Pro-ivermectin Kansas doctor-lawmaker under investigation

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas doctor-lawmaker who has prescribed a parasitic worm treatment for COVID-19 symptoms acknowledged Wednesday that the state medical board has been investigating him since the summer of 2020.

Conservative Republican state Sen. Mark Steffen disclosed the Kansas Board of Healing Arts' investigation of him during a Senate committee hearing. He was testifying in favor of a bill that would require pharmacists to fill prescriptions for both the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for potentially dangerous off-label uses in treating COVID-19.

Steffen said the medical board has been investigating him for 18 months over statements dating back to his brief time as a local county commissioner before he took his Senate seat in January 2021. He said no hearings have been scheduled.

“They're using it to hold over me, to think they're going to silence me as I serve as a state senator,” he told the committee. "And obviously, that's not working out for them.”

During the committee’s two days of hearings, several Kansas doctors reported having trouble getting ivermectin prescriptions filled by pharmacists. Committee Chair Richard Hilderband, a conservative Republican from southeast Kansas, said he expects the bill to win the panel’s approval after it is debated next week.

“That is something between a doctor and a patient, on what their best way forward on care is,” Hilderbrand said.

Steffen is among the Republican-controlled Legislature’s most vocal skeptics of masks and COVID-19 vaccines and critics of the U.S. government’s and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He is an anesthesiologist and pain-management specialist from Hutchinson, a city of 40,000 residents about 50 miles (80...