A deworming drug that is being falsely peddled as a cure for COVID-19 has found itself a dangerously wide new marketplace--Amazon.

The drug, known as ivermectin, has been called out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a dangerous substance that does nothing to cure or treat COVID-19. However, CNBC reported on Tuesday that forms of the drug, including pills and paste variants, are showing up on Amazon’s search results alongside reviews that lead to COVID-19 misinformation websites.

Amazon has not yet addressed the recent news report about ivermectin being pushed to customers through its search algorithm. The company has previously come under fire for COVID-19 misinformation attached to some of its products, forcing it in February to add a notice that would direct customers to the CDC for additional information on any COVID-19-labeled product. However, several of the ivermectin products being sold on Amazon do not appear to carry this label.

Ivermectin can be used by humans in small doses to treat parasites such as head lice, but is more widely used to deworm large animals including horses and cattle. Despite this, it has been pushed by misinformation sites as an alternative treatment for COVID-19.

Last Thursday, the CDC released an emergency advisory that said ivermectin misuse and abuse has led to a spike in calls to poison control centers across the U.S. The agency said that since the week ending on Aug. 13, it has seen a 24-fold increase of ivermectin prescriptions issued, rising to 88,000 from only 3,600 before the pandemic.

The FDA has warned that the drug remains unproven and unapproved as a treatment for COVID-19. It cautioned that when abused, ivermectin can lead to serious harm for humans.

False COVID-19 treatments have been a persistent problem since the start of the pandemic in the U.S. in March 2020. Former President Donald Trump notoriously pushed the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a remedy for COVID-19, a claim his own FDA disagreed with but that was nonetheless picked up by his allies.

More recently, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accused federal researchers of refusing to objectively study the effects of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment because of “blind hatred of Trump.” Paul, a loyal Trump ally, has been a source of misinformation about COVID-19. On Aug. 10, Youtube announced that it suspended Paul for a week after posting a video that claimed masks were ineffective against COVID-19.

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