One of the four inmates named in the suit, Edrick Floreal-Wooten, said he felt violated
Four inmates at an Arkansas jail are suing the facility and its doctor after they were allegedly tricked into taking ivermectin to treat COVID-19 – despite the CDC warnings that the drug does not prevent or treat the virus, and can have serious side effects.
The inmates at Washington County Jail were told the pills they were taking were just vitamins, antibiotics or steroids, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas in federal court Thursday on behalf of the detainees.
‘The truth, however, was that without knowing and voluntary consent, Plaintiffs ingested incredibly high doses of a drug that credible medical professionals, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all agree is not an effective treatment against COVID-19,’ the lawsuit continued.
The suit states that inmates were given the drug as early as in November 2020 and in very high doses.
One of the four inmates named in the suit, Edrick Floreal-Wooten, said he felt violated.
‘It was not consensual,’ he told CBS News in a prison interview. ‘They used us as an experiment — like we’re livestock,’ he said. ‘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, along with Jeremiah Little, Julio Gonzales, and Dayman Blackburn are now suing to demand they receive a medical evaluation by an independent provider and be ‘awarded their costs, fees, and any other appropriate relief to which they are entitled.’
The suit names the jail, Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder and Dr Robert Karas as defendants.
The state Medical Board has been investigating complaints against Karas over the jail’s use of ivermectin, and is expected to discuss the investigation at its February meeting.
Robert Karas, the facility’s doctor, is also being sued by the ACLU on behalf of the patients
According to the lawsuit, the four inmates tested positive for COVID and were quarantined in August 2021 before being given the drug
Four inmates at Washington County Jail are suing the facility and its doctor after they were reportedly tricked into taking ivermectin to treat COVID-19
‘No one – including incarcerated individuals – should be deceived and subject to medical experimentation. Sheriff Helder has a responsibility to provide food, shelter, and safe, appropriate care to incarcerated individuals,’ said Gary Sullivan, legal director of the ACLU of Arkansas.
The situation is reminiscent of the infamous Tuskegee Study, in which almost 400 unsuspecting poor black men were withheld treatment for syphilis for more than 40 years so doctors could track the ravages of the illness on their bodies – despite Penicillin being discovered as an effective cure for the disease in the meantime.
According to the lawsuit, Floreal-Wooten, Little, Gonzales, and Blackburn tested positive for COVID and were quarantined in August 2021.
The complaint then claims that the individuals were given a cocktail of drugs, including two to ten ivermectin pills a day.
‘They said they were vitamins, steroids and antibiotics,’ Floreal-Wootenold, one of the inmates in the lawsuit, told CBS News in September.
‘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.’
The lawsuit states that Floreal-Wootenold received 3.4 times the approved dosage for ivermectin – he was reportedly given 48 mg over a period of four days, while the maximum dosage over that period according to his height and weight is 14 mg.
‘High doses’ is no hyperbole,’ the lawsuit read.
Other inmates received even higher doses, according to the complaint. Blackburn was reportedly given 6.3 times the approved dosage.
Karas seemed to stand his ground on Facebook on Saturday, arguing that the drug was to credit for the low number of deaths at Washington County Jail
High doses of the drug, the CDC states, can cause hallucinations, seizures, coma and death. Floreal-Wootenold, who remains incarcerated at the facility, told CBS hat he feels he can’t trust the medical staff at the jail anymore.
The FDA has only approved ivermectin for use by people and animals for some parasitic worms, head lice, river blindness and rosacea. According to the agency, minor side effects for the drug include skin rash, nausea and vomiting.
‘…Without knowing and voluntary consent, plaintiffs ingested incredibly high doses of a drug that credible medical professionals, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all agree is not an effective treatment against COVID-19, and that if given in large doses is dangerous for humans,’ the lawsuit said.
Karas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office declined to comment.
Karas has previously said no inmates were forced to take the drug.
The lawsuit states that some incarcerated individuals were given Ivermectin as early as November 2020 and only became aware of the treatment in July 2021.
In a September letter sent by his attorney, Karas told a Medical Board investigator that 254 inmates at the jail had been treated with ivermectin.
In the letter, Karas said the information given to inmates about ivermectin depended on who was administering it and that paramedics had not been given ‘required counseling details’ to discuss with inmates about the drug.
The inmates said they were never told ivermectin was among the medications they had been given to treat their COVID-19, and instead were told they were being given vitamins
Karas said the process had since been improved.
