Ivermectin use for COVID; Wisconsin Supreme Court won't order

MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin's conservative-controlled Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a hospital could not be forced to give a deworming drug to a patient with COVID-19.

The panel ruled 6-1 in favor of Aurora Health Care, with three liberals and three conservatives in support and only conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley dissenting.

The decision upholds a lower court’s ruling against Allen Gahl, who sued Aurora in October 2021 when doctors refused to treat his uncle, John Zingsheim, with ivermectin. Gahl was authorized to make medical decisions for Zingsheim and had researched the drug online after Zingsheim was put on a ventilator to treat COVID-19 complications.

Ivermectin became popular among conservatives after commentators and even some far-right doctors held up the antiparasitic drug as a miracle cure for the coronavirus and other illnesses. But the Food and Drug Administration has not approved it for use in treating COVID-19 and warns that misusing ivermectin can be harmful, even fatal.

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Gahl obtained a prescription for ivermectin from a retired doctor who had never met Zingsheim or his medical team, but hospital staff said the drug did not meet their standards and refused to administer it. None of the information in the complaint Gahl subsequently filed against the hospital came directly from medical professionals, according to court documents.

The Waukesha County Circuit Court ordered hospital staff to give Zingsheim the drug but later modified its decision to say Gahl would have to provide the drug himself, as well as a doctor to administer it. An appeals court overturned that decision after Aurora’s attorneys argued a judge could not force a medical provider to give treatment they had determined to be substandard. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in January.

The Supreme Court agreed that the Waukesha County judge did not cite a legal basis for ordering the court to administer the ivermectin.

"We do not know what viable legal claim the circuit court thought Gahl had presented," Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said in the court's opinion.

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Gahl was represented by the Amos Center for Justice, a conservative Wisconsin law firm that has brought litigation against ballot drop boxes and promotes conspiracy theories about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines on its website. 

The Wisconsin lawsuit is one of dozens filed across the country seeking to force hospitals to administer ivermectin for COVID-19. The drug is commonly used in cattle and also approved for human use to fight parasites and certain skin conditions. But some members of online alternative medicine groups have reported self-administering highly concentrated, veterinary-grade ivermectin to treat illnesses. The FDA warns that self-administering the drug, especially in doses intended for animals, can be lethal.

Howard Schweber, UW politics professor said the Supreme Court avoided a radical ruling.

"Hospitals always have had authority to set medical standards on how they do things," said Schweber.

When it comes to big decisions made in a hospital room, UW Health Dr. Jeff Pothof says generally, doctors try to work with patients.

"Where we get in kind of a tricky situation is if there’s no evidence or, on the contrary, evidence that something harms you, it’s really hard for physicians to say, ‘Let’s go ahead and do that anyway,’" said Pothof. "That’s kind of against everything we’ve taken an oath for. The rules, the regulations, the boundaries around those exponential treatments are there to protect patients because there is slightly increased risk for harm when we don’t fully understand whether something works or not."

"If you look at the state Supreme Court’s opinion, it’s full of phrases like, ‘We have no idea what legal theory this judge had in mind,’" said Schweber.

Schweber said the court's decision keeps medical decisions in the hands of doctors.

Statement from Karen Mueller, attorney representing Gahl 

"The Amos Center for Justice and Liberty announces that the decision in Gahl v. Aurora Hospital was released this morning by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

We are exhorted in the Bible to "expose the darkness." This case does just that by shining the light into the darkness. It is about whether the substantive rights (which are written into the statutory Health Care Power of Attorney document enacted by the Wisconsin Legislature) of John Zingsheim and every other Wisconsin citizen, can be ignored by every hospital in Wisconsin, including Aurora Hospital.

These rights included the basic human right to refuse unwanted medical treatments and to receive necessary medical treatment that was being withheld from a patient in a hospital. The operative word here being "necessary" was defined at oral arguments as being needed when a hospital has no other life-saving treatments to offer a patient and when the drug or treatment is deemed to be relatively safe.

Allen Gahl, the nephew, and health care agent under Wisconsin law for his uncle, proved the safety of the sought after drug, Ivermectin, to the circuit court. Despite these facts, two of the three judges on the District II Appeals Court panel held that Judge Lloyd Carter in Waukesha County Circuit Court had abused his discretion. In so ruling, the Appeals Court called the substantive rights found in the HCPOA document to be only "instructive and informative," even though they revealed legislative intent, because they were mandated by the legislature.

Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 6 to 1 ruling, upheld the Appeals Court decision that held Judge Carter had committed a discretionary error. However, the opinion written by Justice Anne Walsh Bradley, crafted a very narrowly tailored decision where the reason for upholding the Appeals Court decision was because the circuit court failed to properly document its legal theory and reasoning as to why Mr. Zingsheim should receive the Ivermectin. The lone dissenter in this opinion was Justice Rebecca Bradley who argued that the majority got it wrong because the circuit court did meet its judicial burden and obligations.

This holding is narrowly tailored to a procedural issue and will have few, if any, negative consequences for the hundreds of families in the State of Wisconsin and the thousands of families throughout the nation who are hoping to file lawsuits to seek justice. Their loved ones were killed due to the intentional and financially lucrative Covid 19 Protocols which financially incentivize harmful treatments. Amos Center for Justice and Liberty represents a number of these families. These deadly Covid 19 Protocols were mandated by Medicare/Medicaid who worked closely with federal government agencies above, state agencies and hospitals below and a number of for-profit and non-profit corporations who received Big Pharma money and spread their poisonous venom of influence. The day of legal accountability is coming.

This criminal conspiracy also required concerted efforts of censorship and the timely spreading of propaganda on social media groups. The traditional television media "talking heads" were also required to convince people that Truthtellers were liars. These co-conspirators intentionally suppressed the Truth to continue and further the hospital homicides. By doing so, they along with what is left of the globalist leaning newspapers, played an active role in causing even more deaths through their false information and deceptions regarding Covid 19 and the so-called "vaccines." Families have mistakenly brought their sick loved ones into what once were considered life-saving hospitals and have now repurposed them as "death chambers" with significant financial gains for the same hospitals and their administrators.

John Zingsheim lives today not because of Aurora Hospital and its medical staff, but despite them. It is Ivermectin from an outside source that saved his life.

The Amos Center will continue to help these families and also those families who have lost loved ones due to the killer "vaccines." We are here to testify to the Truth of what has happened in Wisconsin and in the United States of America: a modern-day genocide. Please continue to pray for us and to support us financially at www.amoscenterforjustice.org."

Statement from Aurora Health Care

"We are pleased with this decision and continue to believe that courts should not be allowed to compel providers to administer care that is medically substandard."

Statement from Wisconsin Medical Society

"We’re pleased with today’s decision. The prospect of judges being able to order a physician or a clinic to provide substandard care to patients runs against everything physicians are trained to do. The 6-1 margin sends the signal that courts should leave important medical questions to those who are qualified to do so: physicians."

Statement from AMA

"The AMA is pleased by the court’s decision. Absent health care professionals’ courage to deny demands for a drug that offers no hope and no evidence of effectiveness, science-based medicine risks drifting into consumerist medicine where misinformation, fear, and privilege drive decision making and can result in deadly consequences."