{"id":466318,"date":"2026-02-13T13:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/466318\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T13:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:28:09","slug":"ken-paxton-backs-ivermectin-proponent-in-texas-medical-board-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/466318\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton backs ivermectin proponent in Texas Medical Board case"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a> on Thursday announced he\u2019s taking up the case of a Houston doctor disciplined by the state\u2019s medical board last year for trying to treat a patient with ivermectin at a hospital where she did not have privileges.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest example of Paxton going after a state agency he\u2019s charged with defending, in this case, the Texas Medical Board.<\/p>\n

The board, which licenses physicians to practice in the state, reprimanded Dr. Mary Talley Bowden in October<\/a> for prescribing ivermectin to a COVID-19 patient in a Fort Worth hospital during the height of the pandemic in October 2021. Bowden asked the board to reconsider its finding, but the board issued a final order upholding its decision <\/a>in December.<\/p>\n

Bowden has since sued the state medical board to have the reprimand overturned and on Thursday, Paxton filed a petition as an intervenor in that lawsuit against the board.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not stand by as Dr. Bowden has her Constitutional rights trampled and ability to serve her patients impeded with an illegal reprimand,\u201d said Paxton in a news release<\/a>. He called Bowden a \u201cchampion for health freedom\u201d and said he filed the intervention \u201cto ensure administrative agencies don\u2019t violate the rights of licensed professionals in Texas.\u201d <\/p>\n

Paxton accused the medical board of reprimanding Bowden without consulting medical expert testimony. The 19-member board includes 12 physicians and seven members of the public. All are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a>. Neither the Texas Medical Board and Board President Dr. Sherif Zaafran Thursday offered immediate comment on the attorney general\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n

Bowden told The Texas Tribune she was pleased with Paxton\u2019s support. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a four and a half year fight,\u201d Bowden said. \u201cI\u2019m thrilled and I hope we can put this matter to rest. It\u2019s not just important for myself but for patients.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not lost on political observers that Paxton\u2019s support of a celebrity vaccine skeptic a week before early voting begins could help win him more support. He is challenging incumbent Sen. John Cornyn<\/a> in what is expected to be a close GOP primary.<\/p>\n

Primary elections tend to attract fewer voters making them exceptionally tight races that typically result in a runoff, so any appeal to special interests of a political party can help bring more voters to the polls, said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. <\/p>\n

\u201cIvermectin is the MAHA wonder drug,\u201d said Wilson, referring to the Make America Health Again movement embraced by vaccine skeptic and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. \u201cAnybody who was prescribing ivermectin to patients is going to be a hero in MAHA circles. Intervening on her behalf, obviously, sends a strong signal to that contingent.\u201d <\/p>\n

Some people opposed to a COVID-19 vaccine began turning to ivermectin which is widely available without a prescription in feed stores because it is frequently used as a dewormer for livestock. The drug has become a symbol for the right\u2019s medical freedom movement and last year, Texas became the fifth state to allow<\/a> the sale of ivermectin by pharmacies without a prescription, thanks to the efforts of anti-vaccine activists. While there are similar efforts currently active in other Republican<\/a> states, the Utah legislature rejected a measure to make ivermectin more widely available this month. <\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s office declined to return a request for comment, particularly on the issue of why he is deciding to go after a state board that his office is charged with defending. But it\u2019s not the first time he\u2019s gone against a state agency<\/a>. In October,<\/a> Paxton sided with the Republican Party of Texas after the party sued the Secretary of State\u2019s office over Texas\u2019 election laws allowing open primaries.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Houston Methodist Hospital suspended Bowden, a COVID-19 vaccine critic, for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus, an action that prompted her to file a $25 million defamation suit that was ultimately dismissed. <\/p>\n

That same year, Bowden had prescribed ivermectin, an anti-parasitic used in animals and humans, as the treatment for Jason Jones, a Tarrant County sheriff\u2019s deputy who was hospitalized at Texas Health Huguley hospital after he had been diagnosed for COVID-19 a week prior. <\/p>\n

His wife sued the hospital to allow Bowden to treat Jones with ivermectin. Within days, a district court sided with Jones\u2019 wife and ordered Texas Health Huguley to give Bowden privileges at the hospital to treat Jones. The hospital appealed and an appeals court directed the hospital to allow Bowden to apply for privileges. Bowden replied that she was sending a nurse to administer the ivermectin. After Bowden\u2019s nurse arrived, hospital staff ultimately called Fort Worth police. <\/p>\n

Jones died more than a year later in April 2023. His cause of death was not disclosed in his obituary.<\/p>\n

The state medical board in its October ruling noted, \u201cRespondent knew she did not have privileges to administer her prescription to Patient\u201d and the panel worried Bowden \u201cmay repeat her attempt to disregard a hospital\u2019s rules on physician credentialing and treat an inpatient at a facility where she is not privileged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[1070,97,252,253,6590,127235],"class_list":["post-466318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-elections","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ken-paxton","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}