Texas Medical Board reprimands Houston doctor over Fort Worth patient treatment
The Texas Medical Board issued a public reprimand to a Houston doctor for prescribing medication to a COVID-19 patient at a Fort Worth hospital where she did not have privileges to treat patients.
The Texas Medical Board reprimanded Dr. Mary Talley Bowden on Oct. 17, following nearly two years of administrative hearings. The board, which is responsible for licensing Texas doctors, filed a formal complaint against Bowden in April 2023, accusing her of unprofessional conduct when she prescribed ivermectin to a man at Texas Health Huguley Hospital.
The board voted unanimously to reprimand Bowden. The news was first reported by the Houston Chronicle.
Bowden said during the meeting that she did not regret her actions.
“I have absolutely no regrets,” she said. “I would do it all over again.”
She added in an email that the hospital defied a court order directing it to give her privileges.
“They would have rather let the patient die than allow him to try a drug that is over the counter. I followed a court order, and my duty as a physician to act on the best interest of my patient,” Bowden said.
She added that she would appeal the board’s decision and that she would file a lawsuit against the medical board and its members.
The situation started in 2021, when Tarrant County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Jones was sick with COVID-19 at Texas Health Huguley. He was placed on a ventilator in the hospital’s ICU in a medically induced coma in October 2021, according to court records. His wife sued the hospital in an attempt to allow Bowden to treat Jones with ivermectin, a drug that is best known as a treatment for river blindness in humans, but during the COVID-19 pandemic gained popularity as a drug to treat the virus.
A court sided with Jones’ wife, and ordered Texas Health Huguley to give Bowden privileges, but the hospital appealed the ruling. An appeals court paused the ruling, but directed the hospital to allow Bowden to apply for privileges.
The hospital asked Bowden to apply for privileges. Bowden replied that she was sending a nurse to administer the ivermectin, according to the State Office of Administrative Hearings’ proposal for decision.
After Bowden’s nurse arrived, hospital staff ultimately called Fort Worth police.
Two administrative law judges with the State Office of Administrative Hearings determined that Bowden “engaged in unprofessional conduct in that she behaved in a disruptive manner toward licensees and hospital personnel that interfered with patient care and could be reasonably expected to adversely impact the quality of care rendered to a patient.”
Although some initial research showed that ivermectin could stop cell cultures in a petri dish from getting infected with the coronavirus, the drug is not effective at treating the virus in humans, according to medicinal chemist Derek Lowe.
“The problem is that the ivermectin results were at unrealistically high concentrations,” Lowe previously told the Star-Telegram. “There are a lot of other things that will ‘work’ if you just take a gargantuan amount.”
Earlier this year, ivermectin was made available over-the-counter in Texas.
