Top FDA official privately backed ivermectin trials—then publicly mocked it as ‘horse medicine’
Newly released FOIA documents reveal the agency's dramatic U-turn.
Newly released emails obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal that one of the FDA’s top officials privately supported testing ivermectin for Covid-19—while the agency later publicly dismissed it as “horse medicine.”
At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Dr. Janet Woodcock, then head of the FDA’s drug evaluation division, was appointed therapeutics lead for Operation Warp Speed to help fast-track Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
At the time, ivermectin had shown significant antiviral potential in lab studies and was being used empirically in countries like Peru and Honduras. It was safe, cheap, already approved for treating parasites—and generating cautious hope as a potential Covid-19 treatment.
After reviewing early data from a colleague, Woodcock’s interest was piqued.
“Wow—we should definitely test it,” she wrote in a June 2020 email. “Safe drug.”
Over the following months, she continued to back the idea. In January 2021, she reaffirmed her support.
“We are trying to put together a pragmatic trial that can include ivermectin,” she wrote. “I’ll do everything I can to help get that up and funded.”
But that same month, Woodcock was appointed acting commissioner of the FDA—and the tone shifted.
From scientific curiosity to public mockery
Just seven months into her new role, Woodcock’s agency changed its tune dramatically. The FDA posted a tweet that would become a symbol of regulatory contempt:
“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
Its tone was unmistakably mocking. The media piled on. Doctors who prescribed ivermectin were smeared. Patients who took it were ridiculed. And the cautious scientific curiosity once expressed inside the FDA disappeared from view.
The backlash peaked in September 2021 when podcaster Joe Rogan revealed he had taken ivermectin after testing positive for Covid-19. Though prescribed by a physician, Rogan was branded reckless.
CNN repeatedly referred to the drug as a “horse dewormer,” fuelling the ridicule.
In a widely watched interview, Rogan confronted CNN’s Dr Sanjay Gupta: “They shouldn’t have said that,” Gupta admitted.
What had begun as a legitimate medical question had now morphed into a culture war.
The timing was no accident
Just two days after the FDA’s tweet, the agency granted full approval to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine—a landmark decision that gave the Biden administration the foundation to enforce vaccine mandates across the country.
The timing was no accident.