Doctor can't have his seized Ivermectin stockpile - court
Friday, 15 July 2022
A controversial Murupara GP won’t get the stockpile of Ivermectin he imported to treat Covid-19 after losing an appeal against Medsafe’s seizure of the pills.
Between September 15 and October 19 last year, Dr Bernard Conlon imported 14,300 Ivermectin tablets from companies in India, across nine separate consignments.
The drugs were intercepted by Customs at the border, tested by Crown Research Institute ESR, and some were found to be contaminated.
Conlon took Medsafe to court in March asking that the drugs be returned, but lost the case and subsequently appealed the court’s decision.
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But that has also been rejected, in a reserved judgement by Judge Robert Spear, made in the Rotorua District Court on July 12.
The judge said Conlon had “no reasonable excuse to import the medicine”.
“Dr Conlon was unable to or declined to provide particulars of a patient to whom he intended to supply the Ivermectin that he imported,” Judge Spear said in his decision.
“Dr Conlon accepts that it was his intention to stockpile the medicine so that he had a ready supply of the medicine available to be administered to any patient that presented to him with Covid-19 symptoms and whom he considered would benefit from that medicine.”
Ivermectin is not approved for use against Covid-19, and Medsafe – the country’s medicines safety regulator – said there was no clear evidence it was effective to treat or prevent the virus, and it may instead cause serious harm.
Conlon’s lawyer, Outdoors & Freedom Party co-leader and anti-Covid-19 vaccine mandate campaigner Sue Grey, argued at a hearing at the Tauranga District Court in March that Conlon always intended to test the products himself before prescribing.
She said he “always intended to have everything tested whether or not it was taken by Medsafe”.
“The seizure has meant it has been impossible for him to get any testing done,” she said.
Grey is under investigation by the New Zealand Law Society regarding her activities concerning claims she has made during the pandemic.
Grey said Medsafe’s seizure of the medicines was “an attempt at an unconscionable overreach by the regulator” and that, under the Medicine Regulation Act 1984, “if he had a reasonable excuse, there was no grounds to seize the medicines and there is no grounds why the court cannot release them”.
She also said the antiparasitic medicine Ivermectin was safe and “had been used for decades, unlike so many of the other medicines available”.
However, Medsafe’s lawyer Sam McMullan said a key element of the act was a requirement for doctors to have a clearly identifiable patient for any such medicine.
“He had to specify he had a specific, identifiable patient in mind [for Ivermectin],” he said.
“It is not for a medical professional to stockpile medicines for the purpose of treating future patients.”
In his July 12 decision, Judge Spear said Dr Conlon was “prohibited from prescribing or administering this new medicine in the circumstances that applied when he imported it”.
“That being so, he did not have a reasonable excuse to import the medicine.”
Conlon was suspended from practising medicine by the Medical Council of New Zealand in February this year, but had his licence temporarily renewed on May 20.
His licence will expire again on August 31, and depending on the outcome of an investigation into his conduct by the Professional Conduct Committee, may or may not be renewed.
Conlon, a long-standing and well-respected GP, is being investigated regarding comments he made about Covid-19 vaccinations, and his refusal to get vaccinated himself.