Ivermectin on the Joe Rogan Experience
21 fact-checked claims across 10 episodes · Jun 2021 to Jun 2025 · updated Jul 18, 2026
Ivermectin became a recurring Joe Rogan Experience subject in 2021, when Bret Weinstein and Dr. Pierre Kory used episode #1671 to argue the antiparasitic drug was a suppressed COVID-19 treatment. Rogan took it himself during his own infection and later disputed how the media described that. The argument returned through episodes with Peter McCullough (#1747), Robert Malone (#1757), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (#1999), and more recently the Houston physician Mary Talley Bowden (#2335). We have fact-checked roughly two dozen ivermectin claims across those conversations.
The contested questions were narrow. Did randomized trials show ivermectin cuts deaths, hospitalizations, and viral clearance time, and did national distribution programs in Mexico, India, and Sri Lanka prove it worked? The largest trials answered no: TOGETHER (NEJM, 2022) and ACTIV-6 (JAMA, 2022 and 2023) found no meaningful effect on recovery, hospitalization, or death, and a 2022 Cochrane review of 11 trials rated the evidence low to very low certainty. Claims about the drug's safety margin, its Nobel-winning antiparasitic use, and FDA messaging hold up better. This page describes evidence, not medical advice.
Most claims
- Mary Talley Bowden (6)
- Joe Rogan (3)
- Dr. Pierre Kory (3)
- Dr. Mark Gordon (2)
- Robert Malone (2)
Related topics
Does ivermectin work against COVID-19?
On episode #1671, Dr. Pierre Kory told Rogan that double-blind trials shortened viral clearance time and cited a meta-analysis showing 62 percent fewer deaths. That meta-analysis, by Bryant and Lawrie in the American Journal of Therapeutics, drew a formal Expression of Concern from the journal in January 2022 after an Egyptian trial by Elgazzar, which carried much of the mortality signal, was found to contain likely fabricated data. The larger trials that followed found nothing: TOGETHER (NEJM, 2022, 1,358 outpatients) reported a relative risk of 0.90 for hospitalization, and Cochrane rated viral clearance evidence low to very low certainty. Bowden's account of 6,000 patients treated with zero hospitalizations is an uncontrolled case series with no comparison group.
Did ivermectin prevent COVID infection in the prophylaxis studies?
Bret Weinstein, on the same Weinstein and Kory ivermectin episode, described a 400-person control group with 57 percent infected, arguing prophylactic protection approached 100 percent. No published study matches those figures. Rogan repeated a close variant, saying nobody on ivermectin caught COVID in that study. Those numbers track an unblinded, open-label Argentine trial (Chahla et al.) of household contacts reporting 7.4 percent versus 58.4 percent, assessed as high risk of bias, with PCR confirmation on only 16 of 340 participants. The placebo-controlled ACTIV-6 trial (JAMA, 2022, n=1,591) found no clinically meaningful benefit.
Did Mexico, India, or Sri Lanka beat COVID with ivermectin?
Kory told Rogan that Mexico cut hospitalizations by up to 75 percent. That figure came from an uncontrolled internal IMSS report, never peer reviewed. On #1718 Rogan said mass distribution meant Uttar Pradesh knocked COVID down to almost nothing, but the state started distributing ivermectin in August 2020, before the Delta wave it failed to prevent, and researchers found populous districts reporting zero deaths for months. Peter McCullough said on #1747 that he advised Sri Lanka on ivermectin protocols; Sri Lanka's largest outbreak of the pandemic ran from roughly July to October 2021, the same window. A 2023 BMJ Global Health review of kit programs across eight Latin American countries found most of the 33 available trials carried substantial risk of bias. See also our wider COVID-19 pandemic fact-checks.
Was ivermectin suppressed by Merck, the FDA, and the media?
Robert Malone argued on #1757 that Merck's warning about its own drug was bizarre given ivermectin's place on the WHO Essential Medicines List. Merck's statement of February 4, 2021 cited no meaningful evidence of clinical efficacy in COVID-19 patients and a concerning lack of safety data in most available studies; WHO lists the drug for parasitic diseases such as river blindness and scabies, not for COVID-19. Terrence Howard went further on #2152, calling the restrictions an agenda against a natural treatment. Bowden's version is more concrete and largely checks out: she was a plaintiff in Apter v. FDA over the agency's August 2021 "you are not a horse" posts, and the FDA agreed in 2024 to delete them, though by settlement, with no admission of wrongdoing.
What is ivermectin actually proven to treat?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invoked the drug's Nobel Prize on #1999, saying ivermectin won a Nobel for efficacy in humans. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honored the discovery of avermectin for parasitic roundworm diseases, decades before COVID-19 existed, and said nothing about antiviral use. That parasitic indication is the proven one: ivermectin paralyzes worms through glutamate-gated chloride channels found in invertebrate nervous systems. Rogan's complaint on #2341 that CNN called his prescription horse dewormer is partly fair, since FDA-approved human formulations do exist. Newer claims remain untested: Dr. Mark Gordon's report of a prostate cancer clearing on daily ivermectin is one patient, and prostate research on the drug is confined to cell lines and mice. More in our health and medicine claims.
Logged claims
“It's insane. And the fact that it won the Nobel Prize for for efficacy in humans yeah in humans yeah it was wild it was just wild they had to do it”
Kennedy invokes ivermectin's Nobel Prize as if it bolsters ivermectin's case as a COVID-19 treatment, when the prize recognized its efficacy against parasitic worm infections, not any antiviral or COVID-19 effect.