‘Since the inception of the media coverage, we adopted a more robust informed consent form to assuage any concern that any detainees were being misled or coerced into taking the medications, even though they weren’t,’ the letter said.
The American Medical Association, the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists last year called to an immediate end to prescribing and using the drug to treat the coronavirus.
Pharmacy prescriptions for ivermectin boomed last summer, and health officials in Arkansas and other states issued warnings after seeing a spike in poison control center calls about people taking the animal form of the drug to treat COVID-19.
The CDC also sent an alert to doctors about the drug.
Despite the warnings, the drug had been touted by Republican lawmakers in Arkansas and other states as a potential treatment for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Karas seemed to stand his ground on Facebook on Saturday, arguing that the drug was to credit for the low number of deaths at Washington County Jail.
‘Guess we made the news again this week,’ she wrote. ‘Still with the best record in the world at the jail with the same protocols. Inmates aren’t dumb and I suspect in the future other inmates around the country will be suing their facilities requesting the same treatment we’re using at WCDC – including the Ivermectin.’
The most infamous unethical medical experiment in US history: How the Tuskegee Study tricked black men into leaving syphilis untreated for 40 years
WHAT IS THE TUSKEGEE STUDY
For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South, in Tuskegee, Alabama, withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward.
Finally exposed in 1972, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement. Twenty years ago this May, President Bill Clinton apologized for the U.S. government. It seemed to mark the end of this ugly episode, once and for all.
Workers initially recruited 600 black men into a health program with the promise of free medical checks, free food, free transportation and burial insurance in a county where many blacks had never even seen a doctor. The men were tested and sorted into groups – 399 with syphilis and another 201 who were not infected.
The disease-free men were used as a control group. Health workers told syphilitic fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers and uncles only that they had ‘bad blood.’
None of the men was asked to consent to take part in a medical study. They also weren’t told that ‘bad blood’ actually was a euphemism for syphilis.
Instead, doctors purposely hid the study’s purpose from the men, subjecting them during the study’s early months to painful spinal taps and blood tests.
Medical workers periodically provided men with pills and tonic that made them believe they were being treated, but they weren’t.
And doctors never provided them with penicillin after it became the standard treatment for syphilis in the mid-1940s
For decades, the study has been widely blamed for distrust among U.S. blacks toward the medical community, particularly clinical trials and other tests. In medical and public health circles, it’s known as the ‘Tuskegee effect.’
WHAT WERE THE TREATMENT OPTIONS?
When the study began, the discovery of penicillin as a cure for syphilis was still 10 years away and the general availability of the drug was 15 years away. Treatment in the 1930s consisted primarily of doses of arsenic and mercury.
A man in a syphilis study sits on steps in front of of a house in Tuskegee, in the 1950s. The city had one of the highest rates in the country when doctors decided to start the racist study
HOW THEY TREATED SOME MEN IN THE TRIAL – AND LEFT OTHERS
Of the 600 original participants in the study, one third showed no signs having syphilis; the others had the disease.
According to PHS data, half the men with syphilis were given the arsenic-mercury treatment, but the other half, about 200 men, received no treatment for syphilis at all.
HOW THEY LURED THEM TO PARTICIPATE
Men were persuaded to participate by promises of:
- free transportation to and from hospitals
- free hot lunches
- free medical treatment for ailments other than syphilis
- free burial
Scandal: In this 1950’s photo, men included in a syphilis study pose for a photo in Tuskegee, Alabama. For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with the disease so doctors could track the ravages of the illness and dissect their bodies afterward. It was finally exposed in 1972
SURVIVAL RATE
Seventy-four of the untreated syphilitics were still alive last January.
In 1969, the PHS’ Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, which has been in charge of the Tuskegee Study, reviewed records of 276 syphilitics, both treated and untreated, who participated in the experiment.
It found that seven men had died as a direct result of syphilis.
Another 154 died of heart failure, but CDC officials say they cannot determine now how many of these deaths were caused by syphilis or how many additional deaths may have been linked to the disease.
SURVIVORS ARE ‘TOO OLD’ TO BE TREATED, MEDICS SAY
Because of their age, the CDC cannot now treat the 74 survivors of the Tuskegee Study for syphilis.
Possible ill side effects of massive penicillin therapy constitute too great a risk to the individuals, particularly those whose syphilitic condition is dormant.
However, experts say, there was a point when the men could have been treated with some measure of success.
<!—->
Advertisement
