeks of laying on his stomach.”
Also she texted this. “The court ruling was terrible.
I am celebrating today... God's timing.
It's just such a roller-coaster.”