“They have 230 million people in this country and they've essentially knocked COVID down to almost nothing.”
Rogan claims the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, with 230 million people, drove COVID down to nearly zero using mass ivermectin distribution.
“you can't say something's 99 like no clinical trial known to human history has ever shown something 99 effective”
Rhonda Patrick states no clinical trial in human history has ever shown a treatment to be 99% effective, in the context of dismissing an ivermectin claim.
“these were frontline workers who were so thoroughly exposed to COVID that 57% of the people in the 400-person control group who didn't take ivermectin did get …”
Weinstein cites a study in which 57% of a 400-person unmedicated control group of frontline workers contracted COVID, used to argue ivermectin's prophylactic effect is close to 100% effective.
“this meta-analysis, which was just published, basically found that there was a 62, on average, a 62% reduction in death when you used ivermectin from all of th…”
Kory claims a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found ivermectin reduces COVID death risk by 62% on average.
“You have a large country like Mexico who just put out results of a nationwide program centered around ivermectin where hospitalizations were reduced up to 75% …”
Kory claims a Mexican nationwide ivermectin distribution program (run by the IMSS social security agency) reduced COVID hospitalizations by up to 75%.
“In fact, we have now double-blind randomized control trials showing that the time to viral clearance is greatly shortened with ivermectin.”
Kory claims double-blind RCTs show ivermectin significantly shortens time to viral clearance and, in the same breath, that it 'eradicates the virus.'
“None of the people who took it prophylactically in that study got COVID. 58% of the people that didn't take it got COVID.”
It is claimed that in a prophylaxis study, 0% of the ivermectin group and 58% of the control group contracted COVID.
“which is why I never sued CNN. CNN lied about me over and over and over again. They said I was taking horse dewormer and they altered the color of my face on t…”
Rogan says CNN falsely described his ivermectin use as taking horse dewormer and altered his skin color on air to make him look green.
“But ivermectin is metabolized by the liver, not the kidney. So it would be no harm for him to get, yeah, I was having had a kidney transplant for him to get iv…”
Bowden claims ivermectin is metabolized by the liver and not the kidney, so it posed no harm to a kidney transplant patient.
“Seventeen states have had bills in the last legislative session trying to get ivermectin over the counter. Three have been successful. So, Tennessee, Idaho, an…”
Bowden claims 17 states had bills to make ivermectin over the counter, with three successful (Tennessee, Idaho, Arkansas), four in deliberation, and ten failed.
“And I actually sued the FDA over that horse tweet and we won. It hasn't really changed anything. But so the FDA, when they put that information or misinformati…”
Bowden claims she sued the FDA over its ivermectin horse tweet and won.
“So for ivermectin, it kind of depends on the rat, I mean, the type of animal and the gender, but it's basically 10 milligrams per kilogram up to 80 milligrams …”
Bowden states ivermectin's animal LD50 ranges from about 10 to 80 milligrams per kilogram while the COVID dose used is 0.4 milligrams per kilogram.
“So once I knew it was safe, then I started using it and then I found it worked. And then all in all, I treated well over 6,000 patients and everybody that got …”
Bowden claims she treated well over 6,000 patients and that everyone who got early treatment stayed out of the hospital.
“And Dr. Verone had much better success than most other doctors. His overall success rate was 4.4 percent of his patients died, whereas in other hospitals, aver…”
Bowden claims Dr. Joseph Varon's COVID patient death rate was 4.4 percent versus an average around 20 percent in other hospitals.
“Gleason is the grade of cancer of the prostate, and it was Gleason 7. He went on 12 milligrams of ivermectin every day for eight weeks, and at 12 weeks, he got…”
Dr. Gordon claims a veteran with Gleason 7 prostate cancer took 12 milligrams of ivermectin daily for eight weeks and a PET scan showed no detectable prostate abnormalities.
“I got covid for 12 hours 12 hours 12 hours tested twice positive for covid it was a Wednesday um let's see it was Wednesday I think we were having Yumer no we …”
Dr. Gordon claims he cleared a twice-positive COVID infection within 24 hours using quercetin, zinc, and ivermectin.
“I think it's an agenda attached to it because they restricted any natural thing like ivermectin... What the ivermectin did, it causes the worms to have paralys…”
Howard claims ivermectin was suppressed as a covid treatment for agenda-driven reasons, describing its anti-parasitic mechanism as evidence it was an effective antiviral defense.
“it is bizarre that Merck would come out with these explicit statements about the safety of ivermectin. Both ivermectin and hydroxy are on the WHO list of essen…”
Malone claims it's inexplicable that Merck warned against ivermectin's safety/efficacy for COVID given both drugs are on the WHO Essential Medicines List.
“there was a specific visit of Biden to Modi and a decision was made in the Indian government not to disclose the contents of those packages that were being dep…”
Malone implies a Biden-Modi meeting led to India concealing the contents of a COVID treatment package deployed in Uttar Pradesh, which allegedly included ivermectin.
“I advise the Sri Lankan government. They reached out to me and said, listen, we're in trouble. We're getting buried with COVID.”
McCullough claims he personally advised the Sri Lankan government to distribute ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine protocols and that this successfully handled their COVID pandemic.