NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw stood his ground during a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, pushing back against the host’s long-held views on using ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. The discussion emerged during Tuesday’s episode after a conversation about cattle farming parasites prompted Bradshaw to recall his past public comments regarding the medication.
As a longtime cattle farmer, Bradshaw explained that his familiarity with the drug came strictly from using it as a veterinary dewormer on his property.
Terry Bradshaw counters Joe Rogan’s take on ivermectin
During the episode, Bradshaw recounted a past encounter with a medical professional who advocated for the drug, noting that he could never rationalize that line of thinking given his own experience with livestock. Rogan countered by stating that the medication was originally developed for human use and claimed that substantial evidence supported its efficacy. In response, Bradshaw directly questioned whether the drug was ever proven to stop the virus and emphasized that his wife, who is a doctor, advised against taking it.
“I got in trouble one time for saying… people were having during the COVID thing, and they were taking ivermectin,” Bradshaw told Rogan. “I didn’t know any better, I thought I knew, but I didn’t know. But Ivermectin, we used to give it to the cattle, right?”
The exchange highlights a long-running cultural debate surrounding alternative treatments that gained traction during the pandemic.
“We’re in Hawaii,” he continued. “I run into a brain surgeon. And he says, “Are you okay with the COVID thing?” And I said, “Um, I had it, got over it, you know, I’m all right now.” And he says, “Boy, I tell you,” he said, “I take ivermectin, man. I said to him, obviously I said, ‘Really? It’s a cattle dewormer, ivermectin. Kills parasites.’ So I just left it at that, and I walked away and going ‘brain surgeon,’ I never could rationalize that kind of thinking.”
Major public health organizations, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, have consistently advised against using ivermectin for treating or preventing COVID-19, stating that credible scientific data does not support those applications. The discovery of the drug did earn its developers a Nobel Prize in 2015 for combating tropical parasitic diseases in humans, though its commercial life began as a veterinary medicine in 1981.
Joe Rogan, however, didn’t agree and explained his stance.
“There’s a ton of studies,” said Rogan. “There’s a lot of people that have written books. I’m not the guy to talk about it, but there’s a lot of evidence that the reason why they were not telling people to take ivormectin is because they wanted everybody to get vaccinated. But the reason why they wanted to get everyone to get vaccinated is not because it was effective. It’s because they wanted to make a lot of money, and that’s what they did.”
“But was it proven to stop [COVID-19]?” asked Bradshaw at one point.
With the podcast episode covering a wide array of topics over its multiple-hour runtime, the interaction quickly became a trending talking point among listeners online.
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