The Ivermectine scandal was a massive mediatic disinformation and smearing campaign conducted in 2021 against the drug known as Ivermectine; it represents one of the gravest cases of science suppression in modern history and a textbook example of how Neo-Obscurantism, State Pseudoscience and Pseudo-skepticism operate.
The case develops in the context of the Covid crisis of 2020-2021; during this time, various different treatments were being researched in the hope of finding an early cure, and among these Ivermectine was one of the most promising.
Since the first applications, mainstream media outlets suddenly started publishing a wave of alleged "fact-checking" articles, all based on a same exact rhetoric entirely revolving around 2 main talking points:
1) Referring to Ivermectine with misleading terms such as "horse dewormer", by latching onto one single use case as if it represented the entirety the drug, in order to falsely imply that it can't possibly be suited for human use; a kind of logical fallacy that is the exact equivalent to calling carrots "rabbit food" in an attempt to discourage people from eating them.
2) Mentioning cases of side effects resulting from an incorrect use of the drug as if they were proof of an *inherently* harmful nature, ignoring the fact that *every* drug is harmful when used in an incorrect way.
The psyop was a massive success: in a few days, Ivermectine became cemented in popular culture as some sort of "snake oil" for the guillable, despite its decades-long history of well-documented successes in human treatment of parasite infections and the several peer-reviewed studies and statistical evidence suggesting its therapeutic effects against Covid as well. Because of this, people infected by Covid were denied the chance of a potentially life-saving treatment, leading to an avoidable loss of countless lives.