Ivermectin's story begins not in political controversy but in the rice paddies of Japan and the research laboratories of Merck—a journey that would ultimately culminate in a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Understanding how a legitimately transformative antiparasitic drug became one of the most polarizing pharmaceutical topics in recent American history requires examining the science, the regulatory process, and the social forces that converged to produce an outcome few could have predict
Jul 13, 2026