JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi doctor who leads a group of physicians opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates has filed paperwork to challenge Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves in the state’s Republican primary.
Dr. John Witcher is the only Republican other than Reeves who has entered the gubernatorial primary so far. He’s best known for founding Mississippi Against Mandates, a group of doctors opposed to requiring COVID-19 vaccines. Witcher has said he was fired from a Mississippi hospital in 2021 after switching patients’ COVID-19 medication to ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug that is not authorized by the FDA for use against the novel coronavirus and which research shows doesn’t work.
A representative for Baptist Memorial Hospital in Yazoo City told the Biloxi Sun Herald that Witcher practiced at the facility as an independent physician and was never an employee. According to a Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure document, the doctor was suspended in 2010 from practicing medicine at another Mississippi hospital after a regulatory commission found he was “an immediate threat to the public by reason of alcohol or other substance abuse.”