HJNO Nov/Dec 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  NOV / DEC 2024 33 THE ANTIPHONY to me, a thinly veiled attempt at furthering their own political aspirations, but at real damage to the future health of Louisiana. There are a lot of vulnerable families who, unfortunately, are going to be mis- led by these types of comments and poorly served by a Department of Health that does not work to promote evidence-based prac- tices that improve health. It’s a lot of fami- lies that are going to be hurt by that. And we will be, unfortunately, realizing the damage it inflicted long after these clowns are gone. Editor Hey, are you vaccinated? Physician Yeah, absolutely. Editor Is your family? Physician Mm-hmm. Editor You have children? Physician We have children, yep. They’ve gotten all their childhood vaccines. Editor How about the COVID vaccine? Physician We all got COVID weeks ago for the third or fourth time, so none of us have had the newest COVID vaccine yet. We just had it. But yeah, we’re all vaccinated. Editor One of the statements that was made was that we have never tried to vaccinate ourselves out of a disease. We usually try to cure it. Physician Wild, preposterous statements. There are three or four mumps outbreaks that happened on LSU’s campus in Baton Rouge over the past 20 years that I can think of, where hundreds of students got mumps. And the way that that outbreak ended was mass vaccination booster campaigns of the mumps vaccine on campus — LSU in partnership with the state Department of Health. And mumps is one of these vaccines that, like the COVID vaccine, provides good protection against severe disease, but tends to wane a little bit and you require booster shots. So, when you have a mumps out- break, you got to provide mass boosters to get out of it. It’s happened three or four times in the past 20 years on LSU’s campus. Editor Do you think doctors in Louisiana who were using off-label use drugs to try to help their patients during COVID were intimidated in any way by any Louisiana officials for saying what they were doing? Physician No, I don’t think so. You’re talking about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin? Editor Well, there were six or seven of them that were actually mentioned. Physician Vitamin D and zinc and a whole bunch, yeah. No, I don’t believe so. A lot of this came out in the hearing. Doctors obvi- ously have professional discretion of how they treat their patient, and pharmacists have professional discretion and respon- sibilities in how they dispense medicines. A pharmacist is not just a pill counter. It’s a profession with its own licensure. If a phar- macist does not believe that a prescription is written that’s appropriate, they oftentimes will push back or call the doctor or investi- gate more. This happens all the time. And I can tell you is pharmacists have certainly saved my butt many, many times. And there have been times where a physi- cian, because they’re working fast or atten- tion is elsewhere, makes a mistake in a prescription — accidentally prescribes the wrong dose, accidentally prescribes a medi- cine that the physician doesn’t realize at the time is contraindicated with another medi- cine the patient is on. The pharmacist’s roll before they dispense the medicines is to go through and do a safety check and make sure everything looks right. There are many times that I’ve been called by pharmacists who say, “Hey, did you need to prescribe this, or did you think about this?” And I’ve been incredibly thankful for that. What happened with ivermectin is that pharmacists, under their own professional training and discretion, were certainly read- ing the data and the independent stud- ies that were out there. Early on, first with hydroxychloroquine, then with ivermectin, there was hope that, “Hey, maybe this med- icine works.” And it was studied and then became clear that not only does it not work, it probably has some harms too. So, there are pharmacists that called the doctor and said, “I don’t feel comfortable prescribing this given the evidence that’s out there right now.”That happened in isolated cases, and that’s what some of the folks that testified were referring to. But that’s the way phar- macists work. What the health department did was communicate the best evidence, and what the department communicated most forcefully was, “For God’s sakes, don’t go to a feed store and buy medicine like ivermec- tin that’s intended for livestock,” which the health department got reports of from the Poison Control Center in Louisiana. Editor Someone I know bought ivermec- tin for livestock to use for COVID. They showed me the animal pill and the online markings of the human pill. It looked the same; I could understand the confusion. Physician It became clear in Vinnie’s [Vin- cent A. Culotta, Jr., MD, executive direc- tor] testimony with the LSBME [Louisiana Medical Board of Examiners], that no doc- tors lost their license for treating patients as they wanted to. Even if it wasn’t the best science of the time, even if it was ignorant to the current body of knowledge, no doc- tors lost their license for that. I think peo- ple were merely offended that, “How dare someone imply that I’m not up to date on my knowledge.”That’s what it comes from. I like Ralph. I think he’s got a chip on his shoulder with this. This is a guy who, when he ran for governor five or six years ago, it