'Should work': Texas doc sells horse dewormer for hantavirus despite COVID-19 reprimand

After being officially reprimanded for treating COVID-19 without permission in Texas, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden has started selling an unproven horse dewormer to treat hantavirus.

Bowden responded to reports that at least five hantavirus cases had been confirmed aboard a cruise ship by speculating about the efficacy of ivermectin.

"Hantavirus is a RNA virus, and ivermectin should work against it," Bowden wrote this week on X. "Ivermectin blocks RNA viruses from entering the nucleus, inhibits viral replication, disrupts integrity of the viral membrane and can prevent viral replication."

On Thursday, the doctor announced a scheme to profit from the new virus.

"I’ll be selling ivermectin for Texans only, no prescription needed," she announced on X.

Bowden said she was charging up to $110 for 100 pills. Commenters noted that the pills sold on Amazon for as little as $10.

"The only thing these people learned from the last pandemic is to start the grift early," one person remarked.

Last year, the Texas Medical Board issued a public reprimand for Bowden after she prescribed ivermectin to a COVID-19 patient in Fort Worth that she didn't have permission to treat.

"The government put out the big information on Ivermectin and why you should not take it for COVID," Bowden recalled during a 2025 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. "And that's sort of how I got tangled up in all this because I had privileges [Texas Health Huguley Hospital]."

"And when they ignored me, then I started speaking out on social media," she continued. "And that's how, that's what got me in trouble. And this was after the rollout of the wonderful COVID shots that were promised to stop transmission and prevent death and obviously didn't. And the government was getting frustrated. So they doubled down on their ivermectin attack, and this was end of August, 2021."